Yet another repress from the vaults of New Age Records, and this time out is the TRIAL 'Foundation' 7". This one originally came out in about 1995 and, oddly for New Age at the time, was pressed on black vinyl only. So 16 years later they finally decided to get it pressed on colour vinyl. And, like the other New Age represses of recent times, they really went to town on it, making 4 different versions...
The rarest colour is marble grey. There are 200 of these suckers:
Or should I say, there are 277 grey, but 77 of them got given the old Walk Proud labels (as with every other record New Age has repressed in the last couple of years) to become to rarest version - the '77 pressing. My two grey copies are slightly different shades of grey. The '77 pressing is a lighter grey than the regular grey copy, but I don't think it shows up too well here.
There were also 300 on clear, and 500 on 'brown'. Well, the label calls it 'brown', but the copy I got was definitely a dark red.
And here you can see the four copies together:
It's funny how some things are never quite how they seem. I remembered this 7" as a really good record that I liked a lot back when it came out. But if I'm honest, I haven't listened to Trial for a long time, and when I re-listened to this recently, it just sounded like a weak version of Strain to me. I was a little disappointed. But I really enjoyed reading the story that came with this record, which is a band history that leads right up to an explanation of how this repress came about. There was quite a lot to read for such a small piece of paper, and I found it a really nice extra to throw in with the records.
Looks like New Age still have all colours in their store if you're interested.
2 comments:
I think that I had read that Hartsfield was shutting down New Age in 2012 to focus on his wrestling company (or something like that). I have a feeling that this Trial 7 inch will be the last of the represses for a while.
damn. Fuckin want this!
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