Antidote 'No Peace In Our Time' LP

When I heard that there was a full length coming out from Antidote, like most people I was extremely sceptical. I mean, can anyone think of any band that has split up, reformed years later and made new music which has not sucked? Yeah, me neither. It just doesn't happen. But still, I was curious. I mean, the Antidote 7" is one of the all time greats. If there was a 1% chance of a new record being even half as good as the 7", then it was going to be worth investigating. So I downloaded it to check it out and I found myself quite enjoying it. I mean, it doesn't touch the 7", but you know what? It's not half bad. I found myself getting kinda addicted to the first song, with it's catchy 'shut up!' chorus, which would then lead on to me listening to the rest of the record. So I then figured I wanted to buy a vinyl copy. And then before I got around to visiting the Bridge Nine store, I stumbled onto a test press on eBay being sold by Drew Stone himself. I'm such a dipshit that I couldn't resist bidding on it. And wouldn't you know it, I won.

As tests go, this one is fairly interesting. This comes in a plain LP sleeve, but the sleeve has a 12" x 12" target glued to the front. And not only is the front a target, but the target was actually used at a shooting range. It was shot three times with an AK47.

I got number 7 of 20 copies. The labels are stamped, as is usual with B9 tests these days.

The back of the cover is signed by all members of the band. The back also has bullet exit holes.

There's also a photo included which shows the sleeve/target hanging at the shooting range. A pretty cool little extra I think.

I haven't read or heard anyone else's opinion on this record. Anyone else given this a chance? If so, let me know your thoughts. I'm genuinely interested.

America's Hardcore Volume 2

Did someone say Bane? Did someone say Supertouch? Well count me in! This is the new compilation from Triple B Records 'America's Hardcore Volume 2'. I didn't even per-order this or really know about it until someone offered me this little set of four records. But needless to say I bit their arm off (not literally).

There are three colours of this thing. The most limited is purple out of 333. I think this was supposed to be red, white and blue swirl. But I guess when you put red, white and blue into a record making machine this is what comes out. Purple.

There are 16 bands on here. Mainly current or new bands, most of which I have never listened to. Clearly I need to do some catching up though as most bands on here are great. Red vinyl is out of 765.

The third colour is clear blue, which is 'limited' to a huge 1,015 copies. In my mind this is the best looking colour of the lot. This photo also shows the glossy booklet that accompanies the record. Just like comps of old, each band gets a page.

I also picked up a test press. The picture also shows the front of the glossy booklet, although the test just comes in a plain white paper sleeve. There are quite a few of these. 35 in total. No doubt the high number made is so the band members could get copies, but with 16 bands on the record, you know there's no way each person playing on the comp got one.

And to finish, the obligatory 'collection' shot, aka the money shot:

The funniest thing though was that on first play, one song jumped out and I was like 'wow, who's this?'. It was Ringworm. I hadn't even noticed that Ringworm was on this thing. Is it me or do they seem out of place?

There are some really good songs on here and I just know this is going to be a gateway to buying more records for me. But I probably need to haul myself into the 21st century a bit more. Notable mention goes to the Boston Mayhem song (which is some modern day hardcore supergroup) which I thought was awful at first, but which is now pretty much my favourite. Weird how that happens sometimes isn't it?

More Than I've Got

There's something I always liked about the Right Brigade / A Poor Excuse 7", and I always kinda wanted to collect all the different versions. I just never got around to it. I did buy two versions from some dick on eBay last year, but he never sent them and then seemed to vanish from eBay. Seemed a bit weird as he had thousands of positive feedback. Maybe he died? Who knows?

Well I recently spotted this yellow vinyl copy and added it to my collection. I only ever bought one copy of this record when it came out and never really knew which colours were rarer than others, but the Bridge Nine discography tells me that this is the rarest colour and there are only 152 of these.

Perhaps now that this doesn't seem to sell for much I can add the other versions to my white cardboard box. Hmmm. We shall see...

This Is A Cave In

Back in September last year, Hydrahead Records announced that it was going to close down. For a lot of people, me included, it was a shock and a bit of a sad moment. I somehow latched onto the label in it's very early days and I bought everything they released religiously. Well, up to about 2005 or so, and then I lost interest. A lot of the stuff they released these last few years just wasn't grabbing my attention. Plus, with the label growing in popularity, it was impossible to get any of the records. They would sell out at insane speeds. So I lost touch and kinda gave up. But I was still very sad to hear that they felt there was no option but to close their doors and shut up shop.

Well, this announcement seemed to generate a lot of sympathy, love and support from people wanting to help. And given that the label's problems seem to be mainly financial, this meant people buying shit. To help, the label put lots of stuff up for sale. The highlight was a lot containing a test press of every record they had released, which was up for $3,333. I did some quick maths and thought that this was a good deal, so decided to buy it, only to then realise that someone else had already bought it. Ah well. So instead I bought two Cave In tests.

The first is a test for the 'Anomolies Volume One' 12". This comes in a plain white sleeve and is numbered out of 30 copies.

The second is the 'Planets Of Old' 12" that came out about three years ago. This one comes in a sleeve with a robot on the front. Hydrahead must have made up loads of these sleeves and used them for every test press over a four year period or so.

I like how the back cover shows some Hydrahead hippy stuffing test pressings into the robot sleeve. Funny.

OK, so these are pretty low down the chart of cool Cave In 12"s, but I guess that's why they were available. I did stumble across some ebay auctions for Cave In LPs last week, including 'Jupiter'. I emailed the seller to see if we could work out a deal for the lot. By the time I had sent my message, someone else had bought them all. They must have spent about $1500 in one go. Damn.

Give Me Seven Inches

Seems we're all collecting Give records these days. Mike, Doug and I are now potentially all chasing the same stuff. At some point, I'm sure it's gonna get messy. For now though, things seem to be ok. We've each got pretty good collections and are each missing different items.

Just like Mike, I now have 19 pieces of Give vinyl in my collection, although a different 19. The 19th is the limited cover version of the 'I Am Love' 7" on Triple B records.

This now completes my mini-collection of the three 2012 released 7"s with limited covers, each featuring a 'part time' member of the band. This one features Austin Stemper. I think that these 'part time' dudes just fill in for shows or tours when the other members are unable to play out. A pretty cool set up if you ask me.