last weekend i visited the reload festival. it is a small two-days festival in sulingen, a small town in the near of bremen. it was an unbelievable hot weekend with some good shows (agnostic front, dog eat dog, hatebreed, arch enemy), good friends and an awfully dusty festival site. the best thing was the chilly afternoon in sulingen's local open-air bath on the second day. but why am i telling you this?
firstly because i wanted to and secondly because this record at hand was my one and only festival pick-up. for a festival with something around 10.000 participants, reload had quite a good vinyl selection. two tents with metal vinyl and one booth with hardcore records. the metal vinyl dealers must have been the same guys as i have seen at wacken earlier this august. beatdown hardwear records, of which i bought some releases in the past, had the booth with hardcore vinyl.
i flicked through the boxes and, indeed, found a lot of label releases. then, one record caught my attention. this copy of the setup's "the pretense of normality" was tempting. i actually always wanted a limited white vinyl copy but only came across one once on the bay and got outbid. since then not even a whiff. with a physical copy at a nice price in front of me, i couldn't say no anymore. the nice dudes and dudettes at bdhw reserved the record for me for one day, so it didn't need to spend more time as necessary in the heat of my car.
i brought it home unwarped and it sounds awesome. "the pretense of normality" has, in comparison to their other full lengths, this distinct belgian h8000 metal edge to it. i think it is going to be my favourite album of the setup. the cover artwork looks real sharp and is printed on a gatefold sleeve with a glossy finish. i think my black copy looks lovely but nevertheless, if someone out there is willing to part with his/her white copy, get in touch! 400 copies on black vinyl. reality records. 2005.
