Kenny Ahrens - Urban Waste

Kenny Ahrens and his friend Lynn Murchy during the A7 days, Photo: De Graham

At some point during the mid-1990's Shelter ended up crashing at our place while on one of their many tours. For some reason or another Cappo had a suitcase with him that had a stack of random old records from his personal collection in it. One of those records was his copy of the Antidote "Thou Shalt Not Kill" EP, which I ended up buying from him. Another one of those records was the Urban Waste EP.

The following morning, while packing up and getting ready to leave, Cappo walked over to the suitcase with the records in it and pulled out the Urban Waste EP. He asked me if I had ever it. I told him I had definitely heard of them and heard at least one song, but never the entire EP. He handed it to me and said, "It's yours, this is one of the greatest New York Hardcore EP's and you should own it". I was stoked to say the least and graciously thanked him.

Later that day after I got home, I put the Urban Waste EP on my record player and right from the first track, "Police Brutality", I knew exactly why Cappo said this was one of the greatest New York Hardcore EP's ever. Perfect shredding vocals over raw, hard hitting, classic New York style hardcore. Definitely up there with the likes of the Antidote, Abused, Agnostic Front and Cause For Alarm EP's.

Here Urban Waste frontman, Kenny Ahrens shares some of his favorite show memories. -Tim DCXX



Bad brains when they came to NYC in 1980. Also, all the D.C. bands including Government Issue and Minor Threat, they were always my favorites. So many more to mention...but the scene was about unity and friends back then, not fame & money. So we were all in it to help each other. "Good things never seem to last" ...someone commercializes it and gets greedy or pretentious about fame or some other bullshit, then you end up with mostly a bunch of assholes. I hope my cool friends never die. - Kenny Waste


Kenny moshing with the white t-shirt on, John Watson with the mohawk, Photo courtesy of UW