Annihilation Time

There have been a couple of examples that have come to light in the last couple of years where I realised that I took bad advice in the past. The first was when a friend told me to never listen to any Black Sabbath albums after the first six, which I found to be wrong a couple of years ago after discovering 'Heaven & Hell' for the first time in 2018. The other bad advice I took was to ignore the first Annihilation Time LP. This was from a friend who recommended their second LP to me, which I absolutely loved at the time, so I had no reason to doubt the advice back then. But back in May this year, when Fred Hammer advertised a limited colour vinyl repress of the first Annihilation Time LP, I figured I'd check it out for the first time. And within seconds I was loving it, and kicking myself for having missed out on it for the last 15 years or so. I guess today's lesson is... 'never trust your friends'.

Well anyway, I ordered a copy quickly, and I'm glad that I did because the 100 colour copies sold out in only a couple of days, which surprised me as I had no idea that this was a band that people were still interested in. And after a few months wait, I finally got my hands on the record recently, which made me even more stoked that I picked up a copy because this thing is one of the most incredible packages I have ever seen.

I took quite a few photos of this package as there is a lot to take in. But the rest of this post is mainly photos. I don't have too much to say about it.

So this is how it arrived, in a poly bag with stickers on the front:

When I flipped it over, I realised that the record was actually sealed inside the poly bag by means of a sticker across the flap on the back. Given that I wanted to access the inside, I had no choice but to somehow remove the sticker. I tried to peel it off, but it didn't work, so I had no choice but to slice through it with a sharp knife.

Sadly it wasn't quite as straight a cut as I hoped, but it did the job:

Once I got it out of the bag, it turned out that the obi-strip was more of a 'bent around the side' one, rather than the kind that wraps around the sleeve completely.

The inner sleeve is one of the best I have ever seen. It has the band's name printed all over it in some cool looking silver ink:

The LP itself comes on a clear orange vinyl. It looks slightly lighter in real life, but not much more.

What's really cool is that this colour vinyl version has special labels, which are different labels to the black vinyl version.

The record is just the start of this package. There was also a whole pile of extras bundled in with this:

Rather than take a photo of each item, and make this the longest post ever, I laid everything out all together so that you can see exactly what is in here:

Included in this photo is: A huge double side poster, a 28 page photo book, 3 x 12" double sided inserts contaning lyrics and writings, 3 stickers, a CD of the album, a guitar pick, a pair of labels from the other (black vinyl) version, and a patch.

I also then put the record itself on top of this stuff to give some scale.

One of the inserts contains a price breakdown of this record. Putting this package together was clearly a labour of love for Fred, and he clearly spent a lot of money to make it happen. On this insert is says (quote) I wanted the individual who bought it to go, "WOW!!!", which I absolutely did. I don't think I have ever seen a record with quite so much money and effort poured into it. With a total cost of $6240, this means that the manufacturing cost for each record was $12.48. Yet all I had to pay for this was $15 postpaid (to within the US). Which means that all of this work probably yielded Fred approximately zero profit. Crazy.

I've been listening to this LP a lot in recent months. The band's second LP, which featured a completely different lineup to this one, was a great mix of 70s rock and hardcore and I was way into it when it came out, but this one is pretty much straight up Black Flag worship, right down to the Raymond Pettibon artwork. OK, so it's pretty much a different band, but it's way more of a punk record. And whilst I'm annoyed at myself for not giving it a chance before, I'm glad that I have it in my life now.