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.