Review / Classic Album
Inside Out
No Spiritual Surrender

“I reach out my hand and you turn the other way!”

The only officially recorded output by Inside Out is also a monster of a record that for many is one of the most impassioned sounding recorded works of all time (though this is not a completely universal sentiment by any stretch of the imagination), and, sure, sometimes the band gets saddled with the whole “this is where the singer of Rage Against The Machine came from” description, which is a huge disservice to the other musicians on the record and the band as a whole; but this did gain them some notoriety after the fact (though, again, for what is sometimes the wrong reasons), and at least that has allowed people to hear No Spiritual Surrender.

Clocking in with only six monstrously powerful songs, No Spiritual Surrender contains nary a dull moment as the guitars howl and the drums pound and the vocals wail together in an almost shamanic religious manner where the four people making the record seem to be attempting to call on some spirits to heal the world or demons to destroy it rather than being just another recording; and when this band hits (and they do virtually all the time), the music feels more like a spiritual awakening than just listening to some awesome record. I might be able to write a doctoral dissertation on this EP, but I will just state that whether you are hearing the mysterious opening drone of “Burning Fight” and its eventual crash when Zack screams “RIGHT!” and then the other words above; or you get caught up in the clarion call of the title track as it just rips through your soul (while you can barely contain the words “Try to make me bow down to you / try to take my identity / try to make me just / another pebble on the beach”… powerful stuff), and these are just a few bits of evidence of just how good this record really is.

Think about this: Inside Out is really just barely a blip on the musical map that probably barely registers in conversation about impacts on most people’s love of music or playing music or what have you, but for those that have brushed wings with No Spiritual Surrender and felt its moving songs and impassioned vocals, Inside Out touches a nerve that few others do; and perhaps that is the legacy of the band and its sole official release (there are bootlegs galore that includes not just this EP but also songs that were meant for an album… dear lord what a tragedy that was never recorded) in that for those people that are touched by the record, it becomes a part of their musical vocabulary and at times an ideal to make something almost as good. Possibly, it is the completely spiritual feel (read: not religious) that the record is imbued with that boils up this deep connection which some people get with the record; but whatever the case, No Spiritual Surrender is one for the annals and no one should miss it.