One of my favourite discoveries of the last couple of years has been Roses Never Fade. The LP that came out on A389 was one of my top records of 2011. If I'm honest, the main point of interest originally that drove me to pick up the record was that the band contained Dwid, whose work I have always enjoyed. The latest release is a 7" courtesy of Neuropa Records, and the biggest change is that Dwid is no longer present. I'll get to that in a bit. But first up, the record.
The label tells me that this comes packaged in a 'spot varnished heavy cardboard sleeve'. I'm not a printer or an artist so I didn't know what that meant, but my plain English interpretation is that it means a sleeve where the band name is somehow printed in an almost invisible gloss over the top of the artwork. Hopefully you get the idea from these photos:
The spot-varnished heavy cardboard sleeve then unfolds to reveal the lyrics printed on the inside:
So as I said at the start, Dwid appears to no longer be in the band. Instead, Nathan Opposition is in (dude was in one of the incarnations of Integrity from a couple of years ago, and was in The Final Plan before that, and now he fronts my new favourite band, Ancient VVisdom, whose sound is not a million miles away from Roses Never Fade. Anyway, the change in sound for RNF is hard for someone like me to describe. All I can say is that it has gone from sounding like some dude is whispering the lyrics in a dark cellar late at night, trying not to wake the people in the house (probably because he's going to murder them as they sleep), to sounding like a the words are now being sung/spoken by dudes who sound like they have pretty much given up because they know that they are about to be murdered. Of course, this probably makes no sense, but its the best I can do at this hour. In short though, if you liked Roses Never Fade before then I can't imagine that the change in sound is radical enough to turn you off.
As you might expect, I picked up all three versions of this. 75 on grey, 125 on white and 250 on black.
The grey is really cool. Has some great swirls going on which make it visually more interesting than the standard grey vinyl you will have seen before.
Surpisingly, it looks like you can still buy all three colours from the Neuropa Store. I'd therefore advise you pick up at least one ASAP.
Finally, if anyone can hook me up with good quality mp3s of this record I'd be extremely grateful.
