Deluge

Another 2022 release that I enjoyed this year was the 'Deluge' 12" EP by Fairweather. I think that I only really knew that this was coming out because I was looking for the Bitter Branches LP in the Equal Vision store, and noticed this one listed. For those of you unfamiliar, Fairweather was a band that were around way back near the start of the century. Equal Vision put out their debut LP back in 2001, which I bought becaudse back then EVR was a great label (back in 2001 they also released the debut LP by American Nightmare and 'Give Blood' by Bane), so I used to buy everything they put out. So yeah, I bought the debut Fairweather LP even though I had no idea who the band was, and at the time I really liked it. They then released records in 2002 and 2003, and then broke up.

I'm not sure I would have bought this one if I hadn't been in the store to buy the Bitter Branches LP, but it was one of those moments where I figured I may as well add another record to the order to somehow save money on postage.

There were two colours of vinyl being pressed out of 250 copies each. I probably would have bought the grey vinyl version had it not been sold out, so my only choice was clear pink.

I enjoyed this record a lot this year. But the main problem is that it's only 4 songs. It doesn't feel like quite enough. I mean, it's been 8 years since their last album, so I kinda feel that they should have been able to come up with a few more songs in all that time. That said, there's 21 minutes of music here, so it's actually longer than a lot of hardcore albums that have ten songs or more. So I shouldn't complain really.

Speaking of their previous album, I distinctly remember it coming out back in 2014, because it came out at the same time as the final Bane LP. Back then I decided not to buy a copy because they were on black vinyl only, which I decided was too boring to bother with. Then at some point a little later it got repressed on blue vinyl. They still had some in the EVR store, so I decided to add one of those to the order too.

It's been a while since I listened to this one, but it still definitely holds up, and buying the vinyl for the first time was a good reminder to listen to it some more. As always, it's funny how bands move in and out of your life over time. I probably hadn't listened to this one for six years or so, but I played this quite a bit these past three months. I also met the one of the band members back in October as he also plays in Be Well. Dude was on tour in Europe but had lost his passport, which had ended up costing him a serious amount of money. I wonder if he made it home ok?