Nations on Fire - 'Strike The Match' LP

I wasn’t really a member of the H8000 hardcore scene. Or maybe I was. A long-distance member. I had known Edward and Hans since the early days of hardcore in Belgium. We met at Hageland Hardcore gigs. There was an enormous sense of unity in that scene and the DIY spirit was very inspiring and key for the rest of our professional lives. Sweet memories. Later on, in the early nineties, Ed called on me to mix the second Rise Above 7”. No idea why he thought I was the right man for the job, as have I never figured out how sound dynamics work. I do play a little guitar though. But I also am very impatient, so studios are not my natural habitat. Anyway, those sessions were a disaster. The studio owner had no clue. Neither had we, so the tracks sounded muddy.

When Rise Above morphed into Nations Fire, Ed called me again. He wanted me to design the sleeve for the record that soon was going to become an instant classic. Desktop publishing was still in its infancy in those days. I owned a Commodore Amiga, since I couldn’t afford an Apple computer. The Amiga had cost me a small fortune and there was no real dtp software available. I had to convert the sleeve design into a postscript file, so it was basically a string of zeros and ones. I remember being quite stressed about it, as the big films to get the sleeve printed cost me an arm and a leg. Moreover, the actual outcome was a bit of guess to me. But luckily, it turned out great. That ‘Strike The Match’ sleeve would become the first in an endless stream of hardcore record sleeves I designed. I lost count, but I’m sure I made about 100 and of them. Onno.