Holy Terror & Strange Grooves

A few months ago Holy Terror Records put up a new pre-order for an LP by a band called Blind To Faith. However, the main attraction to this LP was nothing to do with the record or band itself, but the fact that the first 250 pre-orders would receive a limited new Integrity 7". Being a big Integrity fan, I placed an order right away. I mean, if you told me that if I'd get an Integrity 7" by mail-ordering a selection of gay porn dvds then I'd be straight over to ilovecock.com with my credit card ready for action. Anyway, after about three months of waiting, the records turned up last week.

The Blind To Faith LP comes on a nice, US pressed clear vinyl:

It's numbered out of 250:

The cover is also really nicely printed:

Also, I played this thing and the record has reversed grooves. Which means it plays backwards. You have to put the needle in the centre of the record, and it plays outwards. This is no problem for me now that I have a decent record player, but I remember a few years ago when I had a cheap record player and it would be impossible to drop the needle at the centre of the record because, when it got it near the centre, it would automatically return to its starting position, thinking the record was finished. So I feel sorry for anyone out there who bought this and has a cheap record player. Actually, no I don't feel sorry for such people. You get what you pay for. Fools. The record is good. Heavy and evil as you would expect from Holy Terror.

The Integrity 7" is a split with AVM. The Integ songs are apparently Septic Death covers (again). Like the last Septic Death covers 7", this sounds kinda like it as recorded on the back of a bus using an old walkman. At first I thought this sucked, but after playing it through about ten times I'm starting to really like it.

I have no idea who or what AVM is. Rumours suggest they are from Japan. Integrity has a history of putting out splits with nonsense bands - Psywarfare, Lockweld, The Kids of Widney High. I guess this is another one for the pile.

This 7" is also numbered out if 250. They seem to have matched the 7" numbers to the 12" numbers too, which is a nice piece of organisation:

Now... the interesting thing about this record is that this has two songs, the grooves of which run parallel to each other on the record. In simple terms, this means that you can drop the needle at the start of the record and one of the two songs will play,but you don't know which one. It almost feels random. In all my years of buying records I have never heard of anything like this before. Really cool.

The only problem with this record was that, just before this arrived, I saw that Dwid was selling test presses on eBay. And he also had a green vinyl copy of the Integ 7". It turns out that there are 100 copies on green vinyl, and obviously I didn't get one. But quite clearly I needed one, so I got in touch with Dwid and negotiated a deal. So now I don't have to stress about missing stuff. Here's the goods:

Integ/AVM on green:

Blind To Faith LP test press:

Integ/AVM test press:

Complete with personalised dust sleeve and Integrity guitar pick:

If you want the songs from the Integrity / AVM 7", Dwid is giving them away for free HERE