California Cursed

I'm now scrambling to blog about the year's new releases in the limited amount of time left before 2020 ends. Today's post is a record that I spent a lot of the summer months listening to. The band is called DRAIN and the record is called 'California Cursed'. It was released by Revelation Records earlier in the year, probably around April, and I have literally just received my copies recently. But I listened to these songs a lot this year. Without wanting to sound like a washed up old man, I would say that this was without doubt the soundtrack to gardening in 2020. Haha!

I'd never heard of this band until it was announced that they had a record coming out on Rev. So I did some homework and I watched of video of these guys performing and I was instantly intrigued. On the down side, the show I watched looked like the audience were all about 18, so this felt like a new band for new kids. But the energy in the room was pretty cool to see. These kids were loving this band, and the band were clearly enjoying playing to these kids. I also found it interesting that the band members all kinda look like they should be in different bands. The guitarist in particular grabbed my attention. Dude was playing like he was in Metallica or something and seemed pretty damn impressive. I listen to this record and I struggle to believe that they only have one guitarist. Overall it was clear that this band had energy and was getting people excited, and it seemed pretty infectious. I wanted in.

Well, because this was a Rev release, and I still firmly count myself a Rev collector, I picked up both colours of the first press that were up for pre-order. The most limited, and by far the best looking, is the pink vinyl, out of 300 copies:

The blue vinyl is also part of the first press. There were 700 of these made:

About 6 months after the first press, there was a second press on yellow vinyl out of 1500 copies.

There was also a green vinyl pressing which was part of the first press for indie stores, although I didn't manage to get one of those. Yet.

I'm still debating where this should fall in my list of new releases for the year. Whenever I listen to it and genuinely feel disappointed when it ends every single time. It's the perfect soundtrack of wanting to put your fist through a wall. Or for mowing the lawn. Deinitely could be my record of the year. I guess I should probably figure that out in the next ten days or so.