Annihilation Tests

On 10 December last year I was in a car driving back to Florida from Key West. It's a long drive on one road, so it's a pretty easy one, but it takes ages because the road is one lane in each direction and the speed limit is 40mph for huge chunks of it. Anyway, Anna was driving on the way back and I was scrolling crap on my phone, and I got lucky, because I saw a post by Fred Hammer that had literally just been posted about 5 minutes before. He was selling a set of all three different test pressings for the first Annihilation Time LP, and the price seemed pretty reasonable. So I shot a DM and said I'd love to get them, and he replied almost immediately to tell me they were mine. It was probably all wrapped up witrhin 15 minutes of him making the post. And once I had paid he took the post down. So I would imagine that not many people even saw the post at all.

I asked if he had anything else, and I was pretty happy to find out that he had a spare copy of the first Annihilation Time LP in a spray painted sleeve. I've had one of these on my want list for years, but never found one in good condition at a good price. I believe that there were only 50 of these, and they were made with different colours of paint. Most I have seen had orange paint on the front, but I really like the blue paint on this copy that I ended up with.

The first press of this record came out on Dead Alive Records in 2002. Up to this point I have never owned a first press copy before. I was always holding out for one of these spray painted cover copies, or one of the rare grey vinyl copies. So it's nice to finally get one of them.

Well anyway, as mentioned, I also got a test press of the first pressing. It isn't much to look at, being a black record with white labels in a white paper sleeve. The way test presses should be I guess.

The second test press is a test of the reissue that Fred put out himself circa 2020 on It's Alive Records. This one was pressed at RTI and comes in a rad sleeve which has a sticker on the front and a spray painted graphic on the back. As you can see, it is numbered out of 10 copies.

And finally, the third test press is for the repress on Indecision Records. After Fred put it out on his own label and sold out of a pressing, he gave it to Dave at Indecision and asked him to keep it in print. This one was pressed at Erika Records and also comes in a spray painted cover.

I'm pretty stoked to have 3 different test pressings of this record, and also of the 4 records I bought, 3 feature spray painted covers, which I didn't really propery take in until writing this post. The only annoying thing is that I now feel like I want one of the clear vinyl Indecision copies which I wasn't remotely interested in previously. #neversatisfied