Anne - Dream Punx [A389]

This is another record I picked up at the A389 bash, I'm slowly updating my blog with everything I purchased there, I would do one mass post but my upload speed out in the sticks is 1997 slow and it takes me at least 45 minutes to upload a posts worth of pictures so I apologize.

Anne are kind of shoegaze post punk and definitely a departure from what A389 normally put out, this is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination and I'd urge anyone to listen to it. 

I haven't checked out the pressing numbers for the LP but I think the whole press came out on volour with the numbers shared between the variants, there's no insert with it and the back cover doesn't really give you anything to go on other than the song titles.  Basically the music speaks for itself, I've been listening to this pretty much non-stop for 3 weeks and I keep hearing something new in the songs every time.  A rare treat.

 The missus saw this and thought it looked lovely, I'm a little at odds if I'm honest, the colours go with the artwork and the a/b side splits always make for a different effect on each side, it just looks more like a dessert treat than a record, slap some raspberry sauce on this bad boy and you could have it as a follow up to a nice steak dinner.  That being said, I'd love for someone to come out with scented vinyl, is that even available?  That's be perfect for the colour choice here!

Young And In The Way - Amen/I Am Not What I Am [A389]

I picked up this record from the A389 anniversary show in Baltimore last month, I'd heard a few tracks from previews online and it seemed like my kinda deal, they describe themselves as all American blackened crust, now I don't think I have heard much all American blackened crust before and if this is what it sounds like, I'm down.  This is a double LP of two different records, one previously released on CD and one brand new as far as I can tell. I wish I took a picture of their merch desk, there was a deer skull with candles burning and all of the band had YAITW back patches on their biker leather jackets.  The band were burning incense sticks at the side of the stage when they played, for a minute I thought I was going to witness a Bossk reunion.

 Each of the records are upside down from each other on the back and inside, minimalist text on the inside with no lyrics which adds to the mysteriousness of the music itself.  I like how a lot of A389 records come on gatefold, they're not cheap to produce and a lesser label would be taking a risk doing such a thing, good thing this isn't their first release then.

 Both of the LP's are half and half, I've heard a few of the younger hardcore kids from round my way complain that they don't like this kind of vinyl and much prefer the gawdy pink and white splatter with clear bits infused in there too, each to their own.  I much prefer a nice solid colour or a half and half split over splatter effects any day, the colour choice goes with the artwork but then again if the artwork is black and white you can pretty much get away with any colour vinyl and it'll compliment it. 

 The B-side for the records has the YAITW combo logo they use on a lot of their shirts and artworks, I coudn't see the letter A in it for a long time until I realised they used an X for "and."

Ringworm Shiz

Just before christmas last month it got dead cold but didn't snow, it just stuck in the -2 to -10 zone and forced me to dig out the ultra warm North Face coat I was forced to buy as a result (not a bad thing in my book).  So I was checking twitter around the 10th of December and noticed one of my favourite groups of all time, Ringworm, were playing in a weeks time in Buffallo which is about an hour or so's drive from me.  As luck would have it I wasn't working so I jumped in the motor with the missus and strolled up to the show, they were playing with a few bands who I wasn't interested in and Every Time I Die who also come under that header for me.  As I walked in the band before Ringworm were just finishing up their final song so I didn't have to wait and ETID were on after them so it looked like I was in for an early night.  $12 in and I didn't have to sit through anyone I didn't like, perfect show for me then.

Let's get this post on track then, Ringworm had just released a split 7" on A389 with Australia's Mindsnare, seeing as I'd just moved to another country I didn't have the funds to order one of these online during the preorders so it was a perfect time to pick up both the colour and black versions.  I don't know the numbers or anything but I'm assuming the purple is the rarer colour, it's a cool kind of semi translucent record which goes perfectly with the artwork courtesy of the Human Furnace.  The record is housed within a 7" sized comic book which includes a cool little dig at Victory records which I always welcome in 2012. 

This is the standard black, kids these days tend to not buzz over black records and prefer to gush over a clear 12" with three alternating splatters mixed in to resemble something an student would cough/spew up after 48 hours of solid drinking on freshers week.  I can understand not buzzing on a black record due to the fact it's not the rarest colour but I've noticed a bunch of labels recently using black as the more limited variant and making the main press colour so you never know kids, your black could be super rare.  In this case, it's not.

 Something I'm sure a lot of people know about and that I find a nice touch is that most of a389's releases use the same template on the A and most of the time B sides which I think adds a continuity to the records. It's normally a black background but sometimes it's changed to match the colour of the artwork like here on the Integrity To Die For 10 inches. 

At the same show the band had the Madness Of War demo 7" which was also released on a389, originally released on cassette in  the late 90's after the band came out of hiatus, the songs made their way onto Birth Is Pain albeit rerecorded.  This baby is pressed on a flexi, now I've seen a couple people perplexed by this format on a number of blogs saying they've never seen one.  Now I'm not old enough to remember when these were on the front of the NME but I do remember owning a bunch of Thunderbird flexi's that came on the front of the Frosties boxes.  They were pretty much my only records until I bought the Partners In Kryme classic "Turtle Power" single in 1990.  Ninja Turtles started by vinyl addiction...

Here's a picture of them both together:

The band copies I think were out of 50 on clear and the black was out of 200, I could be wrong so correct me with your knowledge in the comments.  What's cool about these is the fact that the silver ink used on the label makes the clear version look inverted or non-inverted depending on the background behind it. 

I received a couple of copies of both the Scars LP and the Birth Is Pain LP repress from Victory the day before I left for Canada, I did't take any pictures of them so if I remember once I'm home, I'll do a post about them.  I'm pleased Ringworm are done with their Victory contract, it's a shame they hooked up with them just before the label turned to absolute shit and started putting out A Day To Remember and other such rubbish.

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.

4 for 4

I've got a stack of new records sitting next to the couch at the moment, the past 6 weeks I've spent way too much of my money on vinyl and it's started to be drip fed to me by the lovely mailman who comes to my office, not the retard who does the rounds to my house, records don't get delivered there anymore after he left my Wayfarer LP out in the rain.  Anyway, A389 being the brilliant label they are, did a pre-order package a few months back which I ordered to get Integrity's To Die For 10" on red as I slept on the blue press, but I'll get to that in a moment.  The package included 4 records, 2 7"s, a 10" and this 12" from Caulfield:

I'd never heard the band before but seeing as you get a more limited variant of one record and a bonus 7" I thought it'd be rude not to.  Boy was I right to order the whole package, the first thing I noticed was that the LP sleeve was hand made, we're talking black marker on the folds to mark out where to cut and screen printed front/back too.  My copy has a little white ink smudged on the front, I don't think this is intentional but it adds to the DIY feel of the package.  The insert is also pretty cool, photocopied with thick card on the outside and biblical demon images inside along with the lyrics.  I've been listening to this quite a bit on vinyl and mp3 due to the download card included and I'm really into it, it's crusty, doomy and right up my street, can't wait to see what they come up with next.

One thing I dig with A389 releases is that the label artwork is more often than not always the same template, the colours change and the bands logo is always different but other than that it never often differs.  Brings to mind memories of looking through my Mum's 7" box when I was growing up, all her records had the holes punched out as she'd inhereted them from the jukebox in my Grandad's pub, most of those always had a generic label.  More hardcore labels should do this, too many bands are trying to put labels on the vinyl that goes with the main artwork, but fuck it, have a generic template for the record label and fall in line with the rest of the roster, into it.

Next is the record which swayed me to go all out for the package rather than order To Die For separately, this Pale Creation 7" is only available on red vinyl in the deal.  Pale Creation are kind of underrated in the genre right now, their full length Twilight Haunt is up there with Integrity's Those Who Fear Tomorrow and shows all the signs of being a hardcore masterpiece.  The tracks on this 7" are new if I recall, VVake Of Temptation has Nick Fiction busting out some clean vocals which normally I would cringe at if any other band of this genre would do, but it works, the tracks here could easily have come from the full length, I hope they put out another record soon.

Let's get on to the record shall we?  Artwork comes courtesy of Stephen Kasner, a legend in himself, would certainly love to have him do some artwork for my band, if we ever put out more than one record every 18 months.  The vinyl is red, but opaque, I think every red record I own is clear so this is refreshing, almost a maroon colour when seen in the flesh, notice the generic label again.  Standard.

The next record is a bonus for the deal, split 7" from Integrity and Pale Creation.  I didn't own any PC wax until this package arrived, now I own 2, brilliant.  No generic labels here, but I'm assuming as it's a bonus record it can be let off, also there is no text on the sleeve to tell you what bands it is so the labels are your only info here.

Now this record I could have got on the original press when they did a run on blue vinyl with alternate blue artwork but I'm not one to chase buzz records on ebay.  So when it was announced it would gt a second press on a different colour with new artwork I was very interested.  This time we have Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme on the cover, another one of the Manson girls (the blue version had Sandra Good on it, I think I preferred that one actually, a little more sinister).  No text on the front or back, the same image is reversed on the back too.  The only text on the artwork is on the spine.  

The insert shows both the girls, the blue version showed them with their jugs out, this one they look like a chipmunk and Linda Blair from the Exorcist.

The only infor about the record is on the label, you can just about see it in this photo, the B-side has the skull in the same colours.  To Die For was the first Integrity record I got back in '03, I hadn't heard them before this other than the Only The Strong comp 7", I honestly think it's a banger, everything just gelled really well on this record, they weren't experimenting with the Sam Hain/Danzig vibe or anything nu metal, it was jus pure old school Integrity.  I later found out it was put together form old In Cold Blood riffs which kinda sucks, but I still love it.

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.