Alaska / End Reign - Split [Fist In The Air / Worthless Nights]

This is a little bit of a landmark for all parties involved, the first vinyl release for band Alasks, End Reign plus the label Fist In The Air (Worthless Nights put out the Angst 7" already). This whole thing came together pretty fast, I first heard about it in the summer and Alaska had already started recording their side. I'm not going to review the music as such, all I'll say is both bands play a similar style of pissed off metallic hardcore in the vein of bands like Rise & Fall and Cursed. I know it's a bit of a lazy comparison but you'll agree it's pretty spot on, plus they're good bands to be compared to. Both bands are fairly new on the scene with one or two releases under their belt each and I can tell from the songs on show here that they've hit their respective strides with these batch of songs.


Artwork is crisp as fuck, a simple black and white affair by Mr Rupert who is known for handling the illustration for November Coming Fire's Dungeness LP. It's my favourite piece I've seen by him and it definitely accompanies the music well. The only bad thing isn't asthetic but packaging, the record itself was mailed inside the sleeve and one of the copies teared at the top due to the package being thrown about in transit. Anyone reading this who posts records in the mail, please make sure you remove the record from the cover when packing it for delivery to avoid this whether you run a label or are sending a record to a friend. This has happened to at least 5 of my records over the past 6 months, a pet peeve if you will.

Vinyl colour wise we've got a winner, no gawdy splatter in three separate colours on a bad base colour here, just simple clear and clear blue. The colour choice adds to the crisp look of the set, definitely a good decision.

Clear out of 150: (that isn't a pube, honest, it's record fluff, I'd just picked it up off the turntable and it had new record residue on it)

Blue out of 350:



I managed to secure a couple of pre-order covers too, these are just standard 7x7" sheets of card numbered out of 50, a nice touch and icing on the cake. I know Alaska did two lots of release covers recently, 5 of each design and End Reign have one in the works too.

Take Courage - Black Is The Colour, None Is The Number

Another one from some local lads, no abbreviations attached to this lot but worth your time regardless.  This tape is super limited to 20 copies, I picked one up at a show last week but the band still have them available, maybe the fact that it is recordings from a lineup that is only 50% of the one they are right now, maybe it's because people don't know enough about them?  Either way this should have sold out in a day.  Recorded earlier this year, this was apparantly meant to be released on 7" bu the band wanted to record new songs with the new lineup so gave this recording the limited release on tape and put the tracks up for free download on mediafire (which you should get now).  Musically I'd say they're somewhere between This Is Hell and Raise The White Flag, fast and heavy yet pissed off and punk as fuck.  They really impressed me at Hevy fest this past weekend, I definitely see a band with a new lease of life, the next 7" should be killer.

The tape itself is classic Fist In The Air, (I say classic because the SK CD's were sprayed in  metric fuck tonne of different colours) it's sprayed with black and copper paint and resembles a plasterers radio if he was also a grafitti artist.  No lyrics or anything, you've just got a front cover and a list of the songs, job done.  Go order a copy from FITA Records.