The Blackest Curse

Integrity 'The Blackest Curse' LP. This came out on Deathwish Inc. somewhere around fucking ages ago. I only just got mine recently due to the uselessness of my local post office, and even when I finally received the package I wasn't happy. Here's the story...

4 May (or thereabouts) - the pre-order went live in the DW e-store. I can't remember how I found out that it was up, but I did, and I found out early doors. So I went to the store to place an order. But no, fate wasn't going to allow it. Every time I tried to check out I got some dumb error message. I emailed Tre and he passed me on to some chick who tried to help, but basically my order would not go through. I lost one or two days emailing back & forth trying to get the thing to work. In the end I figured it out myself... I had "outside US" set as my State, but my country had somehow changed to "United States" (which I failed to notice initially)... so I guess this caused some kind of conflict and the system crashed. Anyway, the point is that this fannying about ultimately cost me two days, which would ultimately mean that I would miss the rarest colour vinyl...

27 May - This was the "street date". Nothing happened on this date though. I'm just adding it in to fill out the story (and for completeness) because that's the kind of fool that I am.

16 June - I got an email to tell me that my package had been sent. I was really impressed, because this email contained a tracking number and a link so I could follow the parcel's progress to my house. I had never seen this on overseas mail before. I was stoked. In fact, by the time I received the email, the package had already reached the "destination airport" (probably Heathrow, only 5 miles from my house), so I figured it was only a few days away from my hands. How wrong I was...

21 June (Monday) - I got to work and checked the progress. I was stoked to see that the online tracking system now said that the item had been delivered! I was slightly confused though, because it actually said "delivered - no signature", which I thought seemed a bit of a contradiction. I mean, the way I see it, the signature is required to prove that delivery took place. So by claiming delivery without obtaining proof seemed a bit weird. So I wandered down to the post room and asked the dudes. Unfortunately though, there was nothing for me there. So I went back to my desk and waited, figuring it may be "in the system" somewhere and would make it to my desk with the rest of the post. However, this didn't happen either.

At this point I lose track of dates. But what I did next was give it about two more days just to see if the package would surface. It didn't. So I then spoke to the postman when he came to collect the mail in the evening. He told me that the only way I could inquire would be to go to the sorting office and speak to the dudes there.

So that's what I did. I went to the sorting office the next day on my lunch break. I gave the dude on the counter my tracking number and he typed it into his computer, to then turn around and tell me that "it says it has been delivered". "Would I have come here to ask where it was if it had been delivered?" I asked. "Of course not. I don't have it. And why does it say delivered but no signature?". Obviously this dude could not answer my questions. He was a moron. But he did then offer to go look for it for me. And about fifteen minutes later he appeared empty handed saying "it's definitely not here". Since there seemed little else that could be done, he took my phone number and told me that the manager would speak to the driver and get back to me later to let me know what had happened. But of course, this did not happen. Not that day or the next two days later.

So three days later when I had had enough of waiting for a phone call that wasn't coming, I went back to the sorting office on my lunch break yet again. Same dude was there again, and he remembered me. I told him that I had not received a phone call. So he took my tracking number again and then somehow figured that if he went into the back room again to have another look then maybe it would have magically appeared. Surprisingly, he didn't find it. But he did manage to waste another ten minutes of my time. And when you add on the time it took me to walk to the sorting office and back twice, along with all the waiting, I had waved goodbye to about an hour and fifteen minutes of my life. At this point we both acknowledged that the game was up and the only course of action was for me to fill in a claim form. He was even helpful this time though - he pointed out that the delivery date was (apparently) a Sunday... so clearly this was bollocks because the post office do not deliver on a Sunday. So I was pretty confident with this that I had proof that the whole system had messed up and I had been robbed of my parcel. Dude then gave me a claim form and I went back to work, pissed off, and still without an answer to the question of how the tracking system could have said it was delivered when it clearly was not.

So then what happened was that, like most things, I couldn't be arsed. Filling in the claim form looked kinda time consuming and boring and I had more interesting things to do. So I left it on my desk... for a few weeks. But then one day I was sick of seeing it on my desk, so decided that the time had come to fill it in. So I went to the internet and typed in the tracking number again. I wanted to print a screen shot of the bit that said the package was delivered ON A SUNDAY with no signature so I could make a pretty good complaint. But when I typed in my tracking number, I found myself met with a new message that I had not seen before:

Yup - apparently the package had been sat at the sorting office awaiting my collection for a few weeks, and because I (apparently) didn't bother to collect it, the Post Office had decided to return it to the sender!

Obviously I was pretty annoyed at seeing this. I mean, I was pretty sure I hadn't imagined going to the sorting office TWICE, and having the dude search for about half an hour in total. Yet here I was being told that it had apparently been sat there all along... even though their online tracking said that they didn't have it because it had been delivered.

To make matters even worse, when I checked the original tracking number in order to grab the screen shots to write this story, I found that the Post Office seem to think that they actually delivered the package twice! The first time being Sunday 20 June, and then they delivered it again on 14 July:

Even though this was mind-boggling, the upside to this turn of events was that at least I wasn't going to have to fill out a claim form! Instead I emailed Tre at Deathwish and he managed to find out that my parcel had made it safely back to where it started out. Tre then agreed to get it sent out again so we could all look forward to seeing what nonsense the post office could come out with next. Cool.

05 August - I got another email telling me that my parcel had been sent out (again).

10 August - Against all expectations, the package actually turned up! (Although, funnily enough, the online tracking says that it was delivered the day before it did actually turn up):

And when I opened the parcel, what did I find? Well, believe it or not, disappointment. I got two copies on the same colour. I was missing the red vinyl... presumably due to the cock-up with my address that caused my inability to place an order in the first place.

Anyway, you've probably already seen this now, since you all got your copies about three months ago. But here are some shots anyway.

Not that you care, but I'm into this. But also, it's pretty funny to think that this is the first "real" Integrity LP since 'Systems Overload'. Obviously some of you will argue that this is not a real Integrity record because there are no Melnicks in the band. But I guess that what I mean is that the last full LP was 'Closure', which I don't think really counts. And before that was 'Integrity 2000'... which, even though I quite like it, I acknowledge is also not a real Integrity record. And before that was 'Humanity Is The Devil', but that was technically not an album. So I'm kinda seeing this as the first proper Integrity LP since 1995, and one I have been enjoying. Itunes tells me I have listened to this 28 times already. I've mainly been playing this whilst riding my bike to and from work. It helps me go just a little bit faster, trust me.

Oh yeah... and here's something you may not know yet - the second press (on grey) is now up for sale in the Deathwish E-store. Go get one.