Artificial Peace

Artificial Peace was a band from Bethesda, MD who were around in the early 80s. I'd heard the name from the classic 'Flex Your Head' compilation, but knew nothing else about them. Well, it turns out that there isn't really much to know. They recorded 17 songs in 1981 (three of which ended up on 'Flex Your Head') and in 1982 they broke up. Back in 2010 DIschord released all 17 songs as a record titled 'Complete Session Nov '81', and then a year or so ago it got repressed on red vinyl, and somehow this made it onto my radar, and it seemed worth picking up.

This is the kind of thing that Dischord does so well, providing a permanent record of a very short lived band from a long time ago. And as you would expect from Dischord, the recording and sound quality is great. Seventeen songs seems like too many to get through, but what helps is that the whole thing is done in 19 minutes as quite a few songs come in at about 45 seconds, with the longest being 2 minutes 17 seconds. There's certainly no time to get bored here.

Godcollider

Here's another Indecision Records release that I picked up when I visited Indecision HQ a couple of months back. Like a lot of the records I got from Dave, I hadn't heard this band at all, but it actually came out a few years ago (in 2018 to be precise).

Godcollider is a Los Angeles band who play a kind of slow, metal hardcore sound, which has some dudes in who have been in some other well known bands from the past (Suicide File, Hope Conspiracy, Darkest Hour, Narrows). I decided to pick up one of these due to both the cover art and the colour of vinyl, both of which look kinda cool right?

Even four years later, it feels like this record flew totally under the radar. There isn't much at all about this band online anywhere, the record is still in stock on both vinyl colours, and even the test presses that were up for sale sat in the label's store for years. Why this band has received so little attention I am unsure, although I did find out that they are currently in the process of recording some new songs, so perhaps things will change on that front.

I did also pick up a test press of this one, because it was very cheap, and you know how it is. A cheap test press should never be ignored.

I wasn't overly into this one at first. I did find it quite slow and dull. But at some point a couple of weeks ago it kinda clicked. I've been doing a spot of painting lately and listening to music all day, so a lot of the new records I have picked up in recent weeks got a lot more play, and this one made its way onto the daily playlist, so I'll definitely be interested to see what happens with the new songs.

The Few And The Proud

So last year (or possibly even the one before), it was announced that Revelation would be reissuing the Turning Point discography. The band put out one 7", an LP and a split 7" in their lifetime, along with a couple of songs on compilations, and all of those got bundled with the demo onto a double LP back in 2005 by Think Fast Records (with the CD version being released by Jade Tree). I lost count of how many different vinyl pressings there were of the 2xLP discography, but it felt like a lot. So it was kinda weird to hear that the records were going to be reissued again but in their original form. A couple of years back Rev reissued the demo as a cassette only release, and a couple of months ago the reissued 7" version of the 7" landed.

The most limited version was the black vinyl, which was for Rev mailorder customers. There were 313 copies of this version.

This reissue is a pretty faithful reissue of the original, and I do like the attention to detail, such as how the labels and cover art are the same, with the Rev logo having been remodelled to fit where the original Hi Impact Records logo sat. The insert it also faithfully reproduced, with the ink being blue as per the first press. However, if I was being critical, I would say that the labels are those of the second press, whilst the insert is modelled on the first press. Feels like they shold have picked one and gone with it, not mixed and matched.

Also, if I were being really picky, I would complain about the size of the labels on this record. Like a few of the recent Rev 7"s which have been pressed at overseas plants somehow end up with slightly smaller labels on the records, which to me look bad. I guess a lot of people don't notice or don't care, but I notice instantly and think it looks bad. But that's me I guess.

Anyway, there were 500 or so green vinyl copies sold by independent record stores, and 2,200 or so copies on solid orange vinyl which is the common version, and which most shows the small label issue I mentioned. No doubt this will sell out and get repressed again at some point.

I bought all three to keep up the Rev collection but honestly, I am not a big fan of this 7". Yes, the cover is iconic, but musically I never really rated this as highly as other records from the same era. I used to think I was the only one, but recently a couple of other people have confessed that they feel the same, so it's nice to hear that I'm not the only one.

Hot Shit Attitude

Way back before the internet, it was difficult to hear bands without buying records or CDs unless you had friends who you could tape stuff from (which I never did). So compilations were a good way to 'sample' lots of different bands before making that cash investment in a physical product. I think that in Germany they efer to compilationss as 'samplers' which I kinda like. But anyway, it seems to me that compilations are pretty unneccessary these days. Ok, so a lot of them contain exclusive songs, but even so, you can no doubt listen to them on bandcamp or spotify or whatever. Plus comps are sometimes a tough listen because there are likely to be songs that seem out of place. But still, comps can be good fun, and provide a nice varied listen. A couple of years ago, Blackout! Records put out a compilation LP called 'Hot Shit Attitude' which features various 'current' bands (i.e. ones that were current about 4 years ago) playing Outburst covers. I was buying some records from Rev a while ago and was looking to see what else I could add to my cart, so I picked one up this comp on a whim.

I really like how this is made out to look like something from the 80s and bears absolutely no resemblance to either a hardcore record nor the Outburst 7". I also love pink vinyl. As someone said recently, it is the best colour for a record. Well, except clear.

There are 13 songs on here, which includes covers of all 7 songs from the Outburst 7" (played in a completely different order), 4 songs from the demo, and the two songs from the 'New York Hardcore Where The Wild Things Are' LP. Some of the bands I was already familiar with to some extent (Wild Side, Search, Krimewatch, Higher Power, Fury, Stand Off) and some I had never heard before (Initiate, Mizery, Big Boss, Outskirts). All the covers are played pretty faithfully, and actually a lot of these sound harder than the originals, which I think is down to the whole thing sounding like it is mixed better than the original (I always thought that the vocals were too loud). So yeah, overall a pretty cool record really.

Old Blood

I've always been a big fan of Gameface, and as the years have rolled by I have liked them more and more. I think that singer Jeff Caudill is a really great song writer, and his solo songs are every bit as good as some of the Gameface songs. And since Gameface went quiet (rather than broke up, which I think that technically they never did) Jeff carried on releasing solo material, which I have done my best to keep up with. So when he announced last year that he was putting out a limited new record, I made sure to get one.

The record is a five song 12" EP, which is lathe cut and limited to only not many copies. As a side note, why is it that the majority of lathe cut records seem to be clear? Anyone know? The name is a reference to Jeff himself, who made this record to mark his 50th birthday last year. For that reason I want to say that there were 50 copies made, but I am not 100% sure on that.

These songs are really great. One of the songs is a duet with his daughter, Melody, which is a very touching song and which I would imagine he is immensely proud of as a father. Overall a really nice little record to mark an occasion, and I count myself lucky to have got one, as they sold out pretty damn quick.

Down In The Street

It was only a couple of years ago that I listened to the first Annihilation Time LP for the first time. After listening to their other records for years, I had ignored the first one because a friend told me somewhere around 2006 that it wasn't very good. How wrong I was. The first record is fantastic. So when Fred Hammer pressed up a limited 7" with two songs from the demo, I grabbed one immediately. In a lot of ways, this probably doesn't need to exist, as it just contains demo versions of two songs from the first full length. But this is another example of Fred going crazy with the packaging, to the point where it feels like it may as well just contain a blank plastic disc. Yup, this is one of those records that is such a nice piece of art that the music is almost irrelevant.

As seems to be the case with all the recent It's Alive releases from the last couple of years, this one comes in a plastic sleeve which was sealed shut with a sticker. I tried to slice it open but did a pretty bad job this time.

As is also now the norm, this one comes in a printed paper sleeve:

The record is on blue vinyl, with one hand written label, and it's numbered out of 100 copies.

And, as usual, there are numerous other bits and bobs (stickers, flyers, inserts, etc.) included in the package, which really makes it feel special and somehow value for money.

Not much more I can really say about this one. It is what it is. Two demo versions of songs from another record, but in some incredibke packaging. I definitely now feel that I want to chase the other It's Alive releases from the past couple of years that I am missing.

Ignite 2022

At the end of March this year I went out to California for a couple of weeks. It turned out that the day after I arrived Ignite were playing a record release show for their new album, and I ended up going along. It was a pretty cool show, with Bent Blue opening, followed by Steve Cabalero's band Urethane, and then Ignite, who were showcasing smoe new songs from their new record as well as a new singer. I'm not sure why Zoli left the band, but someone said that he is trying to get into acting, so it seems kinda funny they replaced him with some dude who is... an actor. Well anyway, his voice seems like a pretty good replacement for Zoli's, and I've always liked Ignite, so I figured I would give the new record a shot. The only issue was that the colour of the record that they were selling at the show was silver vinyl, and I hate these modern day gold and silver colours that seem to be everywhere these days, so I passed. A few weeks later I saw a clear vinyl one that looked ok, but then I found out that there was an orange vinyl one for sale in the European store and I decided that one was the best bet.

I figure that the orange looks best with the cover of the record, and it's the rarest one, although it seems to me that really they should have made red. But nevermind. The cover is pretty lacking in imagination, with photos of the band members and their names at the top. It almost feels like the whole point is to make clear that they have a new singer. But I'm not really sure that's such a good move, seeing as changing the front man never really seems to be a particularly successful move.

The Century Media website says that there are 300 on orange and 1,000 on clear. There is no mention of numbers on the silver vinyl, but even if it were limited to 100 I still wouldn't want to own it, because I have reached a point with modern collecting where I just want the version that looks best. Most modern records look ugly as hell.

Also, funny that Century Media still manufacture CDs and add them into the record. I have a record from about 2010 where they did this, which almost made sense back then. But in 2022, seriously... who even has a CD player these days? What is the point of this? Haha.

So when I first heard this I wasn't as into it as their previous releases, all of which I love. But the last couple of weeks I spent a lot of time outside painting some walls, and I found myself playing this one every day, sometimes twice. So I realised that even though it's probably not as good as their previous records, I am still really enjoying it. I think the songs just took me a little longer to appreciate, which is no doubt partly due to the different vocal. But yeah, still a good one for sure. I guess I just like records that I can sing along to.

Proud To Be

One of my favourite new releases from last year was the debut full length from Dare 'Against All Odds'. It came out right near the end of the year, and I visited Rev only a couple of weeks after the vinyl came out, but for various reasons I only came home with one copy - the clear orange 'retail' version. I had ordered copies of the other copies, a;though there was a problem with the purple version and I ended up missing it. But then somehow Revelation found some more purple copies, so I ordered one quick smart.

Anyway, I finally got my copies and got around to taking a couple of photos. The purple (which is really clear with purple swirls) is by far the best looking version of the lot. It looks absolultely great.

Before I even got the second press copies in my hands, there was a second press on peach vinyl, so I picked up one of those too. Rather than take photos of the individual copies, I just took one photo with all the copies:

Shown here are the 4 first press copies (clear with purple swirl, clear, clear yellow, and clear orange) and the second press on solid peach vinyl.

Circa nine months after this came out and it still rips. They recently toured Europe and the footage looked great. I have no doubt that if they keep going they will be absolutely huge, and I'm excited to see what comes next.

Apocalypse Tribe

I'm still working my way through all of the records I picked up from Indecision HQ when I visited a couple of months ago. I've had so much new music this year that it's been a bit of a struggle to find the time to play it all, despite having a lot of free time this year. Anyway, this week I finally got around to playing a record by a band called Apocalypse Tribe. I picked up over 30 Indecision releases, a large number of which I had not heard nor heard of. I came across this record and asked 'What's this?

and Dave told me it was a band that had Karl from Earth Crisis in it. That information was enough for me to decide that I'd buy a copy.

The record is titled 'Ai Mageddon' and was actually released back at the end of 2019. There were 500 copies pressed, all on grey vinyl.

After several spins I still can't decide how much I like this. There are 13 songs and it comes in at 25 minutes. The songs are quite fast and quite short, and not really like Earth Crisis at all. Some of the songs are great, and generally throughout this the guitar sounds great. But there are a couple of songs that I'm not so into, although I can't really put my finger on why. I think overall it's a good record, but there's something slightly missing for me that prevents it from being a great record. But I like the concept, the art and so I'd still check out another record should they ever put one out.

Orgasmatron

The Integrity train just keeps on rolling, and as much as it gets frustrating at times with the numbers of records, at other times the records are so damn good looking that it's a joy to own them. This record is a really interesting release, and some of the copies come in some amazing packaging, which means I will forgive the point of it in the first place. This 7" contains two different Motörhead covers. On side a we get 'Cradle To The Grave', which I believe is a relatively recent recording, and on the flipside is 'Orgasmatron' which was originally released on a Victory Records Motörhead tribute compilation way back in 1999. This was one of those records where I originally bought one copy and then more copies got announced and kept appearing and I couldn't not buy them. So here we go...

First up was an orange & black vinyl mix copy that comes in a faux leather sleeve. There were 200 copies of these, and it was sold as a Halloween 2020 package with a shirt. I actually missed the pre-order package deal as it sold out super fast, but I managed to get one later on.

Next up is a blue / black swirl copy. This one goes quite nicely with the cover art, and ended up being the most common version of this release. There were 700 copies of this one made for Record Store Day 2021.

Next up came a limited clear vinyl, glow in the dark version. This was sold by Holy Mountain printing which was some kind of deal available for Halloween 2021. There were only 100 of this one. At first I couldn't get it to glow inthe dark, but for some reason it just needed to be held a little longer than usual under a bright light source, then it lit up nicely.

I then got lucky and bagged one of the test press copies being sold by Organized Crime Records. I'm not sure how many were sold, but mine is numbered out of 17 copies. It comes in a white faux leather sleeve and has some numbered prints included. Hopefully the photos show how great this thing looks.

And on top of these, I also picked up one of the test press copies that Dwid had for sale in a hand drawn cover. This one features Lemmy on the cover. I mean, who else?

So that's all I have of this one. And even though it's a pretty nice collection, it is not quite complete. There was also a third different cover of the test press made by Dom which I could not justify paying for after shelling out for these copies. But now after taking these pics I kinda feel incomplete without it. Oh well. I shouldn't linger on that. These records look great and I feel lucky to have them.

Modern Medicine

I know practically nothing about the band School Drugs. I saw their name in the past and thuoght it was a stupid name so avoided listening to them. But a couple of months ago when I visited Indecision Records HQ and picked up half of the label's output from the last four years, I picked up the band's first full length, and a few weeks later I have really gotten into this one. With hidsight it seems that I managed to just about grab a copy before the first pressing copies sold out, as a second pressing is now available.

The record is called 'Modern Medicine' and was initially pressed on two different splatter vinyl colours. The rare colour was sold out, but that was ok with me as I think the more common one looked a little bit more acceptable. This colour is out of 500 copies and kinda suits the artwork.

This thing sounds like several different styles all at once, but generally sounds like 80s hardcore punk. There are two songs that really do sound a lot like Black Flag for a few seconds, but don't let that put you off if Flag ain't your thing. This band really do manage to mix up the styles here, but not in a disjointed way. It's super hard for me to describe what this is like, but what I can say is that when I first played it I thought it was a little all over the place, and then after a few plays I found it worming it's way onto my daily play list, because it's interesting, fun, intense and melodic. There ten songs on here and it's all done and dusted in about eighteen minutes, and everytime I'm really getting into it I realise it's almost over.

This was originally released at the back end of 2019, so this record is now almost three years old (although obviously a couple of those years were lost to Covid so don't really count). There's also a 7" that came out last year on Indecision that I failed to pick up (but now need to), but I'm already looking forward to more from this band. I hope there's a new one coming soon because these 18 minutes are just not enough to keep me going.

Focus

A good few years ago I used to be happy with one copy of each record. At some point that changed and then all hell broke loose with me trying to collect every version of every rec=rd. And now I've moved on to a new game whereby I'm happy to try to collect multiple copies of the same version of some records. I mainly grabbed these two blue vinyl copies of the Soul Control / I Rise split 7" because they were super cheap. I already own one copy, but this pressing is really cool looking because the labels were all hand drawn, so I figured it would be cool to pickup a couple of extras. I know that all the labels were different and unique, so I figured it would be fun to grab some extras to try to find the most interesting labels.

The first copy is cool and takes a pretty simple approach, with the band names on each side.

The second copy is a bit more artistic. One side has a pumpkin face, whereas the other is some kind of weird space scene with a bunch of stars and something that kinda looks like a big piece of fruit.

So I was really stoked to get these for like $3 each, especially in the current climate. But as seems to frequently be the case lately, there was something still not quite right. These were numbered on the inner sleeve out of 100 copies. The copy I got years ago is numbered, and one of these two is also numbered. But one of them is not numbered. The non numbered one also has a slightly different paper sleeve. So I can only assume that someone swapped out the numbered sleeve at some point. It may have been damaged, or they might have just picked up the wrong sleeve by mistake, but whatever happened it means that one of these is incomplete, and no doubt it will bug me forever more.

Call On My Brothers

Last night I got off my lazy arse and headed into central London to watch Ignite play. As is often the case with bands playing in London, I spent most of the day trying to decide whether I could be bothered to go or not. In the end I went, and I am glad I did, because they were really good live. No shock there really. Although I am still trying to make up my mind on the new singer. Anyway, it had me listening to their entire discography today, and it reminded me that I still hadn't put up these Ignite records that I got recently.

Last year Revelation Records had some kind of daytime event in their parking lot with records and shirts for sale, pizza being made, Popeye from Farside singing live, and a load of other labels selling stuff. And it was announced that there would be a limited sleeve version of the 'Call On My Brothers' LP available. I panicked a little thinking that I would have no chance of getting one, but then managed to find someone who was willing to help me out. This is a limited sleeve numbered out of 36 copies.

I was pretty happy to have got one of these, and I'm pretty sure that it will be a tough find for years to come. But the funny thing is that I had already picked up a clear vinyl repress when it came out a few months before, which I also only recently received.

Given I'd picked these up, I realised that I had missed a pressing back in 2016 or so. There was a blue vinyl pressing which all of a sudden I felt I needed to complete the collection. Thankfully there was one lurking on discogs for a not bad price.

Given I had these copies out to taken photos, I decided to pull the others out, partly because I couldn't remember what colours I even owned.

Pictured here are only the Rev pressings. I also have the original pressing on Conversion, but figured that it would kinda ruin the nice layout by trying to add another one in there.

I distinctly remember getting slightly annoyed at the number of these when they were pressed because they made 4 colours in a very short space of time. But looking at them now, I think they look kinda cool.