The Blackest Test

Today's entry is a story ten years in the making. I think it's a pretty cool story, so have taken the time to write it out at length.

Back in 2010 Integrity released an album titled 'The Blackest Curse'. I ordered it at preorder stage as I was pretty excited for it, because Integrity had always been one of my favourite bands. Funnily enough, I read my original post on this record back before writing this and had completely forgotten the trouble I went through to get the record originally. That's one of the main benefits of this blog I guess - to jog my own memory. Also, fun fact - I am writing this post on 04 September 2020, and my original post about this LP was written on 04 September 2010.

Anyway, around the time that this LP was released, Dwid sold a test press on eBay, which ended up selling for $449.

I remember at the time being shocked that this record sold for so much, as it was a new release. But the reason for the price was that it was one of only 2 (TWO!) copies made. I knew that both test pressings ended up in the hands of big time Integrity collectors, and just accepted that this was one test press that I would never own.

Fast forward about 8 years, and I was chatting to a fellow Integrity collector one day, and he hit me with a rumour that apparently there were more than 2 test pressings for 'The Blackest Curse'. The rumour suggested that the pressing plant had originally sent the label 2 tests, and then several weeks later sent another box with a lot more copies inside. Apparently they had been put into a store room or cupboard at Deathwish Inc. This dude had emailed Deathwish about it, and been told that they didn't know where the box was and weren't about to go looking. It sounded like a great story, but it also sounded kinda made up.

Fast forward another two years, and in the flurry of auctions and raffles that cropped up a couple of months ago for various charities, Deathwish launched their own test press raffle. I got an email on 07 July from Deathwish telling me that they were running a raffle, with 22 different test pressings up for grabs. And in the list of test pressings was Integrity 'The Blackest Curse'. It suddenly felt like perhaps this rumour were true. But the raffle seemed to suggest that you bought a ticket and then if your number was drawn you would be allocated one of the 22 tests on offer. So I figured that my chance of winning the one record that I was interested in were slim, and I didn't want to take the gamble that would likely result in disappointment.

Well, a few days later and my luck turned. I got an email from Dwid himself, offering a 'Blackest Curse' test press. He confirmed that the rumour was indeed true, and that Deathwish had recently unearthed the box of additional tests. Apparently the box contained 32 more copies, which took this from being the rarest Integrity test press to the most common overnight. Dwid got sent a few and made up some hand drawn covers for them.

The final thing worthy of note is that only two of the copies Dwid got sent had the same green labels as the copies he originally received in 2010. The rest had white labels. I was lucky enough to get one of the green label copies. So I still ended up with a rarer variant of this test press. Although this of course means that there is another different variant out there to collect if I'm ever desperate to spend more money.