strife - angermeans

the early 00's were a weird time especially for victory records bands, it seems. earth crisis had their "slither", integrity their "integrity2000", snapcase their "end transmission", well, and strife had their "angermeans". anyway, i still enjoy it and am very happy that i snagged this lp on ebay fora very fair price. love these very basic vinyl editions of which victory made a few back then. another early 00's oddity.

strife - my fire burns on

look what was in the mail today. it actually had been two records. one very hardcore and the other very metal. i start with the hardcore platter. this strife 'my fire burns on' 7" crossed my path on ebay. it has been quite some time since i got anything from the bay. it seems nobody is selling anything interesting these days. the more i am happy with this nice colour 7" being a real bargain in the end.

this 7" was released in 1992 through new age records. it was the follow-up release to their self-titled 7" of the same year, of which its musical content was actually recorded a year prior in 1991. next to 'in this defiance', 'my fire burns on' is their strongest material to me. although only three songs being pressed to the plastic, these songs breath this frantic energy for which i love strife. go listen to this ten minutes long, nineties hardcore eruption.

i have a copy of the third pressing from 2010 if information proves correct. since the second pressing from 1994 the 7" got a revised cover basically showing the burning of a first press cover. i really like that smart take on the title and how the label and/or band distinguished second from first pressing. there are three different versions of the third press. mine being the most common one out of 350 tan coloured copies. new age records. 1992/2010.

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.

strife - in this defiance

shortly after i could obtain strife's first full length 'one truth' via ebay, i also bid successfully on 'in this defiance'. it was one of those records i was after for some time already, and so i was pretty excited as it popped up on the bay. of course i had to reach deeper in my pocket for it, but that's just the way it goes. sleep on it and pay up. despite that, i was really happy as it finally showed up and i was able to listen to this classic in the best way of all, on vinyl.

'in this defiance' is a damn strong record all the way through. not one stinker on this album. check out 'force of change' and 'will to die' with chino moreno. if you're now convinced you need this nineties, straight edge hardcore monument, you better head right over to victory records and order the recent re-press on purple vinyl before it's too late again.

according to deadformat.net the victory first pressing came on 1019 copies on a colour called 'putty'. some copies came out on a more blue end of the spectrum and some came out more greyish. as you can see mine is one of the latter colour. i love these putty colours. victory seems to have specialised in these. i'll have a lot of these babies to post about in the future. but that's a different story. what sucks for the here and now is my dent in the lower left corner (or lower right corner looking from the back of the cover) of the sleeve. we'll see if it bothers me enough to go for an upgrade copy. victory records. 1997.

strife - one truth

blueprint nineties hardcore. inextricably linked to this statement is a band called strife. everything that has to be said about them had been said. the hype they generated with their first two victory records, their split in '99, i think, their edge-break, their comeback with 'angermeans' and the long time of uncertainty until their return to form with 'wittness a rebirth'. you all know about that so let us go directly to the music and to the record itself.

'one truth' is a hulk of a debut album. metallic shaped hardcore with simple but very strong lyrics. yeah man, that's good shit. check out 'through and through' and 'lift'. obviously you know the songs but just for the hell of it. the album was released in 1994 and came on three colours. 500 on red vinyl, 510 on lovely opaque light blue vinyl and black vinyl. never saw any of the coloured records on ebay though, so i was quite happy to see the rare clear w/ black smoke re-press poping up on the bay.

victory seems to press all of their newer records and re-pressings on a clear w/ smoke colour-way limited to 100 copies (this one is out of 109 though). i was able to snag that shining copy for the price of a regular new lp. i think they were supposed to come with a download code, understandably mine is missing here. unlike the first pressing, this comes with a glue-pocket sleeve instead of a gatefold. but i'm quite fond of that. victory records. 1994/20??.

underdog store pt 3/4: strife - demo days

strife - demo days

back in 1992, a time when i was listening to my michael jackson tape and sang along to 'black or white', a band called strife released their first 7" on a new label called indecision records. now we all know the mentioned band and label, and after twenty years both are existing or in some way existing again. those twenty years and the re-union of strife were taken as an opportunity to do a re-press of this important release for both, band and label.

this isn't a straight re-press, to be exact. it's the original strife demo that was recorded at the thousand oaks teen center in 1991. they took the tunes from the original tape of the demo that is in possesion of andrew kline ever since. according to the story inside the sleeve, which is written by andrew kline too, the songs were recorded on a four track recorder and therefore sounds that way.

but to be honest, if you buy that record you don't expect a good sound or whatever, it's more for the historical weight of this stuff. what's really cool about the presentation of 'demo days' is that the sleeve is a 10-page booklet with the story of how the self-titled 7" came to be and on the last two pages you can gaze at a small flyer galery. pretty good!

as another nice extra touch on the label of the b-side andrew kline's demo tape is shown. the very reason why you can listen to the music pressed on your vinyl copy. checking the indecision discography page the following pressing information was added to my knowledge: 1086 copies in total. 94 copies on clear vinyl. 330 copies on clear gold vinyl and 660 copies on clear red vinyl. indecision records. 2012.

burnout store pt. 2/4: strife

strife - witness a rebirth

i actually ordered this one way back in december 2012 or january this year from xsentientx distro which was late anyway. they had two options available. the black vinyl and the limited white vinyl out of 100 pressed by holy roar records from the uk. of course i wanted the white vinyl. sometimes i have an odd feeling with orders and then i e-mail the seller to confirm some informations stated in the description. i don't know why but i was suspicious that they still had some white ones. gut instincts they call that. i seem to have reliable guts.

after that e-mail i never got any reply which makes me pretty sure that they didn't had the limited white version anymore. why they never sent an answer though is beyond me. however i didn't send a second message. so i'd consider it a draw. anyway i didn't want a black version and so i looked out for it on the bay. well, all auctions were wether buy it now options which i thought to be too pricy or the auctions to bid on ended not in the range i was willed to pay. so actually the price was the one and only reason.

understandably i was pretty happy to hear that 6131 records announced a second press on blue vinyl. now i could easily order a coloured copy without the ebay struggle. i didn't pull the trigger immediately with a distro of my trust because to be honest i wasn't too keen on getting the record. other stuff got higher priorities. but as this new shining copy smiled at me at burnout the chance was right in front of me and i took it.

all in all the record is half damn good and half ok. not as good as 'one truth', which reminds me that i need a vinyl copy of that album too, but for a reunion pretty decent. hope to catch them live at some point. the presentation is lovely. great layout which favours the choice for a gatefold sleeve and nice clear blue vinyl out of an yet unknown number of copies (correct me if i'm wrong). 6131 records. 2012.

(edit: as the commentary by jake indicates i didn't tell you guys what happened to the order with xsentientx distro. of course he's right, so here is the story. after i completed the order at the xsentientx page i got an automatic confirmation e-mail. it sayed that they recieved my order and will get back to me with further information. stuff like if all the records are available and numbers of their bank account for the money transfer. after that automatic mail i sent the afore mentioned e-mail questioning about the white strife record. and after that only silence. so i never got to actually transfer any money and the whole thing came to nothing.)