Biohazard - Urban Discipline (2LP)

Urban Discipline finds Biohazard at that sweet 1992 inflection point where New York hardcore was tightening its grip and metal was getting meaner and more streetwise. Released on Roadrunner Records, it is the band’s second studio album and the one that blew the doors open. You can hear why within thirty seconds. The riffs are thick and choppy, the rhythm section moves like a single engine, and the vocals, traded between Evan Seinfeld and Billy Graziadei, come at you in clipped barks and clenched-teeth melody. It is music built for small rooms packed with big bodies, and it still hits like a brick.

The lineup here is the classic four. Seinfeld on bass and vocals, Graziadei on guitar and vocals, Bobby Hambel handling lead guitar, and Danny Schuler on drums. That balance matters. Schuler plays with a boxer’s snap, all jabs and footwork, which lets Hambel carve out those stabbing harmonics and greasy bends without the whole thing turning into sludge. The twin vocal approach is a hook in itself. One voice leans rough and forceful, the other a touch higher and more biting, and together they carry choruses that feel like they were written for call and response in a sweaty club off the J train.

Punishment is the obvious entry point, and for good reason. It became a staple on MTV’s Headbangers Ball, and the clip etched Biohazard into the early 90s metalcore psyche. The song is a small masterclass in tension. It walks you up a staircase of palm-muted riffing, then knocks you back down with a breakdown that still rattles fillings. Shades of Grey has its own gravitational pull, less bludgeoning but just as memorable, with a chorus that crowds still yell like an oath. The title track, Urban Discipline, threads the theme together. It is a series of snapshots of street ethics and survival, sketched in hard lines without feeling cartoonish.

What sets this record apart is the way it folds hip-hop cadence into a strictly live-band setting. There are no guest MCs here, just a feel for rhythm and space that comes from growing up in Brooklyn when boom-bap was blasting out of every bodega radio. The lyrics read like shouted verse, packed with short images and plainspoken anger. It is not poetry in the tidy sense, but it is tight. Nothing wastes time. Even the brief instrumental turns feel like someone checking the mirrors before flooring it again.

If you came to Biohazard through later crossovers or their high-profile soundtrack moment with Onyx the following year, Urban Discipline feels like the blueprint. The sound is leaner than what came after, less gloss, more concrete dust. That suits these songs. You hear hands on strings, sticks on rims, a band breathing together. On a good copy of Urban Discipline vinyl the low end has a satisfying thump and the cymbals cut without going brittle, which is exactly how this music should feel. It is the sort of record that makes sense to own on wax, not just for the ritual of it, but because the physicality of the format mirrors the physicality of the songs.

It is also a record that pulls different listeners to the same spot. Hardcore kids hear the ethics and the breakdowns. Metal fans lock onto the precision and the bite. Skaters and pit rats get the get-up-and-go energy. That breadth is why you still see Biohazard vinyl getting snapped up, and why crate diggers will point out an original Roadrunner pressing with a grin. If you’re hunting Biohazard albums on vinyl, this one sits near the front of the queue.

There is history here too. Urban Discipline helped push a generation of heavier bands toward a grittier, street-level sound, and it did it without sanding down its edges. Critics noticed at the time, fans never stopped noticing, and the songs still turn up on setlists with zero drop in heat. If you find a clean Urban Discipline vinyl at a Melbourne record store, do not overthink it. Grab it, take it home, and let the needle ride. Or, if you live far from the city and rely on the postie, it is not hard to buy Biohazard records online from shops that deal in vinyl records Australia wide.

More than three decades on, Urban Discipline still works as a portrait of a band and a city, both moving with intent. It is tough, direct, and surprisingly catchy when it wants to be. Play it loud and you can almost feel the room start to compress, the way it does right before the floor gives a little and everyone remembers why this kind of music survives.