Beware of Reality

It seems like I've been waiting on these couple of orders from the other side of  the pond for ages, so I was pretty pleased when I got home tonight to see them both waiting for me. I'm pretty sure Mario tipped me off about both of these, hell of a dude!

Anyway the first order was from Back To Back Records and two great releases

Beware - Wont Get The Best Of Me

This is the second press on 'seafoam' green. Limited to 100 copies, my understanding is that these sold out pretty fast.

Face Reality - Strong Survive E.P

This is on a rather good looking solid Red vinyl.. I'm pretty sure when I ordered this it was supposed to be on Orange vinyl, but no way this is Orange, it's about as Red as you can get, maybe they changed it. Limited to 150 copies I believe.

My other order was from Youngblood Records

Face Reality - S/T

I'm not sure what pressing this is or pressing numbers but this Face Reality 7" is also on some good looking colour vinyl. Blue with a hint of marbling in this case.

Give - Flowerhead

 

When buying the Face Reality record I noticed this on the Youngblood site too. Great record and I hadn't previously had chance to add this orange/gold version of the records to my collection. 120 pressed.

 

Worthy addition to the Give collection anyway

 

I've jumped these to the top of my pile to blog about as I'd been waiting a while for them. I've fallen behind recently but the records have been coming in at a steady pace so I'm gonna aim to get another couple of posts done this weekend.

"You've Got Enough Records!!"

"Where are we going?" asked my daughter, conveniently forgetting the deal we'd made not ten minutes ago that saw her get a go on a fairground ride for her co-operation in venturing with me without complaint to the record store we were in the city centre to visit. On being reminded again she added with some annoyance "You've got enough records!". "Well I'm just going for a look" I said...So a, I'm telling lies to a child and b, I'm feeling the need to explain myself on the record buying...what's wrong with me??

Anyway, child complaints aside here's what I picked up along with the Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats record I already wrote about.

First the one record I actually went to buy (or 'look at'), Death Grips - The Money Store.

 

I picked up Ex Military the 'experimental' Hip-Hop trio's debut recently and wrote about it in my Today Was A Good Day post, it's awesome and I needed to get the major label follow up as soon as possible.

 

 

I've only given it a couple of spins but I'm not as initially taken with it as the previous album, I'm not sure if it's because I know what I'm getting now and aren't as surprised by the disjointed madness of rapping, samples and electronic beats, or if this is slightly more watered down and less erratic. It's certainly missing something. Still that opinion will probably change on next listen.

Next I picked up Botch - An Anthology Of Dead Ends

Great album. I'd meant to pick this up previously but never got round to it. I actually thought I'd missed the boat or would have to pay over the odds as this was a Record Store Day release wasn't it? I think 750 were pressed in total but I'm not sure how many of those were on this clear vinyl.

 

I also spotted Doomriders - Black Thunder relatively cheap and as a band I like decided I finally needed to add some Doomriders vinyl to my shelf. This came out a fair while ago now but it's all good.

 

This is the second press of which they made four or five different colours and pressed 100 of each. This is the rather nice purple marble version.

 

Lastly, it seems to have been quite a while since I bought a record based purely on the record label alone, but I saw this 7" from From Ashes Rise and noticed it was on Southern Lord Records that released the Black Breath records amongst others and thought I'd take the gamble.

 

 

It's pretty much what I was expecting from Southern Lord, more doomy metal. It's not at all bad.

 

 

Uncle Acid

Man I like this record! I bought it on Saturday after going to a record store and amazingly they had it. I don't even think I'd normally bother with the 'U' section but I remembered I'd been meaning to check this out after hearing one track a while ago and Mike wrote about it recently too, so i checked and there it was. I've probably listened to it five times since Saturday.

I think if someone described this to me I'd say 'that doesn't sound like my kinda thing', I mean you can make all the Doom and Black Sabbath comparisons you want but this is basically 70's rock just a bit dirtier. I think it's the vocals and how it compliments the music so perfectly to make something totally hypnotic!

The first press and especially the super limited 'ultra die hard' edition have gone for mental money on eBay, which is made even crazier by the fact Rise Above are still pressing this. I got the solid green second press version limited to 500. I think that green actually works quite well, especially with the green sticker on the cover. The laminated cover looks awesome too.

Turnstile

When I started to get back into vinyl last year Turnstile - Pressure To Succeed was the record I bought that kinda triggered it. It wasn't just buying this record of course, I mean I'd been looking at vinyl again and thinking about buying them again but it was this release that I bought first because I'd downloaded it previously and loved it. I saw the blue vinyl first pressing one day and just thought 'yeah, I'm having that'.

One day a couple of weeks ago I looked at the Reaper Records webstore out of boredom as much as anything, when I noticed at the side of the page under top sellers 'Turnstile - Pressure To Succeed 7" Limited Cover 2nd Press'. Limited Cover? I'd only just bought the standard second press, what was all this about? Turns out Reaper ran out of covers, I presume for the last 132 copies of the second press (as that's how many of these there are), and pressed up the above green version of the sleeve.

 

This version just has a photocopied one side inner unlike the normal pressings. Here's a pic of the three pressings together. Would look a whole lot better if I had the pre-order cover version too.

 

Oh and props to Reaper for the speedy delivery they always manage. Considering I'm still waiting for a couple of things from U.S labels that were ordered months ago I really appreciate how quickly they get their stuff to me.

Will To Die

I picked this up recently whilst looking through an online distro because it said 'for fans of: backtrack,dtn, reign supreme, madball'. With that kind of influence I had to check it out as it sounded right up my alley.
To start with Will To Die don't really sound anything like those bands mentioned above and they certainly aren't as good as any of them, not that they are bad, they are OK but just do little to separate themselves from the host of bands out there within this kind of genre. They actually find their own feet a couple of times on this 7" especially when they speed up a bit but it's all too fleeting. The record suffers from some fairly muddy production too. So in conclusion it's an alright release but I can't see it getting many spins going forward, if any.
Limited to 200 copies with 5 different coloured sleeves each numbered out of 40.

Reign Supreme

I picked this up on eBay not long ago. Reign Supreme's American Violence 7". 

Good band that don't seem to get as much attention as some of their counterparts that play a similar type of metallic hardcore. It says limited colour on the front but this is actually the most common colour. 1000 on red.

Who can argue with a dude sporting a Pantera shirt on the centre label?

Heavy Breathing

I just can't stop listening to this band at the moment.
I talked about Black Breath's second album Sentenced To Life in my today was a good day post after it had been recommended to me by a couple of friends. I honestly didn't know what to expect other than I'd heard "It's a bit like Entombed". Well after the first spin of Sentenced To Life I thought it was bloody great. How had I not heard Black Breath sooner? Subsequent plays only went further to cement the fact that this was an excellent release.

Obviously this meant I now had to go find a copy of their debut album too, especially as I was now being told that this first album 'Heavy Breathing' was even better. Now that I liked the band though and wasn't just purchasing on a whim there is no way I was gonna be content with a normal black vinyl copy of Heavy Breathing. Luckily for me I'd bought a few things off a guy a few months ago and seemed to remember that on his list of sale items was Black Breath. Was it Heavy Breathing? Was it a non black vinyl copy? An email later and it was yes on both counts. Fuck yes!

Clear vinyl to be exact which given the ghostly image on the cover I think actually works quite well with this LP. I believe this was the European limited version of the release with the limited U.S version being blue. No idea of pressing numbers though. Both these Black Breath releases have great covers and packaging. Southern Lord have done a great job here. The whole thing just feels solid and quality.

Is this better than Sentenced to Life? Yeah probably. The second album is more of the same really and by that I mean quality heavy music, but I'd say Heavy Breathing is maybe slightly more consistent, there ain't a lot in it at all though, Black Breath have released two absolute scorchers. Think Entombed meets Converge meets Doomriders and your in the right kinda area.