D.O.A.: Something Better Change Vinyl LP

One of the records that built hardcore — before anyone was calling it that.

Something Better Change (1980) is D.O.A.'s debut full-length, recorded in Vancouver between 1977 and 1980 by Joey Shithead Keithley, Chuck Biscuits, and Randy Rampage. Raw, political, and running on pure adrenaline, it sits alongside the first Black Flag and Dead Kennedys records as a founding document of what would become hardcore punk. The songs are short, blunt, and loaded — equal parts UK punk urgency and West Coast street-level fury, with Keithley's sloganeering lyrics leaving no room for ambiguity. The follow-up Hardcore '81 would cement the genre name, but this is where D.O.A. first showed their hand.