path of resistance - who dares wins rsd '15

one of my guilty pleasures has always been earth crisis. i like their old stuff as well as their post-hiatus stuff of more recent dates. in november 2013, when i ordered alot of victory records stuff on their black friday sale - i already posted about the between the buried and me records - i paid a considerable chunk of money and was therefore allowed to choose a free item.

i could pick a free cd. when i was browsing through the compact disc releases, i came across the path of resistance debut full length 'who dares wins'. i knew this band because of its earth crisis side-project character, but i never really listened to them. with the possibility of getting the album for free, i checked some tunes on the net, liked them and threw the cd in my cart.

to snag a vinyl copy for a reasonable price was on my agenda ever since, but not on top of the list. therefore i was delighted to see that victory planned on re-releasing it on coloured vinyl for record store day 2015. last year's rsd was a disaster where i came up short on all vinyl i wanted. i got all my stuff afterwards through the good ol' internet.

so i didn't bother going out at this year's saturday, eighteenth of april. as the path of resistance record was the only one i wanted anyway, i thought i could easily get a copy online or maybe on a later date at burnout store. the album didn't seem to attract alot of listeners on this particular day, and so it was still waiting fo me at burnout last weekend. loveley presentation. thick cardboard slip sleeve, heavy white vinyl and a nice insert with the story of how this album came to be. 800 made. victory records. 2015.

by the way, the path of resistance is not to be confused with the german nazi band of the same name. educate yourself and overcome this cretinism. fuck off, nazi scum! 

forfeit - the lower depths

i really liked forfeit's first release, their 'visions' 7" from 2008. it has the groove, the energy - soild all the way through. so of course i wanted a copy of their full length, which appeared a year later. i got the 'visions' 7" through willem and i remember it wasn't that easy to get a copy back then. with 'the lower depths' things were different. i could have bought a copy at per koro at any time.

they still seem to have it in stock. furthermore a copy was sitting at burnout record store for at least one and a half year. that must be the timeframe in which i saw it for the first time and finally bought the record. that timeframe already indicates that this record wasn't a high priority of mine. strange, because as i told beforehand i actually really liked the 7". somehow i always thought the lp couldn't really live up to the 7".

when i finally listened to the album my worries had been confirmed. the record is ok, still solid, but there is the one thing missing which makes an ok record a good record. can't quite put my finger on it but 'the lower depths' is just an average hardcore record to me. check out 'something against me' and 'cut off'. 800 copies on white vinyl. reaper records. 2009.   

monolord - empress rising

i've been on a little doom kick lately. stuff like conan, pallbearer and iron heel were regular guests on my turntable's slipmat. so when i was at burnout records store the last few times, i was always checking the stoner/doom/ambient section. i stumbled upon the monolord before and even listened to 'empress rising' in excerpts at home after that.

the tunes failed to really grab me but at the next visit, as i flicked through this vinyl section again and the empress was still smiling back at me, i took it as a sign. this time i took it from the racks. with a knowing nod of the shopkeep i opened the shrink, pulled a lovely blue marble vinyl platter out of its sleeve and gave it the needle.

man, listening to music digitally is one thing, but nothing can beat the excitement of dropping the needle on polyvinyl chloride in its most beautiful form. that's why i love this shit. suddenly it all clicked with me, i grabbed the record, threw my hard-earned money on the counter with a smile and left with the good feeling of adding another little treasure to the collection. check out the video for the title track and listen to 'icon' and get fuzzed.

what i hold in hands is the blue marble vinyl from the second press out of 200 copies. there are quite a lot variants of the first press and a third press also already available. check out discogs for more detailed information. by the way, monolord is about to release a new record called 'vænir'. i already pre-ordered and you should too. riding easy records. 2014.

on bodies - the long con

on bodies is a band from the states that i never heard anything before i bought this release and ever since. i was browsing through the hardcore racks at burnout records and came across this album accidentally. i pulled it out of the racks out of curiosity concerning the front cover. as i took a more thoroughly look at the packaging, i recognised a band member wearing a foundation shirt. i listened to 'when the smoke clears' alot at that time and so i sat down to the next turntable.

as soon as the first tunes from the vinyl through the headphones reached my hearing apparatus, i was sold. this is fast, angry and pissed off hardcore with a strong political message. good in my book. foremost western governments and organised religion and their strategy of keeping people in line to maintain power and money flow are crossing the lyrical firing line of on bodies. check out 'we carrion' and 'comes from money'.

the ep was released in 2013 by german label coffebreath and heartache. they were unknown to me until then. checking their releases, the majority of their stuff is still unknown to me. only hot water music and iron chic ring a bell. but still just a tiny bell. whatever, this release looks superb. a marble silver, one sided 12" vinyl platter with a killer b-side screening. 'the long con' got its first u.s. release this year. a 10" by irish voodoo records. 200 copies of this version made. coffeebreath and heartache. 2013.

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.

snake eyes 7"

everytime when i hit the vinyl picture file at my comp the past few days, i was really annoyed by how many records are sitting there for a ridiculous long time. round about ninety pieces of vinyl waiting for the write up. so i made a decision. i'll try to clear my backlog by not later than the end of the year. my post average the last months was at something like twelve. i'll increase the number to twenty. with exeptions included my calculation should work out.

i start my task with the record that, according to its digital date, is hanging around for the longest. snake eyes self titled 7". i didn't really know anything about this band when i first heard of them. funny that the person who pointed me towards it, wasn't aware of them as well as he won it via an ebay auction.

read jake's post about it here. when i read it back then, i remembered that i saw it a couple of times before at my favourite physical store, burnout records hamburg. so i said to myself to check it out the next time i would go there. a word and a blow and two months later i was the proud owner of a white coloured snake eyes 7".

jake already wrote about the most interesting facts about this band. i can add that this seems to be their only vinyl release and is part of their only two releases spanning discography. a demo from 2005 and this baby from two years later. i think it's safe to say that they called it quits. the music itself is great though. check it! 570 copies on white. 1917 records. 2007.

no turning back - never give up

the new no turning back effort and without even a tune of that new record hitting my ears, i pre-ordered it straight away. since ntb started out in the late nineties, there has been no release that disappointed. they never strayed away from the small musical frame that is called old school hardcore, but within it they are definitely an european institution.

call it what you may, but i love these half an hour short eruptions full of scene clichés and lyrical stereotypes that we all hold so dear. no turning back doesn't invent the wheel anew but they are damn good at rolling it along the stages of this planet earth. a band that always delivers.

'never give up' is no exception. fast and bouncing hardcore with a strong nyhc-tinge. check out the videos for 'true love' and 'destination unknown' and feel your feet moving to the beat automatically. i pre-ordered at berlin's core-tex records and chose the white and red mix vinyl.

as you can see, white and red makes a bit of a marbled pink. looks pretty sweet in my book. they got two other colour-ways available from their own d.i.y. e-store and core-tex has copies left as well. the three colours are limited to 200 copies each. furthermore they had 400 black copies with them on the release tour with four different sleeves limited to 100 copies each. take control records. 2015.

agnostic front - the american dream died

after four years since their last output, agnostic front is back with a renewed oath of undying nyhc. the forerunner 'my life my way' was a defiant and above all very positive record to me. with 'the american dream died', as the title already indicates, they went for a more dark and angry approach to the lyrics and thus for a faster and heavier musical take.

short and pissed blasts like 'no war fuck you' and 'police violence' say everything about what af feels towards the current situation in the states and the world alike. they lowered their metal influence a bit to make space for some raw and swift punk. of course they still have some lovely crossover gems. so, everything is pretty balanced on 'the american dream died'.

i got my copy through the nuclear blast mailorder on pre-order. they had two options available. a gold vinyl variant and this silver one. i chose the latter because it matches the artwork very nicely, although it's less limited to the 200 gold copies. black vinyl also available. next to this three european editions there is also a clear (300 copies) and black edition for the u.s. market. furthermore emp mailorder got an exclusive clear red edition out of 200 copies.

this seems to be a regular collaboration between nb and emp, as the latest madball album got an exclusive emp treatment as well. funnily the sticker on the shrink indicates a gatefold sleeve but what i hold in my hands is clearly a glue pocket sleeve. nuclear blast goes very rarely for a glue pocket sleeve for their releases, in fact i believe 'the american dream died' is the only nb pocket sleeve release i have, and that might explain the little mistake. 300 copies made. nuclear blast. 2015.

harms way - rust

their last release, the 'blinded' ep, was a huge cracker. i love it from first to last. 'blinded' is so deliciously evil and crushing that it is easily their musical peak to me. therefore i was in joyful anticipation of a full length through deathwish. then, in the beginning of the year, i got news from deathwish that pre-orders were up.

i really thought about getting the most limited edition from the states, because i really regret missing the blue green merge vinyl of 'blinded' and i believed deathwish would go for a similar good looking platter for 'rust'. but when i hit the e-store i realised that the 'rust vinyl' was already gone. ah well, fuck that, i would get a copy through a german distro.

and so, in pretty much all of such cases i could rely on my distro of trust, per koro records. markus of per koro had some copies in stock and i gladly took one off of his hands. after several spins the album really grew on me so far. at first i found that it just couldn't live up to 'blinded'. by now, i still think that but it's pretty close to its forerunner. a very well executed mosh monster, it is. check out 'infestation' and 'turned to stone', my favourites of the record.

the packaging of 'rust' looks pretty good all around. deathwish went for a gatefold sleeve in a rust and bone colour scheme with a die-cut sleeve to highlight the album title. looks pretty neat. as expected, i got the least limited colour way, which is fine by me. that 'ginger ale vinyl' matches the whole asthetics quite good. 3.121 copies of the first press with 2.100 of my ginger baby. deathwish inc. 2015.

the acacia strain - 3750

this is the last record in my little 'long-time-want' series. the final piece is the acacia strain's second album called '3750'. acacia strain always had changing band members and even the number of members wasn't consistent over the years. back in 2004 they had been six in number. the only constant is singer vincent benett and his voice really is the poster child of the group. '3750' is more 'metalcore' in comparison to recent works but considering the time frame and the fact that adam dutkiewicz of killswitch engage fame was the producer, this make sense.

listen to 'smoke ya later' and 'sun poison and skin cancer' and move like everybody did ten years ago, whatever that means. next to 'wormwood', which i still don't have in my collection, a coloured vinyl copy of '3750' always seemd to be the most elusive one. the cd version was released through prosthetic records, they in turn liscensed the rights to spare change records. spare change was active from the mid to late 00's and they pressed only 199 coloured copies of this album.

i made some half-assed attempts to get my hands on a copy throughout the years, but with some money of an ebay deal in my paypal account i finally stepped up and got serious. i found a seller on discogs who listed the album for a considerable chunk of cash but with an 'make an offer' option. i was able to lower the price a bit and am now the proud owner of #119/199 on this nice clear vinyl. sadly there is no insert coming with this release but i have the cd as well. spare change records. 2004.