Shades Apart

Formed in 1988 in Bridgewater, New Jersey, the hardcore outfit Shades Apart originally featured singer and guitarist Mark V. alongside bassist Kevin Lynch and drummer Ed Brown. Their self-titled debut arrived on Wishingwell later the same year, after which the group went quiet until the Sunspot EP Dude Danger surfaced in 1992. A switch to the Skene imprint preceded the 1993 release of the Neon EP. The band All, whose lineup included Bill Stevenson and Stephen Egerton, handled production duties on the next full-length, Save It, which emerged in 1995 and achieved modest success via a punk-inflected rendition of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.” Eye Witness followed on major-label imprint Universal in 1999, two years after the appearance of Seeing Things, while Sonic Boom reached listeners in spring 2001.