Eater – Wasting Time Review

So four tracks destined for the second Eater album now arrive on an orange 12″. These were originally going to come out on the Punk77 Antenna label way back in 2020, but it never quite happened. The cover is pretty much the same one that was roughed up back then by Andy Ounsted, based on a picture from the Oh Boy! magazine published in September 1978. It’s just been AI’d, and the boy’s youthful complexion smoothed over. The original had Andy O move Andy B closer to Phil as per below!

So to the music. We Eater obsessives will be salivating over the newfound track from 1978 called Wasting Time and good news: it’s genuinely a great Eater song. I’m waiting for Ian to break into Dancing In The Moonlight with that flanged bass intro, but he doesn’t, and it’s a complex well well-crafted song with very catchy chorus that shows their development.

Point Of View (assuming it’s the same rehearsal version) was what kick-started the original mooted join-up release and is a 100 mph classic punk rock that kicks the original recorded version from the Sofa comp into touch. My memory of the other two (5 years ago, remember!) was that they were ok, but I couldn’t immediately tell any major difference. But let’s see when the rest become available.

“They still sounded great . I immediately recognised Ian’s distinctive bass line that opens ‘Wasting Time,’ the first time I’d heard the song since demoing it, with it having never been released in any form.

“A version of another more obscure later song, ‘Typewriter Babies’ was also on the tape, along with ‘Point Of View,’ a mooted single that never was. Then there’s the rough and ready demo version of ‘What She Wants’ (for me, a superior take than the tamer single version).

“The tracks sound vital and fresh – but they needed finishing. So in 2024 I decided to do just that by adding guitar & some extra vocals.”

Nothing obtrusive, though; nothing that will set the old bullshit detector beeping wildly. Blade describes them as sounding “as exciting and in your face as ever today, which is always the main thing for me.” In other words, this is Eater at their frenzied finest, and you won’t be wasting time when you play it. Haha.

Ok so onto the shit part. It’s on Cleopatra, the musical equivalent of Punk rock fracking. To purchase this will cost you upwards of £30, so value for money, you’re looking at about £8 a track for an orange 12″. The last Eater 12″ 4 track record on coloured vinyl was way back in 1978, entitled Get Yer Yo Yo’s Out – it cost 99p!

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