black breath - razor to oblivion

no need to introduce black breath anymore. their two southern lord releases blew up a lot of dust. quite rightly because 'heavy breathing' and 'sentenced to life' are two crackers to say the least. but before black breath teamed up with southern lord, they released a mini album via hot mass records. this baby was entitled 'razor to oblivion' and saw the light of day in 2008.

black breath plays a style of metal that to me is best described as death 'n' roll. while 'heavy breathing' and 'sentenced...' leaned more to the death metal side of their sound, 'razor to oblivion' is pure party music. fast and fierce metal to drink (water, of course), bawl out and bang heads with your friends. in my humble opinion the two southern lord releases are better but i can hang with the razor from time to time. check the title song here.

as i said before 'razor to oblivion' was actually released seven years ago. back then it came on black, clear and clear red vinyl. five years later, in 2013, hot mass decided to re-press this e.p. on clear gold and black vinyl. southern lord still had some copies among their distributed titles and i pulled the trigger when i ordered the new xibalba record at the beginning of the year. by the way, black breath is about to release a new record at the end of october. got to keep my eyes peeled! hot mass records. 2008/2013. 

black breath - heavy breathing

i had 'sentenced to life', the second full length of black breath, in my collection for quite some time now and was always on the hunt for more black breath vinyl. that 'more bb vinyl' was always about 'heavy breathing', i didn't really care for 'razor to oblivion'. don't know why actually, but this record is mine now too and will be discussed in an upcoming post. back to 'heavy breathing'. there are several coloured versions floating around. clear purple, clear blue and clear vinyl. i would have taken any of them.

some copies slipped through my fingers on the bay and others were reasonable priced discogs copies but with ridiculous high shipping costs from the states or simply too expensive to me. after my attempts to get a copy had been rather frustrating i gave up on chasing and decided to wait for a re-press instead. what can i say, this strategy payed off in the end. checking the southern lord european webstore the other day a new, shining 2015 reissue of 'heavy breathing' on white vinyl was looking back at me, shouting 'buy me, buy me!'

of course i couldn't say no to such an appealing request. when it arrived at my doorstep i was delighted to see that southern lord chose the same sturdy material for the sleeve as they did for the first press. high quality look and feel. i am a fan of opaque vinyl colours and usually choose an opaque colour-way over a clear one at any time, but in a rare case such as this, i think the clear vinyl looks best together with the cover art. beggars can't be choosers, right? check the whole record here. i think it's a bit nicer than 'sentenced to life'. southern lord. 2010/2015.

by the way, i also bought an upgrade copy of high on fire's 'the art of self-defense'. check out the updated post here.

black breath - sentenced to life

what a record! i have this baby in my possession for one and a half year by now and i am finally getting around posting about it. shame on me, since it is so good. back then, in 2012, 'sentenced to life' got all the love on many vinyl blogs i read regulary. at first the cover really put me off. looked kind of stupid. but after some more warmly recommendations i finally checked what the buzz was all about.

man, when it first hit me, it was totally by surprise. this shit was heavy. this shit was crushing. this shit was good. plus i really began to like that cover art. i needed a damn copy. by the time, in mid 2013 i was helplessly too late to snag a coloured copy from a german distro and southern lord didn't have their euro store yet. so coloured copies would come pricey, either way. so i hoped for ebay.

you know the feeling of flicking through the racks at a physical store and then, out of the blue, you find something totally unexpected? well, with this copy of 'sentenced to life' it was just that. it was sealed when i pulled it at burnout store. so i tried to open it as unnoticed as possible. i fiddled at the shrink, half expecting black vinyl, just to finally see the red splatter polyvinyl platter. good day. don't know the pressing info on this clear red w/ black and white splatter. southern lord. 2012.