Adult Hysteria

One of my favourite releases this year has been the latest Ceremony album, 'Tell Ne Your Dream' which has reignited my interest in the band. So of course I started looking at what other Ceremony records were out there that I didn't have. I quickly found two 7"s for sale in the UK that both came out around the time that the 'Zoo' LP was released, circa 2012.

The first 7" contains two songs - 'Hysteria' (the first song on 'Zoo') and 'I'm A Bug' which is exclusive to this 7".

The second 7" also contains two songs - 'Adult' (the first song on side b of 'Zoo') and 'Start Over' (exclusive to this 7").

I love how these look with the consistent layouts, and it's cool that they are both on clear vinyl. Discogs tells me that there are 200 of each of these on clear, with all the rest of each being on black. Ultimately I mainly bought these for the collection rather than the two exclusive songs, which now seems to be mainly made up of clear vinyl. Of the thirteen Ceremony records I own, ten are on clear. Gotta love consistency.

Dynamite

These days I'm always behind the curve, so it seems. I was recently offered this blue vinyl copy of the Dynamite 'Settle The Score' 7" and thought I was keeping myself up to date... only to realise that it's been out for over a year. I clearly don't pay enough attention as both Mike and Nico both blogged about this record last year.

If you had to guess where this band came from, you'd be forgiven for opting for somewhere on the east coast of the US. But surprisingly, these guys hail from over here in the UK, and just down the road from me (although admittedly a road I can rarely be bothered to travel).

This 7" was a split release between UK label Northern Unrest and US label Scheme Records. The blue vinyl is the Northern Unrest version limited to 100 copies.

I agree with Mike's opinion that every aspect of this is reminiscent of a Youngblood Records release. Listening to this today, a day on which it has been raining non-stop and getting dark at 6pm, this totally transports me back to 2004/05. I remember spending the winters of 2004 & 2005 clocking up a lot of miles driving to various northern cities, mainly during the week after work, to see bands of the time with crowds full of young kids and energy and excitement. Sometimes its great when things don't change and you can find comfort in what you know. This is UK straight edge done really well and even though I'm twenty years older, I'm all in for this. Hopefully at some point I'll actually leave the house and see them play live.

Gish

Last weekend I found myself in an actual record shop. It's very rare for me to ever go into record shops over here in the UK, as there aren't really any that are anywhere near to my house or that are good enough to warrant a two hour journey to visit. But last weekend we had three hours to kill in Kingston whilst the Apple store replaced Anna's iphone battery, so at some point we ended up in Banquet Records. Generally it doesn't have much that interests me, but I did find this 35th Anniversary pressing of the first Smashing Pumpkins LP, 'Gish', which I couldn't resist taking home.

With hindsight, I'm not sure this was a particularly smart buy. As I type this, there are currently 196 copies of this for sale in discogs. I'm guessing that there must have been at least 10,000 copies pressed, maybe more. Which means that this will never be hard to find, and probably therefore will never even be worth the £25 that I paid for it. Not that collecting records is about value, of course. But it's always nice when you buy something and just know that you could easily get your money back if you changed your mind.

Aside from the fact that this may turn out to be worthless in future, I'm still happy to have a copy of this record at last. I always liked this LP, but I never quite got around to buying one, as the original pressings are all on black vinyl. I'd like to get a first pressing copy at some point, so until then this will suffice.

Mil-Spec's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Mil-Spec toured over here in the UK last month. As much as I would have liked to see them play live, the closest show to me was at a venue that is not particularly easy for me to get to, and I decided that I would stay at home rather than face the journey. A friend reached out to let me know that they had a tour version of the latest record, and the offer was there to pick one up for me. Whilst I had already picked up a copy of the record earlier this year, and am trying to hold off on buying multiple copies of things these days, the allure of a limited tour version proved too much.

The tour cover is the often seen 'single piece of card folded over the regular record cover', but unlike most, this isn't a crappy photocopied piece of paper. They obviously gave this some thought and went with a Sgt. Pepper rip off design, which is quite fitting for a UK tour I suppose. It's well thuoght out and well executed, and actually looks better than the proper cover with the huge sandwich.

Take Three Painkillers

I picked up three 7"s on Painkiller Records recently. This was purely coinsidental. Each came from a different source, but I decided to bundle them together in one post in an effort to catch up on here and not feel so constantly behind.

The first 7" was from a friend, and is a copy of the A-Team 'Clusterfuck' 7". This was actually Painkiller Records number one, originally released back in 2003.

This is a second press copy on blue vinyl, hand numbered out of 100 copies on the b-side label.

I haven't listened to this band for a while, but I always liked them. Then again, I really like that early 00s era of hardcore generally. So many good bands and records, many of which are kinda forgotten about today.

The second record I picked up is a 7" by a band called Beyond The Pale. I hadn't heard of this band before, and looking online it feels like they have a pretty low profile. But this 7" rules. It's total Infest worship, done really well.

This 7" contains 11 songs, but only one of them is over one minute long. Six of them even clock in at under 30 seconds. For such a short record though, this is a really interesting listen. 330 copies on gold vinyl.

This actually came out in 2023, and I have no idea if this was a one off fun project for someone, or if this is an actual band. But I would definitely listen to more of this. I hope they're still going and about to bust out something new soon.

Finally, I picked up this Heavy Discipline 2019 Demo 7".

I already own two other records by this band, both of which sound like classic Boston hardcore. I had no idea this 7" existed, even though it came out before either of the 12"s. Apparently there were 330 copies on white vinyl.

After putting this post together, I'm unclear if Painkiller Records is still going. The last release was in 2023, which is now three years ago. And whilst these days three years goes by in a blink and isn't really a long time, it would represent the longest gap in the label's history, so the signs aren't good. I really hope they're just going through a dry spell, but no doubt time will tell.

Maker of Rules

About a month ago I was posting about an Urban Sprawl 7" that I picked up recently. As I was adding it to discogs I decided to see what else the label, Convulse Records, had put out, and a few second later I was checking out a new release by a band called Bad World. Immediately I was loving it and looking at what was available to buy.

This 7" is titled 'Maker of Rules' and was released in June this year. This 'clear with green, orange and black splatter' is the rarest version, being out of 100 copies. I managed to find a copy in the UK which made it an easy one to pick up, which made a nice change.

To me, this sounds just like early No Warning. Interestingly, the second song features Ben Cook on vocals, although somehow the first song sounds even more like No Warning than the song that has the singer of No Warning on.

This is a really great hardcore 7", and I can't stop listening to it at the moment. I really hope that they come out with a full length at some point.

Louder Than Love

The more time passes, the more that I think that Soundgarden are one of the best bands ever. Sure, I've enjoyed them for thirty plus years now, but since I truly started to appreciate 'Superunknown' for the genius that it is a couple of years ago, my opinion of them only continues to grow.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across this 2016 orange vinyl repress of 'Louder Than Love'. This is their second full length from 1989 and, prior to this repress, the only colour vinyl copies that existed were either green vinyl or red vinyl promotional copies (which now sell for a lot of money). This orange pressing made owning a colour copy much more affordable.

When this came out I decided that I didn't need it, but as the years have rolled on by I have noticed that it has become harder to find, and the price has started to go up a bit. So when I saw this copy on eBay for roughly half the usual price, I watched it. Once again, eBay UK came good.

When I went to add this to discogs, I discovered that there were also two further orange vinyl pressings made in 2019 (one in the States, one in Europe). I have no idea if these further pressings look the same as this one, or are slightly different colours. Heck, maybe one day I will find out.

There's A Knife In My Back

Trying to collect Revelation Records releases is a job that will never ever be complete, not by me or anyone else. But that doesn't dissuade me from stupidly trying.

I recently picked up this black vinyl copy of the Civ 'Cant Wait One Minute More' 7". I used to own this 7" thirty years ago when it first came out. But when I managed to acquire a white vinyl copy, I sold my black one. The irony is that one of the reasons that I sold this is the exact reasons that I have decided to buy it again.

According to the Rev pressing info, there were 300 copies of this record on white vinyl and 5000 copies on black vinyl. But an unknown number of the black copies have a wrong, misprinted label on one side. The 'wrong' label states that the name of the song on the b-side is 'There's A Knife In My Back'. However, the song is actually titled 'Et Tu Bruté'. It turns out that the reason for this is that the song 'Et Tu Bruté' was originally called 'There's A Knife In My Back' and the band changed the title at some late stage. Clearly the change was made on the sleeve art but the label art somehow got missed until some copies had been pressed.

Back in 1995 when this came out and I first bought a copy, I noticed that the label was wrong as the title on the label is clearly different to what is printed on the back of the sleeve. Back then I thought that I had bought a 'faulty product' and so when I got a white copy I sold the black one and was glad to be rid of it. But all these years later I was reminded that this exists, and also realised that not all of the black copies are like this, so it suddenly seemed rare and appealing. So here I am going out of my way to track down a record that I couldn't wait to get rid of thirty years ago. What a ridiculous situation.

The photo above also shows that the final, correct version of the label also has the 'CIV' logo on it, which was not present on the misprint version. I didn't actually realise this difference existed until I picked up this misprint version last week. So this means that the misprint label is different in two ways.

Of course, the way that my brain works is that I now want one of the regular black copies with the regular labels so that I have two different black copies, even though I am not usually interested in the regular black copies. It really does never end.