Dead Horse

Today is the penultimate post in my series on records that I was given by Joey from 6131 Records, and this one surprised me.

I've said it before, but it is funny how I decide which bands to listen to. These days there are far too many bands and it is impossible to check out everything. So I do what I have always done. I make decisions about how interested I am in a band based on factors which include the band name, the people in the band, the label that the record is on, and sometimes the front cover art. All of these things will influence how interested I am in giving something my time.

When the band Touché Amoré surfaced years ago, I decided that they were not for me. To start with, the name didn't exactly draw me in. Secondly, I think I read something or saw something that described their sound in a way that made me think that I just wouldn't be into it. And that was it. Decision made.

Well, after I was given a copy of the band's debut LP '...To The Beat Of A Dead Horse', I figured that the least I could do was give it a chance. So I sat down and gave it some of my precious time.

The first thing I decided was that the cover art is pretty cool. The silhouette of a kid riding a bike into an oncoming storm. Almost a metaphore for life itself. And then when I took the record out, it comes in a printed inner paper sleeve, which I have rarely seen. It looks nice.

This is a first press copy on grey from 2009, which was an era when pressing records at decent quality pressing plants seemed more common. It looks nice.

So aesthetically this ticked a lot of boxes. In terms of how it sounds, I hear a mix of Modern Life Is War and American Nightmare. I'm not sure what I read years ago, but this is very much up my street. Eleven songs in a little under 20 minutes and it's also pretty much the perfect length for a hardcore record. Oh yeah, and add in a song title which is clearly a reference to The Smiths, and I'm all in on this. Clearly I made a bad decision a decade ago or whatever. But I will definitely check out more of this band's catalogue at some point.

And to close out this post, I was also given a test press of this record too. It's not a test press for the above first pressing, but appears to be a test for a repress from (I think) 2015, when the cover got 'upgraded' to a gatefold sleeve.

This test press doesn't seem to exist on discogs, so probably isn't overly common. And even though its a repress, it's still a nice one to have.