Tuesday 12 February 2019

Who We Are

So Descendents released a new 7" for RSD 2018. It wasn't the most interesting looking record of all time. A pretty art-less cover and a black vinyl 7". It didn't particularly excite me and I wasn't going to chase it. A few months later and I noticed that it had been repressed on colour vinyl, so I decided to pick one up.

There are 3 different colours of vinyl (and black). Clear is the euro pressing out of 500. I bought this one because it was the cheapest copy I could find.

I found this quite disappointing aesthetically. I mean, first up, the cover art is pretty dull. Let's be honest, it's not even art. It's text. Then secondly, it's on bad vinyl. The 'clear' is a kind of misty clear that looks cheap. Kind of like the stuff the euro plant used to pump out in the early to mid 00s.

What irritated me most, however, was the lack of a poly bag. I know, I know, this sounds dumb, but bear with me. This 7" came sealed in shrinkwrap. I sliced one side of it open to take the record out. And then I noticed that the inside of the sleeve contained the lyrics. So I then had to take the shrinkwrap off completely to unfold the sleeve.

So basically this is a fold over sleeve that comes with no poly bag. I mean, seriously, why? Are Epitaph now so focussed on profit that they needed to save spending an extra $0.02 per record on something for the owner to store & protect it? Especially when they already saved the art budget by not having any.

Anyway, rant over. It's a Descendents 7" containing 3 new songs. It's good. It's just a shame that it doesn't LOOK better.