New Years Poison

It just occurred to me that as part of my last post I'd completely forgotten about another record I got from CTW as part of the sale 7" order. I also picked up this Poison Planet - Ugly Truths Vol.1 LP.I was just looking at my 7"s and forgot all about it last night.
This is on clear vinyl of 200 pressed and contains the Oblivious and Undermined 7"s and some bonus tracks.

Probably also a good time to thank everybody who has read and reads my blog during it's first year and especially those that have taken the time to comment. I'd also like to give a big personal thanks to all the other great bloggers that have been kind enough to put a link to this blog on their own. I'm sure that has helped with the phenomenal amount of reads I've had this year.
Here's to more records and blogging in 2013...keep screaming!

Carrying The Weight

Here's the latest release from what is easily one of my favourite labels in the UK right now the consistently errrm consistent CTW (Carry The Weight). Survival - Spirit Unchained

This Manchester mobs record arrived about a month ago now after I pre-ordered it as soon as CTW announced it's release. This is the red vinyl version of 75. The other colour ways are 75 on green and 150 on black. These have all sold out now.

Another solid release from CTW. The funny thing though is that I prefer the B-side and the last 3 songs to the A side. The two sides have really different vibes to me, the first 3 tracks have  a D.C hardcore kinda vibe where as the next 3 tracks seem more riffy and have a strong crossover influence . I like the last 3 songs a lot. Have I imagined the different vibe? Tell me!

Whilst I'm at it I've had 3 more CTW releases sitting on my 'to blog' pile for 2 or 3 months so I may as well include them here too. The label had a sale a few months ago and I added these 3 earlier releases to my growing collection of their releases at a very low price.

Said and Done - Weight Of The World. Red and Black splatter vinyl of 200 pressed.

Abandon Ship - Of Time's Turning Wheel. A split with Dire Records 100 on Yellow

The Hard Way - S/T. 250 on Black with a big hole

All good quality hardcore from a good label doing it the right way. Those last three releases can be picked up for £1.99 a piece from the labels Big Cartel . Get on it!

Mighty Ducks

I bought this record purely because of Mario every time I've bought a punk or OI record recently he's said  'dude, you really need to check out Sydney Ducks'. I think he even put them on a CD he sent me and although I've checked out and liked some of the other bands he raves about like the Beltones I hadn't got round to checking out this band at all. So when I was cruising eBay the other day and saw this for a mere 99p I figured what better way to hear a band for the first time than on vinyl.

This is the bands Espirit De Corps 7" and I picked up the red version of 500. I like this 7" a lot it's really good stuff, the B-side song Joaquin Murrieta is cool too. A good introduction to the band I feel and I'm definitely gonna check out more. Hell I might even get round to seeing what stuff of theirs Mario put on those CD's.

I like the packaging on this thing too and how the band are looking up through the gutter on the front. Nice little touch.

Festive Seasons Don't Fear The Reaper

Chortle! Sorry about that title.
Quick post as I'm just kicking about for a couple of recent Reaper Records pick ups.

First up Born From Pain - Warfare

I loosely collect Reaper Records stuff, maybe at some point I'll get a bit more serious about it but they are a quality label so for now when they release something or I see a release on eBay I pick it up if the price is right.

 

 I'm pretty 'Meh!' about Born From Pain to be honest, their OK but I'm not mad into them but like I say it's Reaper so I was gonna have to get it eventually so when I saw it on eBay for a couple of quid I thought I might as well get it.

This is the 'dirty green' version of the record, which looks almost black until you hold it up to the light as you can see. 1000 of these were pressed.

I also got this a few weeks ago too.

It probably goes without saying that I already owned a version of this as I'm a fan of the band but I didn't have this particular colour vinyl. Of course this is Terror and the K.O.T.F EP that came out just before the Keepers Of The Faith LP dropped.

I love all the Keepers Of The Faith artwork and merch and what not for this period of Terror. I guess some people would say it's all a bit much and overkill etc but I dig it.

 

It was the blue version of the record that I already had but that's the most common version of around 1900 if memory serves. This is the 'Gold' version of 300 although it looks brown to me. It was nice to see the inner sleeve for the first time actually as my other copy is still sealed.

 



Patience for Impatience

I've slowly but surely been adding to my Coalesce collection over the past year. As much as I love the band the fact I've owned their stuff on various formats before means I'm just picking them up on vinyl as and when the mood or price takes my fancy.
This is the 4th Coalesce full length to be added to my collection but it's actually my favourite album by them Functioning On Impatience.
It looks fantastic too with a clear sleeve and card sleeve cover overlapping and combining to make a really interesting looking record sleeve. I've tried to capture that as best as I can below. No idea what pressing this is. Standard black vinyl but the cover more than makes up for that.

The Extermination Finally!!

I didn't know if I'd ever be writing this blog post but thankfully I am. It's a long and complicated story but basically I've been waiting for this record since June. The Extermination Compilation on Flatspot Records.

This record initially went up for pre-order in I believe April and despite it featuring four bands I really like I didn't order it straight away. I'd had a problem with an order from Flatspot before and I decided I just couldn't be bothered to order from them again. So it's probably my own fault that two months later the desire to own the Backtrack song in particular got the better of me and I thought 'everyone deserves a second chance' and placed my order.
Two months later and with no sign of it I mailed Flatspot with a polite 'has this record been sent out of interest?'. 'Yeah dude it's been sent, should be with you soon' was the response. A few weeks later and still nothing so I sent another email, 'not sure what happened but I've sent it now' came another response...hmmmm. A week or so later I saw a post from Flatspot on their Twitter account saying 'sending more records out' and a picture of said mail out, and there was my address staring back at me, so ok fair enough it hadn't been sent yet like I'd been told but it was now on it's way...phew...all I had to do was wait. Then this arrived:

I know what you're thinking, that's not The Extermination Comp, nope it's not, this is the cart filler record I added to my order to make the postage worthwhile and I didn't have this Police and Thieves 7" already. Great record of course but where the fuckity fuck is my comp?
So I emailed again and again got the standard 'dunno what happened' etc. Anyway to cut the rest of this short, twice more I've emailed and been told it had been sent, the last time apparently it had been sent with some free records, well it arrived on it's own so god only knows what that was all about.
Now to make matters worse I've really gotta echo my mate Marios comments about the state of the packaging too, theres a great picture on his blog here that shows exactly the way Flatspot pack records. It leads to this happening -

The side of the record sleeve is split and scuffed to shit. Typical.
Look, on a positive this record looks great and is a ripper of a compilation. The Backtrack song is awesome (this band can do no wrong at the moment) and the Suburban Scum track might be the best track I've heard from them too. The blue vinyl and packaging also look great. It's just a shame I had to be obviously lied to before recieving it. Fuck I've been in bands and into hardcore long enough to know running a label is a difficult and mostly thankless task and I really have no problem having to wait for months for a record to drop through my letter box but some honesty and decent mail packaging is really all I ask for.

 

 

Witness a Rebirth

I've got time before work and this record is next to me so as usual it's another post way out of synch with stuff I've received hah!

I used to love Strife back in the day although I never really got into their last
album Angermeans. I can't even remember why. Was it rushed? Did it suck? Maybe I should investigate that one again.
Anyway, this is their new album and first for 11 years the aptly titled Witness a Rebirth. I've only had a few listens but I like it, I don't know if it's a rebirth more a return to form and it picks up nicely where In This Defiance left off.
Igor Cavalera plays drums on this thing and I'm sure if memory serves he did some drumming on In This Defiance too.

Now this thing at the point of pre-order was pictured and described as white with a 'red splodge', but as you can see this is definitely more red with a white haze, I guess that's just how some turned out. This colour is limited to 100 copies. Nice looking gatefold too.

Record Store Day 2

November the 23rd in the U.S is Black Friday and our lucky friends from across the pond have themselves a mini record store day with some exclusive releases issued. This year I got involved...sort of. This could be a long one...

So this little haul of vinyl started early Friday morning at 1am. I'd seen that Banquet Records has some of the Black Friday releases in and they would go on sale in the small hours. Luckily I'm something of a night owl and this sort of time doesn't put me off, so I waited up and swooped for the one record I was interested in. Incubus - S.C.I.E.N.C.E

See back in 1997 I LOVED this record and whilst I haven't been able to stomach anything the band has done since, I still think this is a superb album, so when I heard it was being pressed on vinyl for the first time I knew I wanted to get it.

Pressed as a double LP on gatefold the packaging is actually pretty poor. The images seem to have just been blown up from the CD inlay and theres a printing mistake in that some of the thanks list is printed twice. Obviously a rushed job as this seems to have gone unnoticed. I've since learnt that these Incubus albums are getting a standard press in 2013, had i of known this I'd have probably waited. The Black Friday version is limited to 3000 I think of which I have number 1918. It's good to listen to this album on vinyl and I still think it's an interesting listen but man the packaging let's it down.

 

Anyway, the reason I didn't mind staying up till 1am was that I wasn't going to work the next day anyway, me and the Mrs where in fact venturing to Birmingham for the weekend for a weekend of booze, food, fun and....records, yeah you know I had record store motives in mind for the trip.
I'd been meaning to visit Ignite Records for ages and just hadn't ventured to Birmingham in that time, so I was looking forward to it greatly.
On entering I was immediately greeted by the owner Rich who also runs Speedowax Records. Rich set about quickly figuring out what sort of stuff I was into so he could make some recommendations. In fact in talking to Rich it turned out he'd read this blog via Marcus' blog which was pretty cool.

This was the first thing I picked up from Rich. Hardside - Time Is Punishment. Rich noticed me look at it and said he'd put it on for me if I wanted. On listening to it in the store it sounded pretty good so I grabbed it.

 

Good brutal stuff on Green vinyl released by 6131 records. The cover is damn cool too.

 

 

I've spoken before about how in record stores rather than buying on the net I quite often buy records I wouldn't normally be seeking out because It's in front of me and I tend to get a little punch drunk in the store. So LP wise I next picked up this.

 

 

Machine Head - Burn My Eyes. Here's another album albeit in 1994 here that I used to love. Albums like this ushered in a new breed of metal back then and this album was and is a terrific slab of thrash infused ferocity.

 

Nothing this band has done since has interested me in the slightest, they might be back to being meeetttaaaaallllllll now but their band wagon jumping nu-metal and rap-metal days were repulsive to say the least. Tracks like Davidian and Old are still cool though. In fact in a similar vein Rich had a copy of Chaos AD by Sepultura that I wished I'd picked up now too.

So Rich being a true vinyl pusher of course didn't let me leave the store only picking up two LP's he also pushed some 7"s on to me from his own Speedowax label. Glad he did though.

Let me start with this, Black Shapes - In The Mourning Light. Sweet Jesus YESSS!! This band seriously rip, I like this record a hell of a lot. It's the new band of the singer from November Coming Fire and sounds like Converge meets Hot Damn era Every Time I Die with some Refused vocal moments in places. It's bloody good stuff this. Electric Blue vinyl. Not sure of pressing details. Check it out!

Next Collision - Tiebreaker. Melodic Hardcore here in the style of Saves The Day and bands of that ilk. I really like this too, good catchy hook and melodies with some great chants and singalongs. Rich gave me a two cover version, the cover on the left being the pre-order version. Also contains the two pressings of the record on yellow and black. This double pack is numbered 6/25.

Weight Of The World - No Promised Land. Again a double pack of records on thick purple and black vinyl. Numbered 18/25. This is good hardcore stuff in the style of Trapped Under Ice and Expire

 Next two Rich threw in for free.

 

A split release between Douglas and Deathbed. Two pretty different bands of course. Douglas are UK stalwarts and play pop-punk. Deathbed on the other hand are fierce straight edge hardcore from Atlanta. Good stuff.

 

Snake Road - Severed. Quite a weird one this, I'm totally unsure about this band. Screamy shouted vocals in the style of Snapcase or someone but the music is kinda riffy twiddly rock and roll.Not sure it quite hits home for me but I'll give it some more spins.

So that concluded my Ignite leg of the day, Great record store and Rich is a true gent. It's always good to speak even briefly to a kindred spirit and someone with a similar taste in music. I'll defo be back sooner rather than later I think.

Anyway on leaving Ignite we ventured into Birminghams big shopping centre The Bull Ring. As well as picking up Krispy Creme doughnuts I ventured for the first time in a LONG time into HMV just for the hell of it, and wouldn't you know, they only had a vinyl section!! When did this happen? I think purely from the shock I picked this up.

Helmet - Meantime. This is the 2012 Back On Black reissue.

Nice looking gatefold packaging on 180 gram red vinyl.

Did this album really come out in 1992? 20 years ago? Time flys