Human = Garbage
album by Dystopia

Human = Garbage is the debut studio album by the American band Dystopia, released originally as a 12-inch EP through Life is Abuse, Common Cause, and Misanthropic Records. The record was later reissued on CD format containing a set of bonus tracks taken from the band’s 1992 demo tape, when they were a 4-piece band. They recorded 7 songs in 1992 with Dan Kaufman as their lead vocalist, and titled it as “Live In The Studio Demo,” and released two versions of it with different artwork / design. As of 1994, Kaufman was no longer part of Dystopia, and so a 3-piece band they remained until they split.
The five tracks from the original EP were recorded throughout February 1994, the first session starting at a mere three hours after bassist Todd Kiessling was bailed out of jail. According to Kiessling, he was arrested for trying to purchase an item with counterfeit money. He was, however, unaware of the currency's dubious status at the time of arrest. According to the liner notes of the CD edition of the record, all of the artwork was composed of various pictures and magazines that the band found in abandoned stacks of printed material in alleyways, trash cans and/or dumpsters.
The CD edition of the album (released in 1998/1999) was reissued on vinyl formats in 2014. At that time, the album was pressed on double vinyl through Tankcrimes.
“Human = Garbage” enters the record as album by Dystopia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Human, Garbage and album can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Human = Garbage” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Human, Garbage and album provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5936857. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1994, 1998 and 1999.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Human = Garbage” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.