Look To Yourself To Make The Change

The Break In - No Fate But What We Make [Burial Records 004]

I thought I'd do a post on one of my old bands, in particular the first band to put out something on vinyl, The Break In. I joined in 2003 after they had played about 5 shows with Hannah doing vocals, Myself and Scott White stepped in after she and Alan left the band. It took about 10 shows up and down the country after touring with November Coming Fire and The Last Chance for us to click with the crowd, the sow that happened at was Himsa/NCF/Love That Kills in Canterbury. We rolled on in our Spy Kids 3D specs and busted out (The Break) Intro for the first time, intending to write a full blown song out of it, but after the reaction we got to the 60 second outburst of mosh we decided to leave it as it was. The demo had been out for a couple of months and we had a few songs left to record from that particular session of songwriting, so we approached Troy and McKee of Londons Burial Records about doing a 5 track 7" incorporating the 3 demo tracks with a couple more tracks sandwiched between those songs before we dropped our MCD on Dead & Gone. They were into the idea so we got shit moving. We popped out 2 tracks with Ben Phillips over at City Of Dis and at the same time tweaked the demo with new bass and a few extra guitar bits, gang vocals were fleshed out with a new take and Burrows did another guest spot (Oooooh shit!).

It was 2003 and excitement over a third Terminator movie was at boiling point, the title of this record was born out of the line from T2 "There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." Nate actually suggested the title, cheers for that one. Artwork wise we got Sketchy Adam (@xchandlerx79 on twitter) to do the fron/back and it came out just as we envisioned it, unfortunately the pressing was done on a glued card sleeve rather than a fold out insert jobby so the band name on the spine didn't quite work out, no big deal though. There was 100 copies done for pre-orders on white vinyl and 400 on black. Each was stamped with an x/rose on the A side and the Burial logo on the B side, black ink for the white, red for the black. One mistake which I accept responsability for is I should have gotten the large hole 7"s, but I didn't tell the Burial guys about it until it was too late.

We did a euro tour cover for the Internal Affairs tour in '04 but I didn't keep one of those, all I have is the white, black and a test (one of 10). We raffled one of these off at a Verge all dayer in London, Billy Caliber ended up with one. I have no idea if Burial have any copies left, rumour has it that Daniel Frye has one or two of these leftover with the odd shirt from that era, mostly this comes up on ebay now and again on black and goes for 99p so kep them peeled.

It's worth mentioning, as I enter my 9th year straight edge, that I'm the only one of this lineup still sXe, as the lyrics to the final track suggest "straight edge, it's strong within our hearts, and it's growing stronger every day."
Download the full record here

Not while the ink still stains these fists.

The inserts to the records were photocopied, forward thinking may or may not have predicted the lyrics wouldn't show up on a white background though.

White (/100)

Black (/400)

Test press (/10)

Stamping the labels was very labourious, mainly because the slightly gloss record bags didn't let the ink dry so Troy's flat was literally full of records on the floor in every room.

So yeah I'm missing the Euro cover but I think Mr Frye has a spare one for me.

Eye Of Thundera, Give Me Sight Beyond Sight

Seraphim and Virgin With are two bands I've gotten into by reccomendations from friends and I'm very grateful my eyes have been opened to these bands.  I buy records from bands I like that I've checked out previously on MP3 format and some money left over in my paypal account left over from recycling old phones allowed me to order these when I got a couple of others from Free Cake Records.

This Virgin Witch record I thought was going to come on black but turns out it was on grey with a screen printed B-side.  I've said it before but touches like this are what make vinyl truly the best music format.  The cover is also silver screen printed, you've got to love that screen print smell, it's art school nostalgia.

Songs For Burning Lovers

Burning Love - Don't Ever Change b/w Jack The Ripper [Deranged]

I've got a lttle love affair going on with Burning Love, I knew they'd be awesome as their vocalist Chris has a solid back catalogue but when Santa Karla played with them back in December '09 they blew my mind.  So damn tight and powerful on stage, I ordered all the colours of the demo 7" on TDON prior to that show, I'm up to 9 pieces of wax right now.  This 7" is a sampler for their new LP on Deranged Records out of Canada entitled 'Songs For Burning Lovers' with a B-side of a Nick Cave song.  It's on regular black and a blue/white mix, the labels for each colour are different colour variations also which is a little different as the only colour change is normally the vinyl itself.  Good touch lads.  Really looing forward to the full length even more now. 

http://www.derangedrecords.com/

Got A Number Thirteen Tattooed On My Neck

Withdrawal - Unknown Misery

Withdrawal are tight, Canadian holy terror.  I ordered this from the band a while back and threw in for a shirt at the same time to make the postage worth my while, I got a mail from Adam in the band saying they ran out of my size, it's happened to me with my band on more than one occasion so I was willing to wait for the next batch.  I also got chatting to him about a bunch of random shit, turns out we;re both not complete douchebags and are actually nice dudes.  Fast forward to this week and after an email letting me know they found my shirt in my size I received the 7" along with a short story by Adam with a little note apologising for the delay, all I can say is the record is well worth waiting for, the artwork is stellar, music heavy as sin and there's the obligatory Process logo on the record label.  Seek this out if you dare.

Yo Listen Up, This Is Another Lockin Out Exlusive...

The Wrong Side - Dumptruck Demo [Trip Machine Laboratories]

I posted a week or so about The Wrong Side, before I scored that LP I put a pre-order in for the Dumptruck demo, it was one of those whee you order so long before it comes out you forget it's coming until it slips in through the old letterbox. I didn't go all out and get the black wax too but managed to score one of the 150 on clear green. It's the Dumptruck demo on side A and a live set on side B.

I got number 85, makes a change to get something limited, good to see a label stamping their records and individually numbering pre-orders.  Delivery came with a bunch of stickers too, standard.

The Ignorance Bleeds

My band has a new record coming out.

Everyone Knows Your Name, Nobody Knows Your Face

The Wrong Side - Of The Grave (Lockin' Out)
So back in '03/'04 I was hanging out with some crucial dudes outta Leeds, one of them reccommended me this band Dumptruck who that year had hijacked the end of Mental's set at Posi Numbers fest and played their demo, I was curious to check it out. Couldn't pick up the demo tape as this was on Lockin' Out Records and as we all know, everything that label put out in the early/mid 00's sold out quicker than a new mysterious Integrity pre-order. So I soulseeked it, we all do it, so don't act like you're shocked. It's 4 tracks, dancy as fuck and I loved it. They changed their name to The Wrong Side and like a chump I was broke at the time, working a shitty minimum wage job that didn't give me full time hours and I barely had enough money to make rent let alone bills. Boo hoo, so I didn't snag this on vinyl either, my loss, but I did still pick it up from Soulseek.

This brings me to last month, when I snag another LP off Simpson. I've never actually perused the artwork before so it was good to see what sort of asthetic they were going for, I've been listening to it again recently and I still remember all the words and it makes me mosh in my front room, I think this and the first Righteous Jams LP are some of my favourites in this genre of the 00's. Stoked I've got it on vinyl.

He Goat Appears

CURSED - I [Deathwish]
Time for a post about records. When I learned that my man
Simpson was moving away to a dockside town and flogging off his whole collection (minus the No Warning. Obviously), I was straight on that shit. Sure there are a few other gems I'd like to take of his hands but what's a brother gonna do? I gotta eat. Anyway, I've been into this Cursed band since they put the first record out on Deathwish and I've enjoyed them enough to listen to them on my ipod on copied files I borrowed from friends but for some reason never purchased anything on vinyl. Why you might ask? I don't honestly know, maybe it was the shipping costs from the states, maybe I just didn't want to pick up the most common colour. For whatever reason I fail. This is the most common colour, it's your standard white affair, nothing special, but I like a nice white 12" (yeah, yeah), it looks very clean and goes with any style of artwork. On the subject of artwork, take note people, this is a perfect example in the effectiveness of simplicity. It's simple, intricate and dare I say beautiful in it's design, but also they took the time to include full lyrics, no band should omit this detail, the lyrics are the soul of the band, especially in a genre where words can get lost, the lyrics sheet draws a listener into the record, and with a lyricist like Colohan on board you are in for a treat. More posts on my Simpson goldmine soon.