xibalba - años en infierno

after five years xibalba are back with their latest effort "años en infierno", and what a heavy hitter it is. this band crushes, so far so obvious, the album doesn't change that impression. it's a mean bastard child of hardcore, death metal and a lot of doom metal.

a mixture that really appeals to me. probably it won't top my favourite record of them, "hasta la muerte", but you simply can't do no wrong with "años en infierno". i'm happy that i scored one of those tri-colour striped copies out of 500. it resembles the mexican flag and is a real looker. southern lord. 2020.

darkest hour - godless prophets and the migrant flora

the new darkest hour record is finally here. three years after their last, self-titled record which didn't get much love from fans darkest hour is back to give us the ninth full length of the band's existence. although i never listened to the two unloved post 00's records and therefore was not biased, i was not really excited for "godless prophets and the migrant flora". when pre-orders went up i hesitated to snag a copy right away.

there was a limited white version available through their new label southern lord but they sold out on them in pre-order stage and so i missed it. when the record was released in march this year i was busy with obtaining mid-00's darkest hour stuff and didn't pay attention. fast forward a month and i saw nuclear blast offering a clear vinyl version. this served as a friendly reminder that i actually wanted a copy.

i included it in my last order together with the between the buried and me live album and a rsd release. fast forward another two weeks and after a first listen to "godless prophets and the migrant flora", i am pretty sure that this album stands in one line with other great deeds like "undoing ruin" or "deliver us". i may be a bit too enthusiastic in the face of the first impression but jesus, this bad boy is probably their best work. everything you want from a darkest hour album, just played a bit tighter.

check out "none of this is the truth" and "those who survived" and they will wash away the last shadow of a doubt that darkest hour couldn't deliver the goods anymore. the production by kurt ballou crafted in his godcity studios is so raw and energetic, it's the icing on the cake. speaking of, the artwork done by shaun beaudry printed on a lovely matte card sleeve is just as awesome. can't stop raving about the whole package. 300 copies on ultra clear vinyl as cargo exclusive. southern lord records. 2017.

pelican - what we all come to need

after i bought my first pelican record "city of echoes" last month and listened to it a few times, i knew they would be one of those bands where pre-listening to other records before purchase wasn't necessary anymore. they have the status of impeccability to me now and "what we all come to need" proved the righteousness of that status, an unbelievably well balanced album from start to finish. beautiful soundscapes in mid-tempo with a dark tinge here and there.

they really surprised me with the last song "final breath". it is for an instrumental band undeniably rich in sung words. but none of the band members was responsible for vocal duties. they let allen eply do the job. that eply was a former member of now defunct post-hardcore band shiner. never heard of both of them but the band had some releases on well known sub pop label. now eply is part of the life and times, an indie rock band i don't know either. anyway, his vocals are great, just like the rest of "what we all come to need".

the album is spread across three sides of vinyl and side four is graced with two album songs in their live incarnation and a demo recording. it is the first time that i almost prefer the live versions because the guitar sound is much rawer. lovely, i won't skip this last side, like i do so often with otherwise useless bonus songs. this record marks the band's first release for southern lord, and is the follow-up to "city of echoes". the presentation is very nice here.

it starts with the heavy stoughton tip-on gatefold sleeve. love the solid feel to it. the band name and album title, as well as the tracklist on the back are printed in glossy silver ink. the records are housed in black dust sleeves and the sharp vinyl colour rounds out the packaging. it is a black with wine red merge pattern. a- and c-side are pretty subtle but b- and d-side look awesome. great job by southern lord. bought this in the labels european e-store. actually it was a burning world rec. purchase but they had delivery problems and so southern lord stepped in. re-press from 2015. southern lord. 2009.

sleep - dopesmoker

this is a rather dangerous release for me. dangerous because i was never really convinced of the musical part but this damned album always had a certain aura of attraction that really appealed to me. so every time when another re-press of 'dopesmoker' rolled up i was torn. i listened to my digital copy over and over again but simply couldn't find a reason to justify a purchase.

i mean, ultimately this album is one riff played for over an hour. still the attraction remained. when southern lord announced the latest re-press to be released mid february this year, i tried the album again. my opinion didn't really change. it's still a riff played over an hour drooling into your auditory canal, but i realised that i only could scratch that itch of attraction by finally snagging a copy.

southern lord offered a clear green heavy wax version and after some thinking to and fro, i grabbed me a copy. after listening to it on vinyl i can say that the forced pauses that appear due to changing sides, does good to the musical experience. it breaks up a little the demanding piece of music that is 'dopesmoker'. another thing i realised while listening to it, it's best to really relax.

usually i do something while listening to music. you know, reading along to the lyrics, reading comic books, writing this blog, just something. but when i really feel like doing nothing, just lying around lazily on a rainy day, 'dopesmoker' is the perfect companion. as this doesn't happen too often, sleeps mammoth album won't get as regular spins as other albums get but i finally found an access to this record. on occasions like these i simply enjoy this album and eventually understand the attraction that always drew me towards it.

the history of this record, now called 'dopesmoker', is quite interesting. after the band released 'holy mountain' in 1993 on earache records, they signed to the major label london records. due to this label change, earache and london records started a conflict which even peaked in a lawsuit. because of this lawsuit, the in 1995 already written album called 'jerusalem' couldn't be recorded until 1996.

after the recordings were finished, london records refused to publish the material even though they intended to do so according to the contract between band and label. before 'jerusalem' even saw a release, the band broke up. after rise above records and tee pee records also released this album post break-up, southern lord did the latest release and al cisneros commented that this was the way the band intended it to be in the first place. southern lord records. 2016.

lumbar - the first and last days of unwelcome

lumbar is kind of a sludge/doom allstar band. the notorious mastermind mike scheidt of yob fame together with aaron edge and tad doyle, both played in brothers of the sonic cloth. theses three got together to form a band called lumbar and three years ago they unleashed 'the first and last days of unwelcome'.

i missed the initial release of that record but when i was getting into yob last year and was searching for yob vinyl on the net, i stumbled upon this band and was interested. i listened to a few songs and then ordered the record at coretex mailorder from berlin. they had some copies of the orange first press left in stock for a good price. a no-brainer to order one straight away.

i listened to two songs beforehand and they were great. i mean, if someone had told me these were yob songs, i would have believed it without a shadow of a doubt. but frankly, that is not an issue to me. what actually is an issue to me, is that the record in whole cannot live up to those two songs. seven songs found their way on the platter and with three of them just being some sound samples thrown together.

i really could have lived without these, one song sucks and so there are three good ones which left me pretty unsatisfied. check out the album for yourself right here. the vinyl release was handled by southern lord and they pressed 1500 copies for the first press on orange vinyl. i love that even the inside of the cover sleeve is orange to match the overall look. nice. southern lord. 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.

xibalba - hasta la muerte

it was a true odyssey to get my upper extremities on this sucker. in the past i attempted to snag a copy here and there, but without the absolute will to do so. thus these attempts failed miserably. after i made 'tierra y libertad' and the split with suburban scum mine, fell in love with their heavy sound and couldn't get enough of it, i was pretty determined to finally obtain 'hasta la muerte'.

after ebay was a dead end, i searched discogs thoroughly. i came across an offering from canada. thankfully the exchange value of the canadian dollar to the euro is way more favourable than the u.s. dollar's. so all in all i paid round about 35 bucks. european bucks, that is. reasonable to me. anyway, to keep costs as low as possible i chose the cheapest shipping method which darrell, the nice fellow i ordered from, was offering.

exchanging some mails in order to carve out details of the deal, darrell warned me that surface shipping would take up to eight weeks from canada to germany. i consented because i'd rather wait than pay another twenty bucks for faster shipping. i asked darrell to lower the value of the item on the customer's declaration, to prevent myself from paying taxes at customs. unfortunately after eight weeks of waiting that little trick didn't work out and the record landed at customs nevertheless.

after some phone calls with customs and with the appreciated help of darrell - i will not go too much into detail here but again a big 'thank you', mate! - the record finally was mine. musically this is easily their best work. bulldozing! check out 'no serenity' and the title track and dance hard. the presentation is top notch too. ultra thick cardboard gatefold sleeve with apocalyptic art and some lovely blue marbled vinyl. looking sharp! 500 copies made. southern lord. 2012.

xibalba - tierra y libertad

here i am with the first release of 2015. xibalba's new effort called 'tierra y libertad'. since southern lord runs an european mailorder, i check their offerings on a regular basis. but news of a coming xibalba record came to me through other channels. coretex from berlin had a few coloured copies for pre-order and i recieve their newsletter.

i ordered at southern lord europe anyway because they sold the coloured vinyl for only ten bucks. best value for money, i call that. the eight songs on display are damn strong. xibalba mixes very heavy and groove orientated death metal with hardcore, sludge and doom metal. the outcome is mean. and i mean this in the most positive way.

check out 'guerilla' and 'en paz descanse' and get sucked in in their sinister soundscapes. i was able to get my greedy hands on a grey copy of the first press. i think it was the only colour-way pressed. cover artwork looks silly though. by now southern lord eu and coretex have sold out on the coloured vinyl. 500 pressed. southern lord. 2015. 

high on fire - the art of self defense

in the moment i'm really working on putting together the high on fire records set. with this purchase here i have now three and still three to go. but i know this will work out pretty well as all the other records i need, 'sorrounded by thieves', 'blessed black wings' and 'snakes for the divine' are still available from various sources.

in my hands here is the re-press of high on fire's first full length 'the art of self defense' from 2001. when i was lastly in hamburg's finest record store, burnout records, buying mastodon's 'call of the mastodon' record i also looked through the high on fire section. among other was sitting this baby. i was looking at it thinking about getting it or not.

it had a hefty price tag of almost thirty euros on it and so i wasn't sure about it. in the end i put it aside hoping i could find an less expensive copy on the internet. time went by and so did my london trip. after that i had some money left to burn and of course i would put it towards some new records.

as a constant reader you might remember that i bought a clear purple copy at burnout store back then. time went by and at some point in mid 2015 i came across some copies which were on sale at the southern lord eurpean shop. they had almost every colour of the re-press for lousy 15 bucks on offer. considering that i got the clear purple copy for twice as much, i couldn't pass up to buy an upgrade copy.

i took the brown version and gave my purple one to a friend. after i threw it on my turntable the first thing that came to my mind was, that this sounded doomier than the other records i knew from high on fire, 'death is this communion' and 'de vermis mysteriis'. slower and a more sleep like approach. but as this is the first post-sleep record that matt pike worked on, this seems natural.

this re-press also includes the two songs from the original 7“ that tee pee records put into the second press package of their release of 'the art of self defense'. these two sound more like the style they developed after 'the art...', faster, more energetic. but don't get me wrong, i really like this first album alot. it just sounds different to their other stuff. furthermore their first demo recordings included as well. real fanboy package.

southern lord really did an outstanding job with this re-press. massive gatefold sleeve of thick and sturdy card. it's that thick that i couldn't store it in my usual reclosable pvc sleeves, because i couldn't close them up. had to use an slip pvc sleeve here. a nice 24-page booklet attached to the inner gatefold with many pictures of the band and a poster. even the card inside the sleeve is purple coloured. top notch presentation! the new colouring of the cover art and the whole package all around favoured the semi-translucent brown of the vinyl. put up against the light it looks more like a dark red. 500 made. southern lord. 2001/2013.