About the Album
“Vs.” is the debut studio album by American post-punk band Mission of Burma. It was released in 1982, through record label Ace of Hearts.
Vs. features a rougher, more difficult sound than the band’s debut release, the EP Signals, Calls, and Marches. It is the only full studio album the band released during the 1980s, as soon afterward they disbanded due to Roger Miller’s worsening tinnitus.
AllMusic opined that Vs. saw Mission of Burma “mature into a band whose sound was as distinctive as anyone of its generation. It’s daunting to imagine just how far Mission of Burma could have taken its music had Roger Miller’s hearing problems not caused the band to break up the following year, but regardless of lost potential, very few American bands from the 1980s released an album as ambitious or as powerful as Vs.”
The album ranked at number 49 on Pitchfork Media’s list of the one hundred greatest albums of the 1980s.
The 1997 re’issue on the Rykodisc label featured 4 bonus tracks
13 Forget
14 OK / No Way
15 Laugh The World Away
16 Progress