Nothing Less

Just over a year ago I saw Mindset play in London. I chatted to Ev before they played and told him that I thought that their LP, 'Leave No Doubt', was probably the best straight edge record since The First Step's 'What We Know'. A year later and the band are almost done. They just put out a final 7" on Ev's label' React! Records, and last weekend they popped over to Europe to play three final European shows. I couldn't make it to the one in the UK, but a friend picked up a copy of their new 7" for me.

The 'Nothing Less' 7" went up for pre-order in mid January, and the red vinyl sold out in a few minutes. I didn't get one. So I'm very happy to get this maroon vinyl tour copy.

It's immediately obvious that they put a lot of effort into this record. The sleeve is a tri-fold affair, with a great layout which includes lots of live photos.

It's always sad when a good band calls it quits, but this 7" makes it bittersweet. The songs on here are really good. Truly next level stuff. So it's a shame that we won't get any more, but at the same time, it's good to see them going out on a high.

Plague The Night

Ordering that True Identity 7" got me in the mood to order something else from Europe. This split 7" between Ancient VVisdom and Roses Never Fade came out a year ago to pretty much no fanfare. I don't think I've seen a single picture of one on instagram or anywhere else for that matter. It's almost as if it never came out. Or perhaps nobody else knew about it. I don't know, it's kinda weird to see a record get so little coverage. Although it wouldn't surprise me if nobody actually ordered it due to the label's outdated payment system, where you place an order online, and then a day or so later they email you an invoice, which you then have to go to paypal manually and pay. I'm sure that would have worked pretty well in 1999, but not being able to check out immediately probably puts some people off. It did me for a year.

Anyway, I'm glad I ordered this as the packaging is beautiful. I'm also glad that I decided to buy both available colours. There were 75 on orange vinyl:

And 100 on gold vinyl... and this is true gold rather than clear yellow. Shame I didn't have this a month ago for the #januaryrecordaday thing, but never mind.

The best thing about this record is that it reminded me that I should listen to Roses Never Fade more. I almost completely forgot about them. What a fool. But why oh why did their last album come out on CD only?

There are only 200 copies in total, but Neuropa Records still have copies available for anyone who may be interested.

True Identity

I saw a lot of people listing the True Identity demo in their best of 2015 lists, but seeing as it only came out on cassette, I didn't hear it. I'm have a total disdain for tapes, especially in the modern era. The way I see it, if something only exists on tape, then it doesn't actually exist.

Thankfully, however, the good folks at React! and Refuse Records saw fit to give this thing a proper release on a proper format so I could finally hear it.

Each label made 250 colour vinyl copies, and despite missing the React! copies on gold, fortunately the blue copies were still available from Refuse... probably because most Americans didn't want to pay the overseas shipping. Still, I think it worked out ok, as the blue vinyl is clearly the most fitting colour for this thing. Gold seems like a poor choice. I'm happy.

I've got to say, this is some good shit. I don't know why I seem surprised, given that this contains both Aram and Jim from Champion. But after listening to this one a few times over the past week or so, my main issue is that there aren't enough songs. Hopefully there will be a follow up release soon.

Journey Blind

To say I was excited to get the new Magic Circle LP would be a slight understatement. Their debut, self titled LP came out in 2013, and was one of my favourite releases of the year. But when the LP had dropped it had proven quite difficult to get hold of. Like a lot of records out of Boston these days, it got a lot of hype (rightly so) and the vinyl sold out super quick. So when it was announced towards the end of last year that a new album had been recorded, it got me excited. And I was determined to learn from my experience a couple of years ago, and not miss out on the vinyl. Despite this plan, however, when Deathwish Inc. put up a pre-order option in their store, I didn’t actually bother. I think it was because there was no limited edition or color vinyl option. It made me feel that the situation was not urgent. So I just waited. And then a couple of weeks ago, the band put something up on facebook announcing that there were 100 blue vinyl and 100 white vinyl copies available for pre-order. So I clicked the link and checked out as quick as I could.

The label imposed a limit of one colour vinyl copy per person, which was annoying as it meant that I couldn’t order both colours. So I ordered one myself and then had a friend order me the other one. Hopefully it won’t be too long until I receive the blue, but for now, I only have the white one.

I love the front cover of this. I don’t know why exactly. I mean, if I tried to describe it in words it would no doubt sound stupid. But in reality it looks great. Unlike, say, the back cover.

I've been playing this solidly the last couple of weeks. Goddamn, it's good. So good that there is nothing else I want to listen to at the moment. The only problem I face is whether this is technically a 2015 or 2016 release. According to the label, it came out in November 2015. However, the vinyl only started shipping in 2016. You might think that this doesn't matter, but here I am in January already thinking about my end of year list and whether this is already the best thing we're gonna get in 2016.

Higher Power

So here we are, the first record to arrive at my house in 2016, and it's a UK release.

Higher Power are a UK band from my old stomping ground of Leeds. I saw them last year support BURN, and thought they were pretty good, so I downloaded their songs and gave them a listen. After playing them quite a lot, I took the next step and ordered their debut 7".

Someone described them to me as sounding like Life Of Agony. Their bandcamp page also references Leeway as an influence. So if you like bands that sound like bands with names start with the letter 'L', this could be the band for you.

This yellow vinyl copy is the most limited colour, being out of 75 copies. There's also white, purple and black which are still available from Neutral Words Records. And for those of you in the States, this band will be playing at United Blood fest this year, so make sure to check them out if you're going.

2015: Words Are Not Enough

So 2015 is done, and thank god. On a personal level, it wasn't the greatest year for me. But at least keeping the blog going didn't seem like too much of a chore this year either for some reason. The main problem was just trying to spread out the records, as I only received two big parcels from my friend in the States (one in April and one in September) and that was it. I mean, I bought a few bits myself, but 95% of my records came in two deliveries which I then spread over the year in terms of blogging. Long gone are the early days of this blog when I posted about something on the day I acquired it. Anyway, my aim is always to do ten posts a month, which is 120 for the year, and I just about managed to achieve it despite a very slow start with barely any activity in the first four months.

In terms of the number of records I acquired this year, I picked up 220, which represents a 17% reduction from last year's 264.

The number of 7"s was down by 14%, from 113 last year to 97 this year. The number of 12"s was also down, by 20% from 151 to 121. The number of 10"s, however, was up by infinity percent, from zero to an incredible TWO (one of which I kinda wish I didn't buy at all, but never mind). The next graph shows the monthly profile, although to be honest it doesn't really mean much these days, as it's more when the records hit the blog rather than when I picked them up. But it's kind of a tradition at this point.

Looking at it this way, it seems weird that August was the pinnacle of blogging activity. I mean, in theory it was summer, and has never has been a high point of posting before. I can't even remember why this was the case. I think I was probably trying to get everything up before the next delivery arrived from the States at the start of September.

TOP 10 NEW RELEASES IN 2015

For once it seemed that there were a lot of cool new releases in the year. I think this was the first year that I bought so many new releases that I was spoilt for choice to come up with a top ten. After way too much consideration, this is what I came up with as a list of my favourites:

Note - The photo doesn't put them in order of preference. It was simply arranged in the way that seemed to reflect the least amount of light. If you need someone to blame then I'd suggest December's daylight hours and the positioning of the windows in my house.

One thing I noticed when I got the records out to take this photo was that they all had either black or white covers. Turnstile were the only band who used any colour on their cover (well, Into Another & Done Dying did too, but their colours were pretty dark so I'm conveniently ignoring them). Anyway, if I were forced to put these records into an order of preference, this would be it:

01. Chain Rank 'Up Against The Wall' LP - the best release this year by a country mile. Short blasts of Boston HARDcore that somehow didn't seem to contain DFJ or CC.

02. Into Another 'Omens' 12" - Twenty years after their last release they came back, and sounded better than ever. This only loses points because there were only five songs.

03. Fade 7" - this 7" sparked a small obsession with this band for me towards the end of the year. So rad that this band is british. Hopefully I will get to see them play one day.

04. Sweet Jesus 'You Destroy Yourself' LP - I played this LP a lot before the vinyl landed. Because, let's be honest, nobody could have waited THAT long to hear this.

05. Title Fight 'Hyperview' LP - this actually came out on my birthday, and marked a change in sound for the band that I really enjoyed. This was my most listened to record on holiday this year laying on the beaches of southern France.

06. Turnstile 'Non Stop Feeling' LP - goddamn, this is a good LP from quite possibly the biggest hardcore band in the world right now, but why did they have to shove it in one of the worst covers of all time?

07. Stick Together LP - this was a bit of a slow burner for me, but once I got into it I loved it. Seems most other people forgot about this band though.

08. Violent Reaction 'Marching On' LP - a british band on Revelation is certainly worthy of celebration. I don't think this was as good as the last LP, but I still ended up playing it loads.

09. Done Dying LP - a great debut LP from a bunch of veterans. What I love about this guys is that they're still cracking out new music, unlike most of their generation who are still touring records that came out 25 years ago.

10. Blacklisted LP 'When People Grow, People Go' LP - I was a little sceptical about a new Blacklisted LP, but I shouldn't have been. This sits somewhere between their last two, and made my iphone crash not once but twice.

THE YEAR'S TOP PICKUPS

Aside from new releases, I was pleased with the year in records. I picked up some pretty rad items. My favourites are the ones in this photo:

For those of you with poor eyesight or recognition skills, the photo contains:
7 Seconds 'The Crew' LP on blue vinyl
Faith 'Subject To Change' LP on red vinyl
Godspeed 'Swimmers Ear' 12" test press
Swiz 'Down' 7" test press
Jawbreaker 'Whack & Blite' 7" on grey vinyl
Vision 'Undiscovered' 7" on green vinyl
Bold 7" on pink vinyl
Rain 'La Vache Qui Rit' 12"

2015 WANTS LIST ATTACK

When the year started I decided to try to make a big dent in my wants list. Now, that may sound like a stupid thing to say, but a lot of the items on my wants list have been there for years. For some reason, I seem to spend most money and time picking up stuff that isn't on my wants list at all, so the damn thing never gets any smaller. As I'm not getting any younger, I decided to try to reduce the size of the list this year. Overall I did ok, but not great. I picked up 24 items, which averages two per month, although I have to admit that I had hoped to cross off more. I probably shouldn't complain though as some of these were long-standing wants. Here's the full list of items I crossed off, in alphabetical order:

01. Admiral 7" on Soulforce Records
02. Avail 'Front Porch Stories' LP on red vinyl
03. Black Flag 'Six Pack' 7" on baby blue vinyl
04. Bold 7" on pink vinyl
05. Cave In / Piebald split 7" on pink vinyl
06. Coalesce 'Functioning On Impatience' 12" on purple vinyl & orange vinyl
07. Comeback Kid 'Turn It Around' LP on white vinyl
08. Dirt Merchants 7"s x 2
09. F.U.'s 'Kill For Christ' 12" on X-Claim!
10. Faith 'Subject To Change' 12" on red vinyl
11. Floorpunch 'Division One Champs' 7" with NJ/DC cover
12. Harvest 'Living With A God Complex' LP on orange vinyl
13. Integrity / Creepout Split 7" Japanese press with hand numbered sleeve
14. Integrity 'Black Heksen Rise' 7" on Indie Recordings on white vinyl
15. Jawbreaker 'Whack & Blite' 7" on grey vinyl
16. Life's Halt 'Demo' 7"
17. Mind Eraser 'Teenagers' 7"
18. No Warning 7" on purple vinyl
19. Rain 'La Vache Qui Rit' 12"
20. Samiam 'I Am' 7" on clear vinyl
21. Soundgarden 7" on Sub Pop on purple vinyl
22. Statement 7" on blue vinyl
23. Supertouch 'Lost My Way' 7" with RSD elephant cover
24. Vision 'Undiscovered' 7" on green vinyl

There were two others I picked up which are still sitting in the States waiting to be shipped, so unfortunately they don't count. They'll wait until next year though...

The funny thing is that I've just spent a little time revising my wants list, which means adding more items on, so in total the list has actually got longer this year. #fail

OTHER STUFF I LISTENED TO A LOT

Sometimes I listen to stuff that I don't have on vinyl. Or I get into stuff too late for it to qualify as a new release. Or I get impatient and download a new release without having the vinyl. So here's a list the other stuff that I spent a lot of time listening to in 2015.

Life Of Agony 'River Runs Red' LP
Life Of Agony 'Ugly' LP
Flight Of The Conchords 'S/T' LP
Flight Of The Conchords 'I told You I Was Freaky' LP
ALL 'Allroy Saves' LP
Jaguarz 'Jungle Jamz' 7"
Mutoid Man 'Bleeder' LP
Neck 'Should My Fist Eye' LP
Smashing Pumpkins 'Gish' LP
Higher Power demo & 7"
Negative FX LP
Shockwave discography
True Identity Demo
Unborn 7"

AND FINALLY...

If you've read this far then here's an extra visual treat for you. I decided to put a pic of every record I picked up this year into video format. If you missed any posts this year and can't be bothered to go back and read them, this is the format for you. Enjoy...

Big Creative Eclipses

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am a big Cave In fan. Always have been. This year saw a remastered reissue of one of their 'classic' releases - 'Creative Eclipses'. This was a hugely significant release when it came out back in 1999. It marked a big step away from what they had done on 'Until Your Heart Stops' towards the more rock sounds of 'Jupiter' which would follow a year or so later. Of course, I lapped this up when it came out. I didn't care that it sounded 'softer' because, despite the vocals moving from screaming to singing, to me the guitars sounded even better.

Well, sixteen years later and Hydrahead decided to reissue this by adding the two 'songs' that were originally previously only released on the CD version. This meant that a 7" was no longer big enough to fit it all on, so it got put out as a 12" instead. Obviously I had to invest in all three colour versions available.

Hydrahead pressing info is rarely divulged, but someone has suggested that, just like the original 7", the clear vinyl is the rarest, being out of only 100 copies (and before someone points it out, I know that there were actually 118 copies of the clear vinyl 7"!).

Red vinyl is supposedly out of 300 copies.

And the third colour is white, of which there are apparently 500 copies.

One very cool thing about this release is that the sleeve is just like a scaled up version of the original 7" release, with the front cover having a lot of die cut circular holes in it. It even has the exact same number of circular holes, although I suppose anything different would technically constitute different artwork.

The weird thing is that I can't make up my mind what I think about this reissue. I mean, on the one hand it seems pointless, as the two extra songs are not really songs at all, but 'sonatas', which are basically just musical interludes, the second of which is nearly eight minutes long. Personally, I just don't think they're necessary. But being more positive about things, the release was originally 5 songs long, and those of us who bought vinyl sixteen years ago got shortchanged. The whole notion of 'extra tracks' on CDs always seemed a bit shitty to me. I guess in reality it was all just about using up the available space on the disc, but as somenoe who always bought records it just felt slight favouritism towards those who embraced the new technology... the fools.

So basically I still can't make my mind up whether I like this reissue of not. But while I try to make my mind up, here's a picture of the three 12"s together with the original 7". Just because.

Oh yeah, nearly forgot... but when these things got repressed, the 2011 album 'White Silence' also got repressed on a solid red vinyl. So I had to grab one of those too.

I Walk Alone

So this will be the final 2015 release to make the blog, and just about in time for the end of year cut-off. I was leaving this one as late as possible for two main reasons; firstly, because I couldn't get good photos, due to light issues, and secondly because I wanted some time to listen to it properly.

There was a lot of anticipation and excitement over the debut No Tolerance full length, 'You Walk Alone', especially amongst record collectors as it was being released simultaneously by two record labels. This here is the UK / European pressing, released by Quality Control HQ.

This is the limited blue vinyl pressing, of which there are 200 copies. I knew these would sell out fast, and I knew I wanted one, so on the day it was going up for pre-order I had reminders set in my phone and, on top of that, I made sure to leave work early to ensure that I was at home in time for the launch. I didn't want to waste valuble sedonds trying to transact on my phone, with its stupid keyboard, where I manage to misspell pretty much every single word. Anyway, being dedicated (aka sad) probably helped, as I had orders placed with both labels inside of three minutes. But I'm guessing that there must have been a lot of people playing the game in a similar way, because the blue vinyl copies were gone within an hour.

So what's this like? Well, it's good, but at the same time it feels slightly disappointing. I guess the problem is that my expectations were sky high, so it invariably fails to meet them. On the first listen it didn't blow me away, and even though I have now listened to it over ten times, I'm still not left feeling overly impressed. I'm not sure what the problem is exactly, but truth is that I'm just not feeling floored by this record. Is it a good hardcore record? Undoubtedly yes. But is it up there with their last 7"? Well, no. Not yet anyway. Perhaps it just needs a few more plays...

I also managed to obtain this rare orange vinyl copy of the Arms Race 7". This band features Ola, who runs Quality Control HQ, on guitar. She kindly let me have one of these even though they are super limited copies for friends & family only. I missed out on the blue vinyl copies when this went up for sale originally, but I'm more than happy with this copy as the orange looks very nice, especially as it goes so nicely with the sleeve.

Dirt Merchants

Another two records scratched from my wants list are these two 7"s by Dirt Merchants. They were a Boston band active circa 1992-97. I first heard of them about 5 or 6 years after they broke up. Somewhere around 2003 I started a mild obsession with a band called 27, mainly due to the enchanting vocal talents of Maria Christopher, and Dirt Merchants was her previous band. They released one album on a major label, before which there were a couple of indepently released 7"s. So I stuck them on my wants list and they just never seemed to appear. Well, until this year when I thought to look for them on Discogs, where both were sitting for pretty much no money at all.

The first is apparently self titled, and features two songs - 'Beware Of Dog' and 'Mindfuck'.

The second also features two songs - 'Love Apnea' and 'Purple Barrel'.

There isn't really too much to say about these two. But I wish the rest of my wants list was available this easily and cheaply. Although, if that were the case, things would pretty boring I guess.

Like A Virgin

Another new release that isn't a new release at all. The Harkonen / These Arms Are Snakes split 12", entitled 'Like A Virgin', was first released by Hydrahead back in 2005 on something called a 'compact disc'. This was still in an era when I liked Hydrahead and what they were doing, but even then I wouldn't push myself as far as buying a CD. And whilst Hydrahead may no longer be one of my 'trusted labels' (in so much as I don't religiously buy everything they release), and whilst I don't really listen to bands like this much these days, once I saw this record I couldn't stop myself from ordering a copy.

The record contains five songs pressed onto one side, with a screen print on the flipside. Mine also came with a couple of bent sleeve corners.

This is the milky white vinyl version out of 114 copies. There are three other versions and, believe it or not, this one is probably the worst looking one of all.

The label put some serious time, effort and money into this thing. Not only does it come with a full colour insert, but also an additional, second insert on some fancy ass paper.

This is seriously one of the nicest records I have seen in a long time. I really wish that more labels would put the care and love into their releases that this label did with this one. Truly awesome stuff.

Teenagers

Here's a pretty minor record that has been on my wants list for way too long. This one sided, one song Mind Eraser 7" was originally only available to people who ordered the 'Glacial Reign' LP direct from the label back when it came out. I was not one of those people, unfortunately, so a year or so later I added it to my want list, and then a few more years went by. Oops.

This record looks pretty cool, with a stamped label and also a screen printed obi strip. The only thing missing is a sexy colour of vinyl.

I still want the limited cover versions of the 'Cave' LP, although for some reason I didn't even bother putting them on my want list in the first place. Which means i keep forgetting that I want them. Hardly surprising that I haven't managed to find them yet then, is it?

Two From J

Here are two 7"s I picked up a couple of months ago, which are kinda related. The first is a single from J Mascis which came out a year ago as a Black Friday release. I'm not really sure when the whole 'Black Friday as RSD part 2' started exactly, but never mind. Anyway, this comes in a retro looking sleeve, which I'm not a big fan of.

There were 4,000 copies of this thing made, all on orange vinyl.

The other one that I picked up for cheap was this red vinyl pressing of the Dinosaur Jr 'Freak Scene' 7" on SST.

I used to own this on red years ago. It was probably one of the first 20 records that I bought. For some reason I sold it, so this represents me correcting a mistake I made something like 20 years ago.

Second Nature Tests

I'm only too aware that the end of the year is almost upon us, and I have a pile of records I picked up this year that I still haven't got around to posting. So I figure I need to fix that and get them all up here. It's gonna be a busy few days...

Earlier in the year I picked up some test pressings from Second Nature Recordings. I didn't get around to posting them all up here as they got put into the wrong pile. It was only last week when I was looking back over the year's pickups when I realised that I had forgotten about the other records in the batch. So here they are.

Anasarca was a band that I never heard about when they were actually a band back in the mid 90s. But back when Second Nature originally released this discography LP in 2001, I picked it up as I really liked what the label was doing at the time, and I really enjoyed it. I picked up two copies of this LP. The first is the purple vinyl, which was the limited colour second press out of only 100 copies.

I also picked up this test press of the same record. There were only 8 copies made and this one is stamped with a number 3.

Next is a test press of the Casket Lottery / Small Brown Bike 10". This record got reissued this year on a different record label as a 12", but the original pressing was unfortunately a 10", which means I now have another one of these stupidly sized discs in my collection.

The sleeve for this record is really nice, with the front cut around the centre label.

The next record is not very well knowm. The band is called Eulcid and the record is called 'The Wind Blew All The Fires Out'. At some point, Kurt Ballou from Converge was in this band, along with some dude called Matt Redmond. Anyway, this record was their debut album released back in the year 2000, and I first bought it back then.

This test press is numbered 4/8 in gold ink on the back cover.

Next is a test of the Kid Kilowatt 'Guitar Method' LP. Being a big Cave In fan, I really like this LP. It was a project band for a couple of guys from Cave In, as well as Kurt Ballou from Converge and some dude called Matt Redmond. Ever heard of him?

This has a number 6 stamped on the top of the front cover. Again, there were only 8 copies of this test made.

Now, way back in November 2008 I picked up a test press of the Kid Kilowatt 7" on eBay. It came in a plain white paper dust sleeve, but at some point later I learnt that the other copies had sleeves made. So when I picked up this batch of tests, I asked Dan is he had any spare sleeves for the 7" test. He sent one over.

And finally, a test press of the first Waxwing LP. This was a band that Rocky Votolato sang in, and they knocked out three albums. This is the first, and for some reason I only own this one on CD. Not sure why that's the case.

The craziest thing about this batch of records is thinking about how old most of these releases are now. I still think of these bands and records as relatively recent, although they are 10-15 years old at this point. Crazy.