Lint to use distortion on his guitar and having bassist Matt McCall use an Ampeg SVT amp that "sounded like Blue Cheer or something." The sessions dragged on for "what seemed like forever" due to the engineer's decision to record overdubs and weeks were spent working on single songs. Livermore was also dissatisfied with the recordings, saying "Some were as good or better than anything Lookout had done, but others just felt... weird." By December 1988, the members were unsure if they wanted to continue working on the album and arranged a band meeting to decide what to do. After agreeing to start over from scratch, Livermore was assigned with the task of firing Hirsch from the project and the band went to Sound and Vision Studios in San Francisco with Kevin Army in January 1989 to re-record the album. Recording went quickly during these sessions, with the band completing basic tracks for the entire album in one day. "It was a live recording, because we went in there and we just went down the list. We weren't really taking breaks at all," according to McCall. "We didn’t want to slow down, we just wanted to get it done because we were on a roll." Release Once recording was finally finished, the band began working on artwork and packaging. Michaels drew the front cover and originally intended to put together the lyric sheet, but could not finish it before it was due and had Hayes take over. The album was finished in March and due for release two months later in May. As a celebration, Livermore and the band booked a record release party concert at Gilman on May 28 that also included Green Day, Surrogate Brains, Crimpshrine and The Lookouts on the bill, all of which also had records coming out. However, a few weeks before the concert, Lint and McCall went to see Livermore "looking utterly shell-shocked" and revealed that Michaels had decided to leave the group and that they intended to break up. "I remember me and Jesse, we were on Telegraph, I was buying him some beer", Lint later said. "Me and him talked about how the band wasn't really what it was when it started. It was like a mutual thing. That's one thing that's not usually told, it wasn't like he quit, it was like, ‘Yeah, we're not really into it anymore.'" As a