asg - survive sunrise

asg are back with a new album and again relapse records handled the vinyl treatment. it has been five years since "blood drive" came out and i still have no copy of that record. to appease my bad conscience i have because of the lack of "blood drive" in my collection, i wanted to be early in the pre-order game for "survive sunrise".

i had two reasonable options. there was the possibility to order directly from the relapse euro store. that would have meant a cool vinyl colour-way but together with shipping from the netherlands to germany the price increased over thirty bucks. the other way was to order from emp mailorder and to get a lesser cool colour but no shipping costs and fast domestic delivery. well, i gave the latter option a go.

after a month of waiting for the delivery date to come, it was finally time. the record landed at my door step and after the first spin there was not the shadow of a doubt that "survive sunrise" is another cracker from first to last tune by amplification of self gratification, short asg. super smooth stoner metal with all the good ingredients. groove, melodies, solos - perfect summer record to me.

check out the video for "lightning song" and don't blame me for falling in love with it. you have been warned. the presentation is pretty nice. the artwork spans over the two panels of the gatefold and is made to be seen vertically. the inside shows the lyrics and album credits. the double lp comes on lovely opaque cyan blue vinyl. although the relapse exclusive colours look a bit more exciting, i am very pleased with my copy. 200 made. relapse records. 2018.

asg - win us over

the third record of my little haul from kozmik artifactz aptly is asg's (amplification of self-gratification) third full length "win us over". this is one of the records i am actually after for quite a while now but somehow lost track on it along the way. when i searched for the monolord record it was an accidental find. "win us over" popped up among the search results and i thought it was finally time for me to snag a copy.

the album was actually released in 2008 on volcom entertainment. i never heard of the label and thought volcom was just a clothing company. obviously the guys at volcom also had some interest in music. anyway, it wasn't until six years later in 2014 that relapse records produced the first vinyl pressing for "win us over". in the mean time the band moved to relapse and had already released their first full length for the label in 2013 ("blood drive").

"win us over" is a brilliant stoner record from start to finish. the band members had a strict queens of the stone age and kyuss diet, it seems. still asg knows how to throw their very own ingredients into the mix. they strongly lean to the metal end of the spectrum when the singer deals some harsh shouts here and there. but the most of the time asg plays some high-nod-rate stoner rock/metal with beautiful melodies. check out the full album here.

for their first vinyl press relapse subtly changed the colours of the cover background from red/yellow to purple. don't know why they thought this was a good idea. some legal problems with volcom? i mean, it's not a big deal, just seems so random and therefore unnecessary. anyway, it's still a good cover that screams stoner rock. the vinyl colour is very nice. i think for splatter colour patterns, white is the best main colour. lovely white with multi-colour splatter out of 800 copies. relapse records. 2014.