Organized Crime Halloween MMXII Package

The last couple of years Organized Crime records have listed a mysterious halloween package on their store, last years sold out real fast and an iPhone paypal error caused me to miss out on the records but I managed to score the shirt.  I subsequently ended up being gifted a glow in the dark copy of the Integrity In Contrast Of Sin 7" from Jamie Farrell last year which I'm immensely grateful for but never ended up blogging about, one day.

Anyways, this year I was bang on the ball, I'm not missing out on one two years in a row, like last year they kept the actual details under wraps and only asked for your shirt size so we knew only one thing.  Now OCR hadn't put out much in the year before, they did the Harder They Fall flexi 7" but I wasn't expecting a glow in the dark version of that, what we ended up with came a little out of left field, but not by much.

If you were hoping to be spoiler free until your copy turns up then I'd suggest not scrolling any further because there are gratuitous record pics from beyond the wax seal.

I'd already had a little spoiler of what I was to expect through some online friends (ooh, fwend) so the surprise was dulled a little, I still couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy.  What we have here is a split 6" record from Rot In Hell and Vegas.  The RIH side features what I'm assuming is the last song featuring Mr Nathan on vocals before they become Rot In H8000, VVegas offer up a haunting acoustic number, it was always going to be that or something blisteringly heavy.  For some reason the lyrics don't match up to the vocals on the RIH side, don't know what happened there.

I've never heard of a record coming on a 6 inch, now I have. Here's a comparison next to a 7" just for shits and gigs.

Everything on the outside packaging is screen printed, the wolf logo is the same as used on the shirt and the respective band logos are on the sleeve, it came with a silver sticker amalgamating both band logos too.

I probably wouldn't have opened this had I not read elsewhere that the wax seal was put over a round sticker that allowed you to prize it open with a knife without breaking the wax.  Had I not opened it I'd have had to settle on not knowing exactly what was inside the envelope.  Holy Terror, pushing the boundaries of art.

Integrity / Rot In Hell – Split [Thirty Days Of Night]

 Back in February 2010 when we were all a little more fresh faced than we are today, Thirty Days Of Night announced they were about to unleash pre-orders for a split 7 inch by Integrity and Rot In Hell.  I shat my pants at the time, like a lot of people because with this announcement Rot had just ended their Deathwish requested release freeze before the LP dropped (they still delayed it a while longer but that's a different story).  Anyway, a few nights later when the pre-orders went up I cancelled my plans to go to the movies and waited anxiously for the TDON store to be updated with the new bundles,  I ordered the most limited black copy plus the standard green/blue mix there and then.  I thought nothing of it at the time but no-one would have believed that we were to wait a further 18 months to get our hands on the things.  I won’t go into detail about it all because it’s been well documented elsewhere, I’m just here to give a bit of background and to blog about vinyl. 

This puppy is one of the band only copies on white vinyl out of 100 which I ordered direct from the band on the holy terror site, the records from TDON are safe and sound at the in-laws place.   Both records are housed in a black dust sleeve, it's good to see them opting for a corresponding colour rather than just the standard white paper, it's the attention to detail that I like most about records from these two bands.  This is a double 7" with the first record holding the actual split and the second being a kind of noisy accompaniment to the illustrations within the book by Herr Hellion.

 

The original idea was to have it housed within a hardback book but that didn't happen due to circumstances out of the band and label's control so it ended up being a double gatefold with a booklet inside which is still pretty different if you ask me.  It's full of creepy photographic art and messed up drawings of a fawn guy ripping a hole into another dimension and bringing forth all kinds of beasties.

Dwid saw fit to sign each of these copies which is a nice touch, makes the band only part of the press that little bit special.  Don’t expect to see any of my bands doing this though though, I think the record buying public would frown upon receiving their copies with my name scribbled all over it in wax crayon like the scratchings of a 30 year old man child.  We’d have our money requested back via paypal with a note saying “thanks a lot Duggan, you ruined hardcore.”

In all seriousness, it’s good to see this thing released and in the hands of the fans hands, the Rot tracks on here are tidy as usual, I’ve had the songs for a little while on the down low but you didn’t read that here.  Oh and pick one of these up if you’re a Colohan completist, just saying.  Integrity released the songs on here on their Detonate Worlds Plague 12" which I guess is technically an EP, this split was scheduled to come out ages before that record but it didn't so quit you're bitching.

Rot In Hell / Moloch - Split [Feast Of Tentacles]

 I checked out Moloch about a year ago on the reccommendation of a couple of the Rot In Hell fellas, it's good shit, not surprising that the band ended up doing a split 7" then. 

This one came on a couple of different colours, I believe the pressing info was 400 on black and 100 on red.  The cool thing being the covers on the red records were printed with red ink, it's all screen printed with the inserts being done on tea stained paper.
Feast Of Tentacles have been putting out tidy little packages recently, always high wuality both musically and aesthetically. 

I missed out on any kind of special release cover for this one, I hear there was one made for the show in Nottingham but I couldn't make the trip up unfortunately.  I hope I get to see Moloch play in the near future.

Rot In Hell - Niu [A389]

This is a one sided live EP which I have on tape from Grot Records, they did a couple of different covers and I was meant to do a post about it along with a bunch of other things over the past couple of months that I just haven't got round to doing, real life eh.  Anyways we've (Santa Karla) been playing this beast in the van since I got it and it really captures the pissed off live sound that Rot have.  You can't hear the dancing but you just know everyone's losing their shit, or maybe they were just standing around not knowing what to do like at CTW, seriously, this band make me want to punch someone in the face or grab a girl inappropriately whilst picking them up when they fall over moshing to Cold Snap.  Wise up guys, this is the band you want to break your nose to.

This is out of 300 I think, all the records are on black too, you can't see too well from my amazing photographic skills but the cover is screen printed with silver ink.  The whole thing is more DIY than a regular A389 release, but coupled with the tape version and the fact it's a live recording it all ties together nicely.

Side B has the same labels as The Blackest Curse, you don't see me complaining.  It would've been cool to have a screen printed b-side but I know these were done as a kind of last minute release so there probably wasn't much time for such a thing.

Rot In Hell - Sins Of Malice [Hemlock 13]

It's becoming increasingly obvious that there was a period of a couple of years where I didn't buy any music on vinyl due to a deadbeat job, my music collection consisted of mp3's and CD's burnt from mates.  Not ideal but needs must when the ends don't meet.  Nowadays I'm in a shit hot IT job with a disposable income that I could only have dreamed of at 18 years of age.  Handsome and rich, well, one of those anyway.  One record I didn't get round to ordering was the Rot In Hell demo 7", I copied it off an old friend to have the songs sure, I kick myself for not snapping up a copy of the vinyl when Nate got round to pressing it on wax.  Other records I missed out on shall be posted on here when I get round to picking them up at prices up to 5 times the band originally sold them for.  Sickening isn't it.

Musically it's Rot In Hell at they're infancy (yeah, I know it's the demo) and I think they work best as a
stripped down clevo worship band, they haven't lost this edge in their more recent material (no pun intended), which is why the current genereation of bands on both sides of the Atlantic look up to and admire their music.  The Meanstreak cover is top notch, it's not often I know the cover but this one was bang on target, I was fortunate enough to get given a copy of the Only The Strong 7" from my girlfriend as I was just getting into hardcore.  The Clevo side has been good to me ever since, best comp ever?  It's definitely up there.




Packaging wise this is superb, hand stamped and numbered disco bag (25/219), spray stencilled b-side and disco bag and screen printed cover which folds like you would fold up a box when you move house.  Lots of work went into this, which is why it is worthy of the price tag it's been accruing recently on ebay.  On the subject of spraying records, this reminds me of a comical day back in 2003, twas the day Terror played in Canterbury, the first time they played in the UK, Lowest Of The Low had just been pressed on vinyl from Reflections and they hadn't put out any generic samey records with uninspired riffs and boring lyrics.  But I digress, The Break In demo had just come back from Ben Phillips on a master disc the night before and we had to get these demos made up ready for the show that evening.  So all five of us were tasked with either burning CD's on Anton's lame ass CD drive, spraying the on body art, cutting up the brown paper or spraying the covers.  #29 was a 3 story townhouse we all used to live/hang out at, for one day only it was a finely tuned demo making facility, the only problem being that as we were spraying in rooms on the first and second floors there wasn't enough ventilation which made the day a little more fun than usual.  All of a sudden Anton and Burrows' impressions of Beyonce and general fucking about were that little bit funnier, turns out we were pretty high on the fumes.  Involuntary edge break?  Or a bunch of 20 year olds not paying attention to the safety instructions on the car undercoat spray paint bottles?  4 out of 5 members would go with the former, I say it was an accident.  SxFxEx

Note to any bands out there today, this is how you put together a decent record, put some fucking effort into it or fuck off.