It seems a bit weird to review an album that was first released 20 years ago but the new release of Bleach is different to the original and is worth a review. The album comes in a really nice digipack case with a booklet full of rare photos of the band in their early days. The album also contains a bonus live show which I expected would be on a bonus disc but it is added on to the end of the disc instead. The live show is from February 9th 1990 and was recorded at Pine Street Theatre in Portland. This show was available on a bootleg but it is not as good quality as it is on this disc. The only bad thing about this show is there is nothing special about it. It is just live performances of songs with no mid song banter and average crowd reaction. I would like to have seen a show such as the Vienna show from November 1989 which is widely known as THE best Bleach era Nirvana gig. The main highlight from the live show is that it contains the song Sappy, which is the best Nirvana song that was never released officially.

The first 13 tracks on the disc were the original release of Bleach plus the song Downer that was added in later releases of the album. Bleach is a favourite among many Nirvana fans because it is Nirvana at their rawest and punkiest sound. Apart from About A Girl all the tracks have destorted guitar, heavy bass and tinny drums. It really makes you realise just how polished their later albums were in comparison and this is the only album where you’ll really hear Nirvana sounding the way they always wanted to. For me personally there are not really any tracks on this album that stand above the rest. I really could not pick out the top 5 but songs such as School, Floyd The Barber and About A Girl really stood the test of time and were performed by Nirvana the most in their career.

Verdict: If you like Nirvana and don’t have Bleach then buy this album. If you love Nirvana and already have Bleach, buy this album anyway. If you want to get into Nirvana I suggest Nevermind or In Utero first.