the second parkway drive record of the month. pretty industrious fellows over at epitaph records. at first they gave us the long overdue first vinyl pressing of 'horizons' for this year's record store day and shortly after that i saw a new pressing of 'deep blue' going up at the kingsroad merch eu store. man, what do you think i was doing? of course i ordered a damn copy to fill the last remaining gap in my parkway drive full length collection..
back in 2010, when 'deep blue' was initially released, epitaph already did a vinyl pressing on clear blue double vinyl. copies of the first press are pretty hard to come by and so i was thankful for this re-press. especially as it comes on solid blue vinyl. in my eyes way more favourable. listening to it now, i can't really say anymore why i lost interest in these guys. after 'horizons' dropped in 2007 i was way more into more extreme types of hardcore induced metal. deathcore ruled my daily playlists.
that's probably why they seemed a bit dull to me at the time. listening for the first time to 'deep blue', i think it's a great album. it's that typical melodic death metal mixed with modern hardcore they perfected on the first four albums and are now expanding with their latest work, called 'ire'. in particular i love the sound production by joe barresi (who also worked with tool, bad religion or soundgarden) and the artwork of this record shown on cover and the printed dust sleeves. comes additionally with a slip sleeve and on lovely 180gr opaque blue vinyl. epitaph records.