nuclear blast: amon amarth

amon amarth - versus the world

some serious metal this time! 

i cannot say that i like amon amarth unconditonally. i like 'twilight of the thunder god' and this one (while i have to admit that i don't know 'with oden on our side' and 'fate of norns' just partially), the rest of their discography is ok but gets lost in the swarm of just-ok-music. 'versus the world' whereas is kind of epic to me. i remember watching the video to 'death in fire' (which featured live footage only) and how i loved the constant synchrone head banging and hair swinging of the band :)

i have it on cd already and it was available on white vinyl for quite some time (the first back on black re-press). thing is that i didn't think that white is a matching colour for this release and that's why i was never really attracted to it. spotting it on yellow vinyl at nuclear blast the time had come for me :) i couldn't resist. only thing which is quite bugging is the distribution of only 9 songs (of normal length) on 4 sides and constant turning after 2 songs. 2 sides aka one lp would have made it perfectly.

i like the cover art even though the he-man is a bit embarrassing (but that's just viking metal, i guess), the colouring is rad. 

as the picture of the inner sleeve shows amon amarth is quite a good live band. lots of beer drinking out of horns, some viking ships as decoration and stuff like that. pretty metal, right. as i wouldn't pay the money to see them on a single show, i have to catch them on a festival by chance.

clear yellow double vinyl. don't know about pressing numbers. gatefold sleeve. back on black.

tdon records: dead swans/architects split 7"

dead swans/architects split 7"
dead swans is a recent discovery of mine. i recognized them by checking the bridge9 roaster and ordered the debut album 'sleepwalkers'. as i expected in the corresponding post dead swans' music did really grow on me. as mentioned by the time i was writing about 'sleepwalkers' i already ordered this split directly from thirty days of night. i am in for this mainly because of the dead swans part which is great. don't really like architects and after listening to their part i still don't.

i ordered the white w/ purple splatter vinyl which is limited to 200. there's a black and a clear w/ red splatter version. the last mentioned you can gaze at j@sfr. the cover art is plain and simple but good looking, i think. not so cool is the missing of an insert.

per koro: lie & wait/overdose, reign supreme, 6rtk/absidia

lie & wait-overdose split 7"
since i already call led astray + the awakening my own i wanted to have all their releases. there are just two more, two split releases to be precise. one with a band called lmf from 2006 and another with overdose from 2007 of which i talk about here. at first i ordered it from the band's own web shop. in vain, it appeared because the band isn't around no more and that's why they don't run it anymore. so, like so many times before, i checked the per koro shop and made a find. the lie and wait song is great. the overdose side is cool too. solid hardcore punk with a unique singing style. don't know if overdose is still there or if they released more stuff but i'm not too stoked to find out.

 lie and wait side with way more swirl

overdose side with just a tiny bit of the purple colour.

grey w/ purple swirl vinyl. 400 made. team science records/triple b records. 2007.

reign supreme - american violence 7"
i really loved their first full length album testing the limits of infinite and so i just needed more! this was the forerunner in 2008 and it's just lovely :) great modern hardcore with a high level of energy. i missed them live in hamburg because of an lack of information, damn it! got to catch them some other time.

while my fellow blogger j@screamingforrecords can be quite sure of the pressing number of his colour variation i don't really know what i have here. the info on the deathwish records (to which malfunction records belongs) site says the following: 300 red w/ black haze, 700 red w/ black splatter and 1000 red. so is my white w/ pink splatter of a 2nd pressing or what?

six reasons to kill/absidia split - the morphology of fear
i know that this split exists for quite some time (since 2004 or something) but i never felt like i need to own it. that was mainly because i'm not a big 6rtk fan. i know some later stuff and they are an ok band but nothing more. checking the cheapo section at per koro i found it on coloured vinyl and saw myself kind of drawn to it. i listened to the absidia songs and knew why. they're great! edge metal in the vain of heaven shall burn! good stuff. still don't really like the 6rtk part but absidia alone made this worth the purchase.

wonderful presentation! lovely artwork + lp sized booklet + opaque brown w/ black splatter vinyl. cd version by bastardized recordings. vinyl version by per koro records. 2002.

ebay: destiny

destiny - the tracy chapter
finally done :) this is the last piece in the puzzle of my early european-hardcore-scene experiences that made me love the whole hardcore thing! with these releases it's usually not a question of money but a question of availability. this record came out in 2004 (i was buying cd's at the time) with a run of 500 copies and not one copy was to be found on the net. no distro, no label not even ebay. so it was wait and see. a challenge for my not very strong patience. but then one day it shown up on the bay and after one hard week of waiting for the auction to end i won it for a nice price.
the music is great plus a lovely sound by tue madsen's antfarm studio! think of a german version of early poison the well. they sound pretty similar but as i heard the destiny stuff first i didn't get into that copycat feeling :) as a constant reader you maybe know my repulsion for clean vocals. yeah, what should i say... destiny has them and i goddamn like it. a bit contradictory but that's life :) i thought that is because the music came to me in an early stage but that's not the reason - i didn't like clean singing back in the day too. i think with this record destiny just managed to make these vocals sound proper in the context of their music.

semi-translucent mint green vinyl. 500 made. cd version on lifeforce records. vinyl version on beniihana records (r.i.p.).

nuclear blast pt. III: nile

nile - ithyphallic
a hulk of an album! nile plays everthing with virtuosity - the fast & technical parts, the slow parts & the melody parts. all under the pretext of the old egyptians which is the very factor that makes them so special to me. i just love getting lost in the whole topic of old pharaos trying to get immortal by mummification, speaking spells to get rid of enemies, showing the after-world ones glory by building enormous monuments and so on and so on.
the only thing which bothers me a bit is the missing of the liner notes on this one. that was discussed with eagerness among fans and led to the revival of liner notes on "those whom the gods detest", thankfully. but that's really the only thing not being on the top. -that solo on "the essential salts"... what a cracker!-

i was lucky to get my hands on this. actually it was sold out for a long time but nuclear blast dug out some left over copies from some forgotten vault. this happens from time to time (e.g. sepultura latest album was available again on white and some blue copies of agnostic front's my life my way were up again) but nb doesn't seem to make a big deal about those re-stocks. it seems to go unmentioned and you have to find those copies by chance. that's excactly what happened here :) i got it for the original price of 16€ and was quite happy!

it comes in a nice gatefold sleeve including the lyrics. clear gold w/ black smoke vinyl. great match with the cover art!

on the back you can see it is numbered. the four numbers indicate a pressing number in the range of 1000. i presume it's 1500 because i saw a pic of a copy on the net that was #1043 and because it's a round sum :)
if some one knows the actual pressing number let me know.


nile - at the gate of sethu
*at this point i actually wrote about my first copy of this album. i wasn't satisfied with it and re-placed it with a better one :-) read about it here.*

nuclear blast pt. II: whitechapel

whitechapel - s/t
actually i put my pre-order of the "nile - at the gate of sethu" in plus the agnostic front and another nile record. a few days later just out of curiosity i checked the new-section at nuclear blast again spotting the latest whitechapel out put. at first there were no pictures and the following colour variations: black vinyl, copper vinyl and sand vinyl. i thought the copper colour sounded most interesting. so i wrote an e-mail asking to add the record to the order.
a week later nb put up some pictures. mmmhh... now i thought that sand vinyl looked better. so i wrote another e-mail. finally after being a pain in the ass for the nb team changing my order a few times, i got what i wanted :)
the music is great! another step forward compared to "a new era of corruption". complex song structures, dark melodies, good lyrics. the whole package!

nice presentation. matte paper sleeve, lp-sized booklet, sand vinyl. 200 made. metal blade records.

nuclear blast pt. I: agnostic front

a long time ago (two months i believe) i placed a pre-order over at nuclear blast records for the new nile record. along with this i ordered a few more records. usually i make one big post including all the records i got but this time i'm just too fucking lazy for that, so i'm going to split this post up into three parts.
here is number one featuring:

agnostic front - my life, my way
i don't really like agnostic front's old stuff. i know about their impact on hardcore and their undeniable value for the world wide hardcore scene but the music never really grabbed me. but the last three records (another voice, warriors and this one) are real scorchers! so after i picked the new nile album i looked around and nuclear blast had "my life, my way" still in stock.
i love this record. can't get the melody of "city streets" out of my head :)

lovely presentation! i found the following pressing information:
1st press: 800 clear blue - 150 white - 100 green - 100 red
2nd press: 300 clear

wff: wfahm, terror, sworn enemy

it took a bit more than a month but now finally my with-full-force-festival-picks-post! this nice and neat festival took place on an airfield near a small town called roitzschjora (yes, even for a native like me this is hard to pronounce :) in the region of leipzig.

it was one crazy weekend. the average temperature was around 34°C and i was sweating my butt off! in the afternoon you just couldn't stand the heat in front of the main stage without the slightest chance for shade. and then, it was the night of the second festival day, all hell broke loose. while the main act, heaven shall burn, was playing a storm was approaching. as it was above us there was rain without end, even hailing. the big speakers turned off but the monitors that were pointed towards the band seemed to work because heaven shall burn were really going crazy on the stage but no one could hear a damned thing :) it was an odd situation. the tent stage had to be cleared because safety couldn't be guaranteed at 11 on the wind force scale. tents were flying away, barrier fences broke and 69 people were injured after a lightning strike. one hell of a night...

but now to the records i picked up:

war from a harlots mouth - mmx

in my opinion wfahm is one of the most underrated bands in european hardcore/metal scene. they play an outstanding unique blend of extreme metal styles with a pinch of hardcore and jazz plus great society critical lyrics. this album is my favourite of them and after i already have the digipak cd version i knew i got to have this on vinyl. i bought it from the lifeforce records booth for 10 bucks!

clear red white splatter vinyl + fold out lyric sheet + download coupon. 500 made. lifeforce records.

war from a harlots mouth/burning skies split 7"

about wfahm i have said enough i think so let's focus more on burning skies, the band this split is shared with. i know them since their full length debut on lifeforce "murder by means of existence". they disbanded by now. the musical direction of burning skies is somewhere between technical death and grind core. fast, heavy, down tuned. this is really the soundtrack for your next hate demolition trip. music to destroy. even the lyrics are just about things the singer hates and wants to beat up :) so after a bad day i can enjoy this but i really have to be in the mood for burning skies. nothing to listen to on a daily basis...

by the way the wfahm part is excellent.

lovely clear green w/ blood splatter vinyl + gatefold sleeve + download coupon. 500 made. lifeforce records. got this from the lifeforce booth too.

terror - keepers of the faith

this is a record i always wanted because of its brilliancy but somehow wasn't on the top of my wantlist. maybe because of the constant availability on the internet or because i have this already on cd... i don't know.

i entered this booth by a company called forensick music. a lot of guys were hanging around and as i came closer i could understand why. two hot, lightly dressed girls were running it :) maybe this was also a reason for me to buy this record... i believe the girls were making good money by all means. afterwards i found out that they were from slovakia.

nothing more to say about the music. if you don't know it - shame on you and get the fuck up!

clear blue w/ black and white splatter vinyl. the white splattering looks like bird shit :) + a lovely lp sized booklet + download coupon. 1029 made. reaper records.

sworn enemy - the beginning of the end

this one i scored at a booth i already forgotten the name of (dementia strikes soon). they had just one box of records, maybe 40 in total and just six or seven albums because they had a bunch of copies of each album.

sworn enemy was always a name that was familar to me. i even saw them play live at 2007 with full force but totally forgot about it (dementia strikes again). i never owned a cd or mp3's of them i just had the vague idea that they are pretty good. lousy eight bucks and a coloured vinyl version convinced me to go for it. no mistake at all! great hardcore metal crossover mid 00's style!

the artwork for the front cover must have been in a poor resolution as it was printed because if you take a closer look you can see it's pretty pixelated (my pic dosen't really show it).

clear lime green vinyl. 200 made. vinyl version on superhero records.