strife - incision

when i wrote about that on bodies 'unremarkably mortal' 7" two posts back, i told you guys that i included another record in the order. a hardcore heavyweight release. and what else it could have been but the new strife output. i read about news at the lambgoat.com new hardcore and metal releases info page and initially thought it was a full length. the record is released by war records, which is the label of the band's guitarist andrew kline and that meant pre-orders from the states would come expensive.

therefore i waited it out to have a german distro i could order it from. of course my favourite distro per koro had a copy for me when the release date had come. the first thing i came to realise about this new effort was, that it's not an album but much rather an e.p. of four songs. well, usually i am totally a fan of the 12" format but for three new songs and a black flag cover track, i probably would have preferred a 7" release.

anyway musically it's simply three damn good strife songs. after 'witness a rebirth' i wasn't sure if they would continue recording but they are back with a vengeance. you can check out the whole e.p. by clicking this link. war records had two colours for 'incision' available. a clear and a clear red one. both colour-ways came with a silkscreened b-side for more limited editions and with blank b-sides for the common editions. i have the most common vinyl coming on clear red out of 700 copies. war records. 2015.

the black dahlia murder - abysmal

the black dahlia murder is one of the few bands with seven records or more where there is no bad record to be found. all their full lengths are pure melodic death metal worship of the american tinge. i have almost every black dahlia murder album on vinyl and taking all these facts into consideration it was a no-brainer to order their new effort 'abysmal' blindly as soon as pre-orders went up.

like all their previous outputs, metal blade took care of release matters with 'abysmal' as well. as emp mailorder is the official distributor of metal blade europe, i knew that the pre-order process would go down all smooth. the interested music enthusiast was able to choose between two european colour-ways, which were orange with red splatter and orange with black marble. i took the latter one. there is also an american opaque yellow version around.

'abysmal' took some time to sink its claws into me. it wasn't the initial hit to me like 'nocturnal' or 'ritual', but after several spins it really grew on me. all the stuff i love about this band is there. the fast blast beat attacks, the unbelievable hymnic twin guitar harmonies and those fantastic story telling qualities of vocalist trevor. from 'vlad son of the dragon', the transylvanian lord dracul, prototype of what would later become the modern vampire myth, over lycanthropic dangers in 'the fog' to the the so-called mentally ill in 'asylum'. the absolute awesomeness.

the only little downer is the artwork. i mean, the idea is pretty cool. looks pretty death metal and all, but you know what? i don't like those computer generated images. it would have looked a thousand times cooler, if it was really drawn. i don't know, i'm not an expert and probably it's quite an effort to craft a cover like this, but to me it looks cheap. sometimes these are the little things that set the really great album, which 'abysmal' is, apart from the absolute fantastic album like 'ritual'.

anyway, musically this is the shit. go get it! the vinyl version comes in a tri-fold sleeve, with a full landscape poster and a bonus 7" with three more fantastic songs. the last song, 'der ton', is an odd one. it's sung in german (der ton = the sound) and is about what sweets sounds the electric guitar produces. would love to know why the band chose to sing it in german. 500 copies of my clear orange w/ black marble and the 7" on gold/brown. metal blade. 2015.

snapcase - designs for automotion

picking up the 'end transmission' lp used this summer in düsseldorf was a friendly reminder that i had way too less snapcase vinyl in my collection. so i checked back with the label almost all their output was released on - chicago's finest victory records. fortunately victory just re-pressed three snapcase titles that i didn't own on vinyl. thanks to victory's very moderate oversea shipping costs, i bagged them all.

the first of the batch i post up here is their third full length 'designs for automotion'. this album is the next progressive step to 'progression through unlearning' and fits perfectly between the aforementioned album and 'end transmission'. snapcase records make sense evolutionary, if you can follow me. although it's probably the snapcase album i like the least, it doesn't mean 'designs for automotion' is weak. not at all.

it is packed with energy and shows the possibilities of hardcore. it doesn't have to be your average gang shout, breakdown, my-crew- and my-city-lyrics over and over again. snapcase raised the bar and they still sound relevant today. check out 'disconnector' and 'ambition now'. victory re-pressed this baby for the first time since its release. 112 on 'funfetti/tan putty'. looks lovely. victory records. 1999/2015.

glowsun - eternal season

after glowsun's latest album 'beyond the wall of time' got some serious spins on my turntable, i looked around for the predecessor album called 'eternal season'. i already bought it something like two years ago via discogs, only it wasn't for my humble self but for a good friend who didn't have an account. by this incident i knew that there was a lovely semi-translucent yellow vinyl about.

so when i asked discogs again for that yellow vinyl out of 300 copies, it answered with a handful of offers starting at fifty bucks up to one hundred. man, no way i was paying the asking prices. the blue vinyl of the first press out of 150 copies even started at eighty bucks. completely out of the question. discogs told me but another thing that made me confident again.

napalm records, the label 'eternal season' was released on, reissued the record just in time for the 'beyond the wall of time' release. at discogs copies started at an illusionary sixty nine euro price tag, but i thought to check out the napalm internet shop for remaining copies. thankfully i did because i snagged a new copy for the store price. still thirty bucks but factory new.

sometimes i can't explain those second hand prices and especially those who pay them. if discogs is to be believed, a yellow copy sold for ninety euros. so not even for the rarest colour-way, and it's still glowsun we're speaking about and not led zepplin. makes me wonder if i pay that money, if i was able to. when money wouldn't be an issue. probably yes. greedy humans we are...

the album however is very good. a little bigger portion of vocals one here than on 'beyond the wall of time' but really just marginally. the rest is just pure psych/stoner worship. progressive and sophisticated through and through, musically and visually alike. check out 'death's face' and 'thing' and then go and buy a copy of that 180g clear red vinyl out of 100 copies, because napalm has still some left. napalm records. 2012/2015.

on bodies - unremarkably mortal

a new release by on bodies. i bought their 'the long con' ten inch release last year on a whim and was very pleasantly surprised that their material really raged through the twelve minutes of its duration. great fast, at times melodic and always political hardcore punk with former culture and morning again member damien moyal on vocals. so of course i was pretty curious about this new 7" by the band.

it is a very good release after all. just like 'the long con' it's that same recipe they used before. it's fast, it's angry, it's melodic and it makes that type of political hardcore decent again. i am thinking a lot of verse when listening to on bodies. check out the song 'prevail' and tell me you can sit still when listening to that cracker. only downer is that 'unremarkably mortal' is too short. give me a full length, dudes!

the initial release passed my by a little, it was through the per koro newsletter that i heard word of this 7". so i headed over to my favourite distro and, together with another hardcore heavyweight release, i ordered it straight away. irish voodoo released this slab of wax. there is a shop exclusive black and yellow mix vinyl out of 110 copies and my opaque yellow distro vinyl version out of 550 copies. irish voodoo records. 2015.

kataklysm - of ghosts and gods

i saw kataklysm play live at this year's wacken. or better, i saw them playing the last two songs of their set. they played at a ridiculous time, 12 a.m. on the third day, and i really tried my best to be there in time but my age and the growing exhaustion at this point of the festival were an opponent too powerful to successfully battle with. i liked the two-song appearance anyway and my anticipation grew considering the release of the new record.

i pre-ordered the new album 'of ghosts and gods' via nuclear blast europe, together with the latest nile record. as the 'what should not be unearthed' vinyl edition faced some delays i had to wait some extra weeks for the kataklysm lp as well. when it arrived it unfortunately had some ugly bends in the cover. however the nile lp came unharmed. anyway, i returned the record for a replacement.

i have to compliment nuclear blast for the very smooth procedure. it was no problem to get a replacement and i even got the postage i paid in order to return the record as a credit balance for my next order. now i finally have a new, shining copy of 'of ghosts and gods'. i really have to say that this album very good and beats its predecessor 'waiting for the end to come' to second place.

die hards will probably say that they again decreased their northern hyperblast in favour of an increasing level of melodies, and right so, but that's just the very thing that makes this record so good to me. somehow it's the right balance between grooving aggression and catchy melodies. check 'thy serpent's tongue', ugh - snakes. gold vinyl out of 200 copies. nuclear blast. 2015.   

poison the well - the opposite of december

when i bought destiny's 'the tracy chapter' back in 2004 i was totally blown away by their awesome mix of crushing hardcore, fierce breakdowns and the most bittersweet melodies i have ever heard. one of my all time favourite albums. why am i telling you this? fair question. the answer lies in destiny's similar sound to poison the well, intended or not. when i listened for the first time to poison the well's first full length, to check if the rumours can be trusted, i was really surprised.

the similarities were remarkable. check 'nerdy' by ptw and 'admiration of sadness' by destiny. you will see what i mean. so because i love this destiny record, i now was in desperate need for a copy of 'the opposite on december'. still on cd back then. it didn't really work out but when i started to collect vinyl and got a copy of destiny's 'the tracy chapter' on green vinyl, the thought of owning 'the opposite...' resonated somewhere in the back of my head. the cd was released by trustkill and the vinyl was liscensed to goodlife from belgium. that made it hard to get a coloured vinyl copy.

last year i was pretty close to have a blue copy. i bought it on discogs. a few days after the pruchase the seller gave me a refund. don't know what really happened but the end result was no blue vinyl in my hands. so i waited again and last week my copy was finally there, again bought from discogs. a polish seller had a nice first press copy, to be distinguished from the second press by its ten inch insert instead of a twelve inch insert, to offer and i gladly grabbed it. cover and vinyl are in very good shape. 300 made on opaque blue. really great to have this in my collection. artwork by jacob bannon of converge fame. goodlife recordings. 1999.

kreator - phantom antichrist

i never was a big kreator fan. in fact, i didn't know anything the band ever released since this year's sommer. but from the beginning, i had a ticket for this year's elbriot festival in hamburg. it's a one-day-festival with one stage and last year was a blast. bands like august burns red, amon amarth and especially life of agony made this day really memorable to me. this year's line up didn't really do anything for me but one exception.

mastodon was on the billing and i was thrilled. i pretty much bought the ticket solely for this band. sometime at the end of july their was an announcement on the festival page that mastodon had to cancel all their remaining euro shows due to personal matters. aaarrgghh! now i had to find something to make this event worthwhile to me. the only band on the billing i was interested in checking out and which i didn't know previously was kreator.

of course i know that kreator is one of the three big german thrash bands next to destruction and sodom, but i never was keen to listen to anything. i checked some stuff of 'hordes of chaos' on the net and was pretty surprised at how cool this was. the right dosage of thrash energy and really catchy melodies. i bought the cd box set for next to nothing and at the festival the kreator thrashed everything in their way. i really enjoyed it!

so when i was on a record shopping spree in hamburg last month with a friend, i couldn't pass this one up. it's their latest record on nuclear blast. although 'phantom antichrist' might be a bit more melody-driven than 'hordes...' and, as i read, more than all their other releases up to this point, it's a very good metal record to me. i enjoy it from first tune to the last. not one weak song. check the title track here. the presentation is lovely, too. great artwork all around and nice semi-translucent, almost highlighter yellow vinyl. nuclear blast. 2012.

rise & fall - our circle is vicious

i really like rise & fall. this belgian crust/punk/hardcore band has a great feeling for energy, haunting melodies and ferocious heaviness. it's hard to sit still while listening to a rise & fall record. i actually had a copy of 'our circle is vicious' since last year. it was a second press copy on 'bronze' vinyl that i bought from per koro. as i was looking for pressing information on discogs, i read about the first pressing's breakdown. all the colour-ways of the first press sounded way lovelier than mine and i started to feel a bit unsatisfied.

when i saw some pictures on the net, including the post of jake's copy and adding the factor that the album is pretty slick, i knew i couldn't live with my boring bronze piece of wax anymore. so i made a mental note to pick up a first press whenever i'd get the chance to. subject to a reasonable price, of course. two weeks ago the chance was there and i pulled the trigger on this lovely slab of vinyl on ebay. it came with an album sticker. don't know if it was part of the original package, or if the seller threw it in.

however, i finally came to peace with 'our circle is vicious'. as already mentioned the album is superb. check out 'in circles' and 'harm's way' and convince yourself that this band rules. the art work for this baby is, again, crafted by jacob bannon, vocalist of converge. looks ace! the album was recorded and mixed at god city studios by kurt ballou, converge's guitarist by profession. with so much converge interweaving it only made sense that 'our circle...' was released on deathwish inc. 300 copies on white and bronze merge vinyl. 2009.

early graves - red horse

i actually never heard a word about this band before i came across this ebay auction, which helped me to add this monster to the collection. the same seller that had the alpha & omega record of the last post, offered 'red horse' and i was simply intrigued by its cover and vinyl asthetics. so i took a short trip over to the tube and listened to some stuff.

whoa, what the hell? early graves sounds dark, fast and absolutely pissed. a lovely mixture of punk, crust, hardcore and metal which reminds from time to time of the almighty converge. the whole album is an absolute cracker. check out the title track 'red horse' and bear witness to the rumbling sound of the record, which adds a bit of a stoner feel.

the album was released by no sleep records. i don't think i have any other no sleep records album but i definitely like what they did with this output. nice slip sleeve of good cardboard quality, black dust sleeves and this gorgeous vinyl colour. a red marble vinyl that almost looks pink out of 300 copies. great album through and through. got to keep my eyes open for the band's other stuff. no sleep records. 2012.

alpha & omega - life swallower

in my book alpha & omega's second record 'no rest, no peace' is pretty damn good. it really grew on me since its release. after that i loosely looked out for the remaining vinyl outputs. in last year's september i have already written about their first 7" 'devil's bed' on 6131 records, which i scored on the bay. 'life swallower', the band's debut full length, was actually in my possession since march of last year. i am finally coming around to post it.

i won this copy of the u.s. pressing on ebay as well. i can't say what exactly i paid in the end but it wasn't expensive at all. my copy came in in great condition. musically this los angeles' based band knew how to record some tight metallic hardcore in 2010. it reminds me more than once of the heyday of the crossover sound from the nineties. bands such as merauder or almighty biohazard come to my mind.

check out the album in its entirety and be life-swallowed wholly. i really like the art concept here. the gatefold is made to look as a medieval book cover and opened you can gain knowledge of how to make a pact with the horned one himself. 6131 pressed three colour-ways for 'life swallower' and i have the least limited out of 600 copies. this purple with black smoke vinyl looks super lovely nonetheless. reality records from belgium even did an european pressing. 6131 records. 2010.

mad at the world - domination

beatdown hardwear has a pretty solid roster. i bought a lot releases of them in the more recent past. always quality stuff as long as packaging is concerned and in most of the cases content-wise as well. thus i always keep my eyes peeled for new releases and attendant pre-orders. they build quite a reputation among collectors in germany and therefore limited stuff goes fast for the more popular bands like nasty, ryker's or bitterness exhumed.

so when pre-orders for the quite new and unknown band mad at the world from france went up, i made sure to check them out quickly and decide whether to get it or leave it. well, i made my decision towards the latter and have now the full product in hands. the band comes from paris and plays some pretty heavy metallic hardcore. there's a lot of sepultura groove going on and i definitely dig it.

you can check out the whole output at their bandcamp page. they already released a two-song demo last year but only on tape. conveniently beatdown threw them onto this platter as a bonus. even more convenient as 'domination' is rather an e.p. with its only six songs, so adding two more pieces just made sense. mad at the world doesn't re-invent this musical style, which isn't known for innovational strength anyway.

but they have a real good song-writing on the plus side and they manage to keep their stuff fresh. all in all i won't spin this on heavy roation but it's good to let go of some aggression every once in a while. the presentation is very good, as usual with beatdown hardwear. the record comes in a nice gatefold sleeve with pretty cool artwork, a poster and on hot yellow/orange marble vinyl out of 75 copies. some still available. betadown hardwear. 2015.

mastodon - the hunter

a record mailer doesn't fit into your average mailbox, right? well, let me tell you a story. to get this record was a quite a pain in the ass. reprise set the release date for this colour re-press in early august this year. that plan didn't really work out so after i already put in my pre-order at the european warner store, it got delayed at the end of the month. ok, no problem so far. i survived many pre-order delays before and this would be no difference. when it arrived it unfortunately looked like this, though.

i use to get all my vinyl stuff delivered to work to avoid picking up my mail at the post office. this package was delivered on a friday and at the time in the afternoon none of my collegues were there anymore. that son of a bitch postman took the easiest way and crammed it into the mailbox, although a package of that sort has to be confirmed at receipt or brought to the post office if there is no one to accept it.

the pictures give you an idea of how it was stuck there. it didn't move a bit when i tried to pull it out. i got a little mad when trying it and ripped the whole box off the wall. fuck, i was pissed. the coming monday i took the mailbox plus package to the post office and earned astonished looks of the staff. fortunately the employee was very nice and we worked out a reclamation document, because he had to tore the record apart in order to free it.

when the emplyoee filled in the form he found out that the postman actually faked the receipt confirmation. what an asshole! to this date i still wait for my refund. going to enquire about that the coming week. anyway, i placed another order and this time it all went down very smooth. the record came in the way it is supossed to be and i think it's a damn good mastodon record.

i was a little insecure if the post relapse records were as good as the first three (i count 'blood mountain' as a relapse record because they handled the first two vinyl pressings), but after 'crack the skye' was a real scorcher i was in positive anticipation. what can i say, 'the hunter' does not disappoint at all. it is a pandemonium full of sophistically crafted musical pieces. check out 'octopus has no friends' and 'all the heavy lifting'. not as coherent as the records before but not one stinker to be found.

this is the first album after their series loosely based on the four elements and therefore they chose a different way of art work for the hunter. the cover shows a full on sculpture by aj fosik. pretty cool. the album title is a dedication to brent hinds' brother who died of a heart attack on a hunting trip. the record itself comes on 140g opaque red vinyl and with a ten inch insert. don't know how many were made. reprise records. 2011/2015.

electric wizard - dopethrone

i heard of electric wizard a thousand times before because they are the big thing in their genre. i even listened to them at some point, but you know how it is, it just wasn't the right time for me and the wizard. when i was browsing through the nuclear blast eu shop recently i came upon a re-press of 'dopethrone'. nb always has some good stuff of rise above records through a distribution deal of the two labels.

i pretty much liked the cover art. it's kind of ominous and with its blurriness it seems to fit whatever the horned man on the cover is doing. i don't know about things like these. so i hit the tube and checked some tunes and lo and behold, i really liked what i heard. great fuzzed out doom worship with a distinctive stoner edge. nice stuff. check out 'we hate you'. probably my favourite song of the record.

therefore it was a no-brainer to add a copy to my cart. after some listens i only grew to like it more and more. 'dopethrone' often gets praised as electric wizard's crowning achievement. of course with only knowing this album i can't be sure about this statement, but it's definetely a hell of a good doom record. understandable that rise above keeps cranking out re-issues of the wizard's work.

good for the fans and especially good for me. this re-press looks real lovely. gatefold sleeve with all lyrics on the inside, black poly-lined dust sleeves and this nice 180g semi-translucent, white marbled vinyl makes it looking sharp! electric wizard has eight albums in their back-catalogue. it's going to be fun to collect them. the hunt is on! can't say how many were pressed of these, though. rise above records. 2000/2015.

integrity - black heksen rise

i snagged this copy of integrity's 'black heksen rise' 7" at burnout records more or less by accident. the hardcore 7" section at burnout is just right behind the turntables, so when i listen to some records at the store i use to look through the racks. on such an incident i pulled this 7" from the racks unaware of its content. i just really liked the cover art in the first place and as i had 'suicide black snake' on rotation recently, i thought this piece of wax could do no harm.

my copy is part of the indie recordings pressing. indie recordings is a small label from norway, if information is correct. it's some sort of re-press because the two songs on display here got actually released for the first time on the split of the same name together with rot in hell in 2011. this release was a double 7" with a narrative of dwid himself on the second disc and packaged within a book written and illustrated by the same weird holy terror worshipper.

considering this outstanding package, maybe i should get a copy of this thrity days of night records release, too. this partial re-press came out two years later, with indie handling the european affair and a389 recordings for u.s. matters. it seems like a trimmed version, which it apparently is. however i love the two songs here. check them out. indie pressed 500 copies with 100 on grey vinyl, 200 on black vinyl and another 200 on white vinyl. indie recordings. 2013.

nile - what should not be unearthed

hell yeah, a new nile record! i just love this friggin' egyptological death metal monster. i have collected all their full length records on vinyl over the years, some even on doubles which isn't usually my modus operandi. so i was all over the pre-order to their new opus 'what should not be unearthed'. when pre-orders went live i was disappointed about the colour options. nowadays nuclear blast europe presses all their releases on gold, silver, or clear vinyl. most boring.

nb doesn't seem to give their releases any thought. it's like there is a new record, ok let's press it on the regular colours whether it makes sense in combination with the cover art or not. same thing with 'what should not be unearthed'. thankfully it was also pressed on a fourth colour, which is used frequently as well as of late but looked more pleasing to me. so i chose lilac vinyl. all out of 300 copies.

but now to the musical content. after a couple of listens and spending some time with lyrics and liner-notes there is not the shadow of a doubt that nile's eighth full length is an absolute scorcher from start to finish. i don't know how they make it happen to crank out one master-piece after the other, but it's just that - a master-piece. it's impossible to choose a favourite but i like 'evil to cast out evil', which is about the demon pazuzu who has the ambivalent quality to protect a person by being the greater evil compared to others; in particular.

i recommend this album to you bar none. go get this bad boy! the presentation however, is a little downer. no complaint about the cover art, it's pretty cool and is what a nile record should look like. it's about some details. nuclear blast eu doesn't press their records on 180g vinyl anymore. the usual poster is missing. they dropped those cool black dust sleeves for the regular white ones here. there is no sticker with the pressing info of your copy anymore and above all, the d-side's emptiness just screams for an etching. what's wrong there, nb? nuclear blast. 2015.

ays - eroded by the breeze

i did quite often hold this record in hands. it was one of that records that sat at my favourite record store for what seems like ever since it was released. i even did listen to it at the store but there was always some other records that i preferred to buy instead. when i picked up their second full length 'wreck my soul' at cologne's underdog store, it was like a starting signal for me to also pick up 'eroded by the breeze'.

funnily in this year's spring cobra records owner daniel dug out a forgotten box with some left-over copies of 'eroded by the breeze' from his storing room. so he put up fifteen copies for sale in his online shop. so everything was laid out right in front of me, i only had to reach out. this is exactly what i did and thus i am now the proud owner of a black and white split copy of ays last full length.

this sounds very much like some stuff that could have been released by deathwish inc as well. while 'wreck my soul' was a straight up hardcore record, 'eroded...' is dark and punk ridden hardcore of that converge end of the spectrum. usually i prefer the latter sound but in this case i choose 'wreck my soul' over 'eroded...'. not that this album is bad but the straight up hardcore was on better terms with ays.

well, you might want to forge your own opinion? here is your chance. check out the album in its full glory. 'eroded by the breeze' was a co-release by the mentioned cobra records and purgatory records from wales, uk. purgatory did some colour-ways and cobra did some, too but i haven't found a source telling me the exact breakdown. i am afraid i don't even know how many of my split version have been pressed. cobra records. 2010. 

terror - the 25th hour

just like with 'live by the code' i wasn't really excited about the upcoming terror record. you know, there is stuff that you have to have pre-ordered and there is stuff i know i can easily get through a distro or physical store at almost any time. reaper came up with a bunch of colour options but all on clear vinyl colours and one gold edition. mehh, not that attracting to me. so i checked green hell mailorder as they had an exclusive edition for the last record, too.

yepp, green hell did have an exclusive version on appropriate green vinyl. i hoped for an opaque version and on a record shopping spree in hamburg with a good friend of mine, i entered burnout records store and grabbed a copy of the green hell exclusive. to your understanding green hell is the vinyl supplier of burnout, that's why they usually have the exclusives. ok, it's clear green. well, whatever. when i took the record home and put the needle on it for the first time, i was really surprised at how damn angry that record is.

on 'live by the code' they tried to relive the 'keepers of the faith' vibe, which doesn't really worked out. 'live by the code' is still good but couldn't live up to 'keepers...'. with 'the 25th hour' terror reminds me of their early works like 'lowest of the low', just better. check out 'the solution' and 'mind at war'. scott vogel really sounds pissed on this baby. thumbs up! 300 copies on clear green vinyl. reaper records. 2015.

carnifex - until i feel nothing

carnifex released a new record last year called 'die without hope'. i was pleasantly surprised at how much i came to like it. with this high feeling i checked what other albums of the band might be pressed to vinyl. so i found out that the predecessor of 'die without hope', 'until i feel nothing' by name, got a nice colour treatment by chicago's victory records.

as victory pressed this to coloured vinyl only, it was a no-brainer to order from a german distro. i ordered with hhv because they had a reasonable priced copy in stock and doing serious record business with them had always been a pleasure so far. no exception this time as well. the record itself is a very good deathcore album. carnifex just knows how to perfectly deliver very heavy and catchy neck-breakers.

the artwork isn't really my thing here, though but i appreciate the fact that it's drawn and not another heartless computer imagery. on a side note: this album was produced by the band and tim lambesis. the tim lambesis who once sang for as i lay dying and now serves his sentence in jail for hiring an assassin to eliminate his wife. crazy world. 400 copies made on marbled neon green vinyl. victory records. 2011.