condition (disc/cover): NM / EX

February 1964: the most ferocious Messengers record ever made, and one of the most intense hard bop sessions in the whole Blue Note vault. Wayne Shorter's title track is eleven minutes of controlled fury - Art Blakey playing like a man possessed, pushing wave after wave of pressure under the horns, with Freddie Hubbard answering everything at full burn. Shorter's "Hammer Head" and Hubbard's "The Core" keep the temperature high. Recorded right as the new thing was breaking all around them, this is hard bop pushed to its absolute structural limit - the old form containing the new fire, barely. Magnificent. CD edition.