The Yellow and Black Attack

The Yellow and Black Attack is the record the band's own official date list places at 21 July 1984 — a six-song EP on the West Coast independent Enigma. It exists in two forms, though: the same list carries a separate entry for an expanded edition dated 10 August 1986, and the running order shown here is that later one. It was made fast and cheap. Michael Sweet puts it at two weeks and twenty to thirty thousand dollars, and credits that speed for the raw energy on it. For scale, In God We Trust four years later took six months and six hundred thousand. The response started before the record did. Wes Hein, co-owner of Enigma, remembers phone calls asking to buy the thing by the box — to hand out at church. It reached the Billboard 200 in the expanded period, entering on 23 August 1986, peaking at No. 103 on 13 September and staying thirty weeks.