M.I.A. - We Must Fight!

At the end of the year they went to a local recording studio in Costa Mesa and got 9 songs down to tape in one afternoon, until they ran out of money —$300 well spent!

A cassette tape was hastily copied and passed around. A copy of the tape was given to Kevin Seconds at a show with 7 Seconds in Reno. Kevin passed it on to Tim Yohannan of Maximum Rocknroll. It eventually ended up in the hands of Felix Alanis at Smoke Seven and Greg Shaw at Bomp.

By mid-1982, M.I.A. ended up on 3 vinyl releases: Tell Me Why on Bomp’s American Youth Report compilation, New Left on Alternative Tentacles’ Maximum Rocknroll Presents: Not So Quiet on the Western Front compilation, and 8 of the 9 tracks on the infamous Last Rites for Genocide and M.I.A. split LP on Smoke Seven.

...In one corner is M.I.A., a band originally from Las Vegas, the champions of punk’s positive side. They’ve managed to fuse a super tight thrash sound with enlightened attitudes— ”I Hate Hippies” is obviously meant as a satire with a moral — and the results are absolutely stunning.

- Jeff Bale’s 1982 review of the Last Rites LP in Maximum Rocknroll #2 

This release marks the final chapter in Modern City‘s reissue campaign of M.I.A.’s catalog, started in 2023 with Notes From the Underground (National Trust 1985) and After the Fact (Flipside 1987), Murder In a Foreign Place (Alternative Tentacles 1984) and a 7” with two compilation tracks Just a Dream and Turning Into What You Hate.