this is the winner right here

I feel like Sandinista is more the band openly experimenting and combat rock is more of a focused end product of weirdness. I’m not trying to knock Sandinista too much, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone new to the band. I would however recommend a lot of songs from it, which are so unbelievably good that I imagine would lead to diving right into it.

No need to die on that hill, nobody would kill you for that rational opinion.

I’m a huge clash fan… but Sandinista is a challenge at times. I don’t think I’d ever recommend a new clash listener to check it out before Combat Rock. There’s a lot of gold in it, but making it a triple album left a lot of fat that should have been trimmed as well.