ebay usa: nile - black seeds of vengeance

nile - black seeds of vengeance

metal days over here have reached its peak today with a real gem. nile's mammoth sophomore release black seeds of vengeance. somehow in the past i thought that owning the five last records nile released would be enough. listening to 'bsov' now this opinion is beyond me. that record is superb! it's that old nile pattern. fast and technical death metal with that great feeling for oriental melodies combined with those egyptian underworld lyrics. perfect nerd stuff!

i cannot really recall how i came across this american auction on ebay. i don't know if it was by chance or if i was especially looking for it. anyway, as i saw it i thought that this is now or never. because i didn't know of any other source to get this from. discogs and dead format were dead ends and popsike told me that it wouldn't turn up on the bay that often. so i was bound and determined. in the end i won it for my max bid. you know, with one laughing eye because i got it and one crying eye because i'd have to spend a shitload of money with shipping.

in the end shipping wasn't that bad because the dude came from belgium and just sold it through ebay u.s. when it arrived i couldn't get my eyes off of that beauty. that colour is bad ass! goes perfectly with the orange lettering on the cover. sensational! condition is very good also, so i think it was worth the bucks. i believe that there are 500 of this colour way pressed. but i'm not really sure because i couldn't find a source to confirm. some other colours are around too. i saw a clear (that 100 not for the puplic thing) and a clear gold version. relapse records. 2000.

metal blade pre-order 2/2: entrails - raging death

entrails - raging death

ahh..., the fertile combination of music and art work. powerful indeed! again it helped me to investigate further behind this nice cover that looked like it held something inside i would like. so i checked the net if i can find some tunes belonging to this output. what i found was the first song of the record called 'in pieces'. and man it's a real scorcher! check for yourself. simple swedish death metal. just some new metal which i felt i really needed looking at the thin release stream this year.

listening to the album in whole, it cannot really hold on to the glory 'in pieces' promised. it's just a little too obvious. you know that reliable structure, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-break-chorus. and the lyrics are a bit too flat. i mean nothing against some snappy shouts like 'blood hammer - bringer of doom' (especially the word 'doom' was made for deep and dark grunting), but all the time? yeah, i know it's death metal and stuff but... ah well, judge for yourself.

but i don't want to sound too negative. because that's just not the way i feel about this record. really. i like it for what it is. solid swedish death metal that is. it probably just pales a bit in comparison to the black dahlia murder record i got in the same go. but again, it's an enjoyable listen! period!

the presentation however is out of the question. the inevitable gatefold sleeve with all the lyrics, black dust sleeve (which always look better than its white counterpart), a nice poster with the cover art in different colours (which will never feel the closeness of an embracing wall) and a really good looking vinyl colour. 350 copies of marbled 'azure'. and the pictures really do it justice this time, because they show that the colour changes a bit depending on the lighting situation. just like the azure blue sea in the sun. i'm feeling a bit romantic today, it seems. ha!

metal blade records. 2013.

metal blade pre-order 1/2: black dahlia murder - everblack

the black dahlia murder - everblack

i'm sick. therefore i'm at home. therefore i have some extra time, and therefore i'm going to post about a record at a time, i'm usually at work. only good thing about being sick, it seems. lowering the pile of vinyl. whatever, metal days approaching here on hardcore/metal vinyl. first up is the new effort of the black dahlia murder called 'everblack'. i highly anticipated this release because it seems to be the only metal output this year i was really waiting for. so of course i was all over the pre-order thing.

at first i ordered the record from nuclear blast along another metal release (upcoming post). with nuclear blast i can order and then do the money transfer later on. so in the meantime i was checking ebay germany. metal blade europe has their official store as a part of emp.de. their prices suck plus their shipping rates suck plus emp sucks, so i never order there. but on the bay metal blade has their own shop. as the black dahlia murder record and the one, which will appear in the next post, are both mb releases and prices were lower, i cancelled the nuclear blast order.

indeed metal blade had all the colour ways for this release to offer. i went for the purple w/ white splatter vinyl version. in hindsight i don't know why anymore. it's the second to rarest version. the rarest is a purple w/ black marble version. after checking some pics on the net i can only say that it looks awesome. a touch of idiotism, i suppose.

the music took a bit to grow on me. in the beginning i thought it to be casual good quality by tbdm. good stuff that couldn't get near to masterpieces like 'nocturnal' or 'ritual'. but after repeated listenings it gets better and better. outstanding songs like 'in hell is where she waits for me' (first tbdm songs that deals with the crime comitted against elizabeth short lyrically), 'into the everblack', 'every rope a noose' or 'map of scars' sending shivers down my spine. moreover the lyrics are again top notch story telling. great dark mysterious stuff without ever being cheesy. a human being that hates its extremities and feels the urge to get rid of them for example. check them out, they are worth the effort.

the gatefold sleeve that comes with the record is a tri-fold affair with fantastic art work that literally unfolds unfolding the sleeve. awesome! 200 copies on purple w/ black marble, 300 copies on purple w/ white splatter and 500 copies on purple vinyl as far as the european pressing is concerned. i believe there are some more u.s. versions. metal blade records. 2013. 

discogs 2/2: reality returns

reality returns 7"

after grabbing the judge discography i was looking for something else to add to my order. i didn't find anything else in the discogs offerings so i headed over to the take it back records big cartel. as christian is handling both shops i thought that there was be no problem mixing items of the two. what caught my attention was a new release by take it back, reality returns namely. the description said something like new straight edge band from southern germany, reminiscent of biohazard and merauder.

so i fired off an e-mail to christian asking him if he could add a copy to the judge record. 'no prob' was the answer and three days later the records were physically in front of me. man, this stuff delivers what it promised. pure 90's hardcore worship with the right bit of metal crossover and straight edge mentality. really good. check the band's bandcamp and order this slab of wax!

not only the music is damn good on this, the overall look of it is fantastic too. the record comes on nice and heavy clear green vinyl and the card which it is wrapped in, a.k.a. sleeve, is made of thick matte paper with lovely art work. furthermore, for your digital amusement a download card is included as well. you just can't do wrong with it! there were 500 copies made in total. 250 on black vinyl, 150 on clear green vinyl and 100 on clear vinyl. i opted for the clear because it's the most limited but all colours still available.

take it back records. 2013.

discogs 1/2: judge - what it meant

judge - what it meant discography

i'm not a big youth crew hardcore fan. never was. it's probably just not my time. i was shitting dipers in the 80's, so musical uproar through hardcore passed me by back then. the only youth crew band i ever really got into is judge. mainly because they are a bit harder and a bit groovier than other youth crews in my opinion. my problem here was that the more you reach back in time, the more the value for coloured vinyl goes up. 

i'm relatively new to the collecting game and as it's impossible to want an original press of anything judge has ever released without paying over the odds, which i think, is every price that hits triple digits (for a fucking record? come on), i had to set my eyes on the discography released by revelation in the mid 00's. maybe when time goes on, i'll reach deeper into my pocket but for now the compilation will have to do.

i found this baby on discogs by a german seller. i looked more closely and found that it was christian unsinn from take it back records, of whom i bought stuff already in the past. he sold the double lp for a good price and i knew that he treated his stuff well. added to cart! the presentation is pretty nice. lovely matte card gatefold sleeve which has a great little biography wrtten by porcell.

i know that there has been some talk about the choice of the vinyl colours and most of it is not very flattering. as a big worshipper of split coloured vinyl my opinion is pretty splitted too. of course i like the clear red-opaque yellow and the clear-clear yellow vinyl discs but i think the splatter is a bit too much. but not way too much, looks still cool and the colours match the ones on the cover. there are 2300 copies pressed on this colour way for the first pressing. also a second pressing on black vinyl in existence but i don't know any numbers. revelation records. 2005. 

underdog store pt 4/4: die young - loss

die young (tx) - loss 7"

since i have their debut full length sitting on my shelf i was keen to get more of their vinyl output into my hands. first thing i came across was the 'loss' 7" from 2008. a more recent release since their break up in 2009, i think. as i saw it at underdog i couldn't pass on this. especially as it's probably catching dust there for five years. the price was good too. so there was no reason for me not to throw some money at the salesman.

the music on this is just great! intense and crisp metallic hardcore. better than on 'graven images'. mainly because the sound is more organic. on 'graven images' especially the vocals sounded like they put several layers over one another which really felt artificial. this time it's much better. don't know why bands do this anyway. get a new singer if he can't get it done, man! check out the title track of this piece of plastic. cool solo.

pressing information is vague on this one. discogs tells me that there is a grey marbled version limited to 400. deadformat.net lets me know that there is a blue version of the first press without numbers and 130 clear gold copies of the second pressing as last show press with special cover. oh yeah, and some white vinyl again without numbers. musik-sammler.de feeds me with the best information so far. 500 copies of the first press all together. 100 trash-purple vinyl (probably the blue vinyl at dead format?) and 400 trash/grey (hello discogs). 500 copies of the second press. 200 on white and 300 on orange, which is the clear gold i assume. don't know if they took 130 of these orange a.k.a. clear gold vinyl copies for the last show or if they pressed them specially for the occasion. but i think i did a sufficient job with this pressing info mess already. do some work on your own, ok?!

a389 records. 2008. 

underdog store pt 3/4: strife - demo days

strife - demo days

back in 1992, a time when i was listening to my michael jackson tape and sang along to 'black or white', a band called strife released their first 7" on a new label called indecision records. now we all know the mentioned band and label, and after twenty years both are existing or in some way existing again. those twenty years and the re-union of strife were taken as an opportunity to do a re-press of this important release for both, band and label.

this isn't a straight re-press, to be exact. it's the original strife demo that was recorded at the thousand oaks teen center in 1991. they took the tunes from the original tape of the demo that is in possesion of andrew kline ever since. according to the story inside the sleeve, which is written by andrew kline too, the songs were recorded on a four track recorder and therefore sounds that way.

but to be honest, if you buy that record you don't expect a good sound or whatever, it's more for the historical weight of this stuff. what's really cool about the presentation of 'demo days' is that the sleeve is a 10-page booklet with the story of how the self-titled 7" came to be and on the last two pages you can gaze at a small flyer galery. pretty good!

as another nice extra touch on the label of the b-side andrew kline's demo tape is shown. the very reason why you can listen to the music pressed on your vinyl copy. checking the indecision discography page the following pressing information was added to my knowledge: 1086 copies in total. 94 copies on clear vinyl. 330 copies on clear gold vinyl and 660 copies on clear red vinyl. indecision records. 2012.

underdog store pt 2/4: bleeding through - the truth

bleeding through – the truth

being in a physical stores and buying records is very much different to sitting at your home flattening your ass in front of your comp and ordering wax. the finger on the trigger is much more loosely when you hold the actual record in your hands instead of staring at a picture on your screen. sometimes it’s an advantage, sometimes disadvantage. i could have bought a copy of ‘the truth’ many times before. on discogs an offer was hanging around for quite some time, sold by green hell. a funny connection because green hell is the vinyl supplier of underdog store. just like burnout store …the world is small…

the discogs option was on white w/ black splatter vinyl. i wasn’t sure if there were more colour ways or if it was the only one. the copy i had in front of me was sealed and so i asked the girl behind the counter if she could slice it open, so i could check. as customer friendly as she was it was no problem. i checked. clear vinyl. well, i hoped for the white splatter but hey, it was cheaper compared to the net and – instant gratification! it was mine.

i’m not sure if i would like ‘the truth’ as much as i do now if it was a release of 2013. i mean, i didn’t even like it that much back then when it came out. the clear vocals are pretty cheesy, i admit. but somehow it grew on me over the years. has probably something to do with the memories i connect with that particular time in my life. ‘dearly demented’ still one of the best songs these guys have ever written. the album was released in 2006 by trustkill records, which listened the vinyl version to forsaken records. couldn’t find much information on them but ‘the truth’ seems to be their only output. 500 on white w/ black splatter and another 500 on clear vinyl. released on forsaken records in 2008.

underdog store pt 1/4: bitter end - guilty as charged

bitter end - guilty as charged

in my last post about a bitter end release which was the 'mind in chains' 7", i said that next in line was their debut full length 'climate of fear'. well, sometimes things don't work out as planned. back in june this year i was on a visit to my sister in cologne. of course when i'm in a big city like cologne my visit wasn't going to be only of a selfless nature. i checked what record stores could be found in the rhine metropolis. of course i didn't had that much time because i wasn't mainly in town for the records. underdog record store was the best find because it was the closest to the centre.  

i stepped into a small, well sorted store that looked a bit stuffed. i headed straight over to the hardcore selection and flicked my way through it. first score was 'guilty as charged' and as i looked inside the sleeve, i was most pleasantly surprised to see that it was the light blue version which i knew wasn't the most common colour way.

musically it's a huge step forward to 'mind in chains'. of course i'm missing the stuff in between (which i already have and will write about soon) but it's remarkable. 'guilty as charged' didn't click immediately, it's growing on me listen by listen. but that's a characteristic of all great records with a long term quality. check 'immortalized', one of my favourite songs of the record. first pressing information goes like this: 300 on grey/ maroon mix vinyl, 700 on my clear ice blue/ black mix and 1000 on opaque maroon vinyl. deathwish inc. 2010.

animate records: kataklysm - shadows and dust

kataklysm – shadows and dust

i’m familiar with kataklysm for quite a long time. i think since their 2004 release ‘serenity in fire’. i never really liked this record. i mean, musically it’s pretty cool but it sounds way over-produced to me. those hyperblasts, for which the band is somewhat famous, don’t really sound human anymore. more like a drum comp in my opinion. but anyway probably i will get it too because it’s also out on coloured vinyl through animate records.

but back to the record i actually want to write about. ‘shadows and dust’ was released in 2002 on nuclear blast records and is real good. the sound is way more organic and comes with pressure through your ears. at the time it never got the vinyl treatment, probably because vinyl wasn’t cool anymore. in 2011 things were different.

animate records, a small german d.i.y. death metal label set out to release next to other classic metal stuff like lock up or napalm death, all classic kataklysm albums of the pre-‘in the arms of devastation’ era on special vinyl versions. they are going backwards in the catalogue and ‘temple of knowledge’ is the latest release by now.

the albums all get nice gatefold packaging and next to a higher amount of black vinyl copies, a limited coloured run for collector’s pleasure is also made. in the case of ‘shadows and dust’ the coloured copies come on lovely milky clear vinyl w/ black smoke.

the coloured records are all hand numbered but rather than written on the back of the sleeves or on the dust sleeves, the hand-numbering comes on nice stickers that were attached to the shrink wrap. with the use of a hair dryer i was able to loosen mine and put it on my storage sleeve. #79 out of 100. animate records. 2011.

the catharsis big cartel pt 2/2

the catharsis - no control split 7"

ordering from the band's big cartel i was able to obtain their first output too. it's a split release with another u.k. band called no control. for the no control side i cannot say that i like their stuff. solid hardcore - check. more of the same - check. but just not my cup of tea. in case you want to form a different opinion to mine, you can check their bandcamp page.

the songs from the catharsis are way better. sadly both are featured on the 'romance' lp also. so nothing new actually. so i only bought the record for completion's sake. the cover art they used for their side is from the same artist who did the 'romance' front

at first i was a little puzzled with the 'no control' lettering. on my version it is written in purple. jake's copy has it written in green. the black versions come with more colours. but fortunately speedowax.co.uk has a solution. check for yourself. pressing information is as follows: 100 on black vinyl, 200 on lime green vinyl and 10 test pressings. speedowax records. 2013.

the catharsis big cartel pt 1/2

the catharsis – romance

i wasn’t aware of the excistence of the catharsis since i one day opened my mail account and had a new mail by jake, telling me that he had come to love this up and coming u.k. band and that i should check them out, simply for my own sake. well, i did so. i listened to the song ‘o’recluse’, and, let’s face it, it’s a damn good song. so much energy going on. it was all i needed. i searched for a digital place to buy it. i came across the band’s big cartel. unfortunately they didn’t have the clear green rsd version in stock, which i’d really liked to get my hands on. so i took clear vinyl instead.

it took quite some time to arrive and as it finally showed up, man, i was frustrated. the fucking sleeve had two big fucking seam splits. and of course one in the spine of it so it can ruin my shelf perfectly. i hate that! why didn’t they pack it seperated from each other, record and sleeve. easy thing to do! man, fuck that! ok, ok, i need to calm down. probably it was just that wrath inside me that made my relation ship with the music somewhat difficult. the first couple of listens were in passing. it just didn’t click. i thought it was assembled too chaoticly. then i concentrated more on the tunes with reading the lyrics along. it got better and better.

then i took the little book that came with the record written by the singer. basically it contains the lyrics plus extended liner notes and explanations. before that i thought the singer was some pseudo intellectual wannabe-art-dude, throwing around with some vague, sophisticated lyrics just to impress. now i think pretty much the same, only now i understand what he intended to tell the listener, haha. no, forget that, this guy has some deep going stuff to offer and it’s written very good and i’m just an emotionally cold wreck. the music grew on me along with the great lyrics and here we have a damn good record. check their bandcamp page and show some love for the catharsis by buying their records. don't know how many were made on clear vinyl. speedowax records/enjoyment records. 2013.

and jake, dude, you were right, i love the record!