Cold Snap - Bad Moon Rising [Dead & Gone/CTW]

Dead and Gone, what a label. They've been around for ten years, put out records by Justice, On Thin Ice, Iron Age, Betrayed, Deal With It and the best one being The Break In, obviously. This is D&G #39 which is also their swan song, I'm pleased to say it's a band from my neck of the woods.  Cold Snap have put out a few records now, if memory serves they did a demo CDR, then the Glacies Incarnate 10" on Southern Rise and the split 7" with Cornered on CTW.  I've got all of those so far, but I didn't pick up all the variants until now. They've impressed me more and more each time I see them, more so since Jamie joined, that kid seems to make any band step up their game when he steps in, just look at how much On Thin Ice improved. The 4 tracks on this 7" are definitely the best they've done so far, word is a full length is being worked on now, you won't be able to believe that. This record came on 3 colour variants, the pressing info on the D&G store conflicts with the CTW one (they co-released this), so I'm going with the D&G numbers. The name of the 7" is "Bad Moon Rising," now looking over the lyrics, which aren't typical hardcore fare and bloody good, I can see why the name was picked but I still think it is both weak and Creedence-esque. Every time I hear those three words out loud I get the Creedence song in my head for an hour, which is good because I get a sweet song in my head and bad because this is Cold Snap and I should be humming crushing breakdown riffs.

The colour records are out of 150, I'm sticking by this view at the moment of me not being much of a fan of the splatter records, this one is a little different, it's three different colour splats on clear vinyl, which is kinda cool but I'd much prefer to see one of the variants as a good old single colour. UK bands take note, this is what I want.

The other colour variant is described by the band as black with a yellow centre, this I can stomach, looks kind of cool, almost like it's the first record to be pressed after the yellow run has finished and they haven't cleaned the plates.  The yellow is actually alot brighter than the photo, without the flash on it looks washed out. Would have liked for one of these to be rarer than the other, as it stands I'm sitting on a collection where each one is equal in number, how do I know which one is cooler to have?

Black is out of 200, so only 50 more than each of the colour records, I don't know if they made any tour covers for their euro/UK tour, if they did I'll kick myself for going to see Stewart Lee live last night instead of standing at the front and not moshing (I only mosh to Integrity, covers of old UK bands that no-one knows anymore and Shockwave).

Breaking Point / Wiretap! - Split [Purgatory]

Purgatory are making a name for themselves, they've put out a few records this year, I've got a couple of them, this is the newest addition. Breaking Point are from the south of England, Wiretap are from South Wales. I've not heard much of Wiretap before, I have the demo which was available for free to download and I caught them in Birmingham when Santa Karla hopped on a show last summer, but they've always kind of passed me by as a band that isn't really aimed at me. Listening to these tracks they're tightening up their sound a lot more, I suck at comparing bands to other bands so I'm not going to bother, it's not at all bad though. Breaking Point's side was a surprise, Louis is going for the kind of Cro Mags gruff melodic vocals these days, peppering a bit of that here and there throughout the two tracks (intro, doesn't count as a track) and The Mayes does a guest spot, his voice really stands out and adds to the track, normally guest spots kind of blend in or don't work at all. Nice one.

Enough about the music, I'm doing that too much, I'm writing about the records. We've got two variants here, I don't think there was a black record so it's this gaudy puke colour splatter effect first, it makes me feel ill to look at it which I think is amazing, good work on making it look rank Saker.  The photo doesn't show how ghastly it looks, the yellow is quite vibrant while the green is akin to the paint colour putrid green you used to be able to get from Games Workshop.

I'm taking an educated guess that each band chose a colour to go with, fair's fair and that. This one is a grey and white mix, this is more tasteful than the splatter effect and I think if bands decide to go with something other than the one colour, this is my preference. It goes with the artwork, which is both a blessing and a curse. It looks nice and fits with the tone, but lacks the balls to be a different colour completely, but I guess the sutrid eye rape of a splatter record covers that. Good work.

I hear there is a record release cover being worked on for the Bitter End show in CT on August 13th, I'll be there, my band is playing actually, so that'll be another copy of the record for the collection. I'm hoping for a rip of a classic HC record, I'll probably get a quick photoshop knock up they did the night before and photocopied up the corner shop, prove me wrong.

Lovewolves - A True Discourse & Ark Of The Covenant - S/T [TDON]

A month or two back TDON put up a duo of pre-orders, now seeing as I own every piece of vinyl they've put out bar the Azriel 12" and the Last Witness 7" (I'll pick up the LW one at some point), I thought I'd spring for the x3 deals of both. It helps that I like both the bands too. There was 500 copies of each bands record pressed, 100 on black, limited to the x3 package and two sets of 200 on different colours. It's good to see Lonewolves getting a vinyl release, I think Carcaroth would have been great on wax too, shame it wasn't released on it at the time. Ark Of The Covenant is pure 90's Goodlife metal, definitely the best band Darke's been involved with, the music suits his vocal style to the ground, good riffs, good breakdowns. Both of these records look like they could have benefitted from having a big hole on them, I think Lonewolves even had the artwork take that into account as the labels have a large white circle on them, maybe it cost too much, maybe I'm mistaken.

No catalogue number again, I'm pretty sure Jamie has sworn off these now, shame as I like knowing which records came out before others. On a related note I've noticed the last few Purgatory and CTW releases have omitted the catalogue number, maybe I've got too much love for them, maybe I'm old fashioned. I mean I still think you shouldn't wear the shirt of a band that's paying a show and you should wait two years after a band splits up before covering one of their songs.







Black vinyl, out of 100 each

Colour vinyl, out of 200 each:
Ark:

Lonewolves:

This next one is pretty special, it's black with clear red splatter, now since clear red is a weak colour, 40k painters will know what I mean, it doesn't show up when put over or in darker colours.

Here's a picture of it up against the light, I've got a Rot In Hell 12" with white splatter on black but this is the first one I've seen with a clear colour used with the black.

Age Of Kali - Demo '06 [Rat Patrol]

Just a quick one, picked this up from Jesse Bad Aids when he was offloading his entire hardcore collection after dropping out, I didn't do a pre-order for the record due to me being on minimum wage and living with a retard.  I only had the standard black version (with insert).  Something always niggled at me to pick up the clear version but I never really looked out for it, so when it became available to me literally on a plate I had to take advantage.  Such a shame this band didn't finish recording their next record, but as they never released anything else I guess the riffs were fair game, Cold Snap can do what they want with them eh?  The spontaneity of the song writing for this is admirable, the whole thing was written and recorded in one evening, bar the vocals, I'd love to do that, maybe my next band we'll do something on the fly like that, one day, one day.  There is some choice lines in the lyrics about annoying trends which are still relevant today, but I'll let you seek it out for yourself, it's worth it, maybe someone has the mp3's they could upload and I'll put them here.

Anyway, enough of the music, on to the record itself, this is the pre order sleeve, Ugly Kid Joe homage with UKJ lyrics on the back.  Clear vinyl, number 62/100 (damn this was '06? Seems like yesterday it came out).  I love how the labels have nothing to do with the standard artwork, they say Thamthon monster of cats, I always meant to ask one of them about this but always forget, maybe now I've put it on here it'll remind me to ask.  The black should be easy enough to pick up on ebay, treat yourself, oh I forgot to mention, members of this band went on to be in Cold Snap and Rot In Hell, well the recording members did, they had a different drummer for a few shows, I think Jason Frye even busted out the drums to a Cold World cover once.  Great dane.

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.

If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It

Saw Predators the other night, enjoyed it, took away the bad taste of AVP 1 & 2 for sure.  Two words: Danny Trejo.  This dude is a 23%er, any film he appears in is instantly made better by 23%.  That is all.

Integrity - The Blackest Curse [Deathwish]

I haven't got many records in the mail recently, everything I ordered over the past couple of months has mostly been pre-orders so I'm now waiting on almost 20 records and I just ordered anothe 5 in the A389 pre-order, but it's no big deal, something to look forward to eh? Today was the first in the long line and the one I've been looking forward to most, I've held off downloading it from the blogspots and haven't listened to it anywhere else online as I wanted to bust it out on vinyl, it's on as I type this and I'm very into it, but this isn't a review, I'll leave that to Nate. There'll be plenty of people posting on their blogs and tumblrs about this so I know I'm not doing anything too original here, it's more of a way to catalogue what I've bought and a way of keeping track on how I waster my money.






I saw Deathwish Inc had put the pre-orders up on evening when I was doing a Pacific session with the lads, iPhone in hand I set about compiling an order for one of these but with shipping it wasn't worthwhile for just the one, so I threw in for 3, not knowing any of the pressing info at all. Turns out that was the magic number as that was the number of variants Deathwish had on offer, but they didn't release the pressing info until a few weeks ago. I know there'll be some limited copies knocking around and possibly even a band only press so I'll keep an eye out for that in the future.



Artwork wise we're talking super minimalist, I don't know exactly what the image is from but that is pretty much all you get, there is the skull on the front in invisible ink and the song titles on the back also in invisible ink, looks nice but can't get it to show up with my shitty camera. No liner notes, band members or thanks list, lyrics are notably absent too, looks like I'll be getting them on the internet then. That's the only thing I'd change is to have the lyrics, but it's Integrity and they're not known for putting the lyrics in their records.

Record colours are very tastefully selected, I'm a fan of one colour records, clear or opaque, half and half/tri colour is good too. It's not that I don't like splatter/marble, it can be very effective but keep the amount of colours used to a minimum, having 3 different colours splatted on a white background just gets mixed up and looks like an artists mixing palate. I don't know, I think it's the cool thing to do, maybe once a band has put out their first 7" they'll get the kooky records out of their system and they can put a full length out on a good old white LP.

Red out of 300


White out of 700


Clear out of 1000 (this came with a sticker for this record and the Starkweather one)




Side A


Side B


Insert (this'll get framed soon methinks)


Also I've not had an update in a while but I thought this was a good post to put this in, screen printed poster from the London show on May 29th. Thing cost me a tenner, but it's a decent size poster and on nice thick paper. Mine didn't have a rectangle ripped out of it like some other people I know, must have been a bunch of stoners hanging by the merch desk then. This was my first time seing Integrity live, I missed out on them in '03, I think we were playing shows on most of the gigs I would have been able to get to, and I missed them on the Converge tour, but I hear it wasn't too great on those shows. They played a greatest hits set, nothing written after 1999 which is slightly disappointing, but I can understand that, Taste My Sin wouldn't have gone a miss though. Rot In Hell and Never Again played, I missed half of NxA's set but they got the reaction of the night, blew me away, RIH should be whipping up a shitstorm in the pit when they play but it didn't happen, a great shame as they were tight as fuck and have Charlie Manson on guitar, best band in the UK right now, believe.

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.