I still have a clear memory of the day I bought this CD. I was in ninth grade, and my stepdad took me to the mall to buy me some new music—a purpose that I almost certainly overstepped. Among the CDs I plucked from the wall display were The Moon Is Down, Crash Rickshaw’s self titled, and Four Wall Blackmail, the debut from Dead Poetic.

As clearly as I remember that day, though, I can’t remember what it was that made me pick this record up. I had a habit of scouring record labels’ websites in those days, so I certainly had seen the band featured. I don’t remember if I heard a single on a comp or seen a music video.

But I do remember that the first time I remember seeing the term “emocore” was in a review for this record. Obviously, this is hardly the first album that could be described as such—it missed that mark by over a decade. But in my personal journey, this served as an entry point to the idea that the heartfelt melodies of emo and the powerful frenzy of hardcore could exist side by side—an idea that would inform much of my musical tastes as a teenager.

Let’s be completely frank: this isn’t a perfect record. Sometimes, I’m not even sure it’s a good record. I love it, personally, but it’s guilty of some of the worst crimes of its era. Many of the lyrics are so overwrought that I would have been embarrassed to scrawl them into the margins of my composition notebook (and brother, you should see some of the lyrics I scrawled in there). On a few occasions, it walks a little too closely to numetal territory, complete with a shouted vocal affectation that would be difficult to prove isn’t rapping.

But those shortcomings weren’t enough to keep me from returning to this CD over and over again throughout high school. I even listened to it on my way to commencement. Even when I put it on recently to see if I would have any interest in the vinyl pressing, I was surprised that instead of cringing the whole way through, I enjoyed far more of its runtime than I expected.

Because when this record is on, it is dead on. Tracks like “Stereo Child,” “August Winterman,” and the title track still hit me. “The Green Desire” might not be the heaviest thing I’ve ever heard anymore, but it’s still deliciously raucous.

Oddly enough, revisiting this record against its follow up, I still prefer Four Wall Blackmail by a large margin. It’s certainly not as well crafted, and the band still had a lot of self-discovery to do. But there’s an earnestness here that I always found New Medicines to lack. Or maybe it’s too slick for the jagged edges that gave this record so much character to show through. Every thick power chorded riff that’s missing a lead lick and every sung, screamed, or shouted line is dripping with an authenticity that was absent of most of its trend-hopping colleagues—and yes, I’m including the follow up in there.