Nothing Less

Just over a year ago I saw Mindset play in London. I chatted to Ev before they played and told him that I thought that their LP, 'Leave No Doubt', was probably the best straight edge record since The First Step's 'What We Know'. A year later and the band are almost done. They just put out a final 7" on Ev's label' React! Records, and last weekend they popped over to Europe to play three final European shows. I couldn't make it to the one in the UK, but a friend picked up a copy of their new 7" for me.

The 'Nothing Less' 7" went up for pre-order in mid January, and the red vinyl sold out in a few minutes. I didn't get one. So I'm very happy to get this maroon vinyl tour copy.

It's immediately obvious that they put a lot of effort into this record. The sleeve is a tri-fold affair, with a great layout which includes lots of live photos.

It's always sad when a good band calls it quits, but this 7" makes it bittersweet. The songs on here are really good. Truly next level stuff. So it's a shame that we won't get any more, but at the same time, it's good to see them going out on a high.

Plague The Night

Ordering that True Identity 7" got me in the mood to order something else from Europe. This split 7" between Ancient VVisdom and Roses Never Fade came out a year ago to pretty much no fanfare. I don't think I've seen a single picture of one on instagram or anywhere else for that matter. It's almost as if it never came out. Or perhaps nobody else knew about it. I don't know, it's kinda weird to see a record get so little coverage. Although it wouldn't surprise me if nobody actually ordered it due to the label's outdated payment system, where you place an order online, and then a day or so later they email you an invoice, which you then have to go to paypal manually and pay. I'm sure that would have worked pretty well in 1999, but not being able to check out immediately probably puts some people off. It did me for a year.

Anyway, I'm glad I ordered this as the packaging is beautiful. I'm also glad that I decided to buy both available colours. There were 75 on orange vinyl:

And 100 on gold vinyl... and this is true gold rather than clear yellow. Shame I didn't have this a month ago for the #januaryrecordaday thing, but never mind.

The best thing about this record is that it reminded me that I should listen to Roses Never Fade more. I almost completely forgot about them. What a fool. But why oh why did their last album come out on CD only?

There are only 200 copies in total, but Neuropa Records still have copies available for anyone who may be interested.

True Identity

I saw a lot of people listing the True Identity demo in their best of 2015 lists, but seeing as it only came out on cassette, I didn't hear it. I'm have a total disdain for tapes, especially in the modern era. The way I see it, if something only exists on tape, then it doesn't actually exist.

Thankfully, however, the good folks at React! and Refuse Records saw fit to give this thing a proper release on a proper format so I could finally hear it.

Each label made 250 colour vinyl copies, and despite missing the React! copies on gold, fortunately the blue copies were still available from Refuse... probably because most Americans didn't want to pay the overseas shipping. Still, I think it worked out ok, as the blue vinyl is clearly the most fitting colour for this thing. Gold seems like a poor choice. I'm happy.

I've got to say, this is some good shit. I don't know why I seem surprised, given that this contains both Aram and Jim from Champion. But after listening to this one a few times over the past week or so, my main issue is that there aren't enough songs. Hopefully there will be a follow up release soon.