bitterness exhumed / optimist - split

bitterness exhumed's first full length release 'a place for many ghosts' was one of my favourite releaes from 2013. i really love their heavy mix of crust, doom, sludge and hardcore. so after that i was eager to get more stuff of them. in 2014 they released an e.p. on a twelve inch via demons run amok, called 'desperate and miserable'. unfortunately it couldn't really live up to 'a place...'.

so i was a little sceptical when beatdown hardwear announced a split together with optimist. of course i wasn't that sceptical to miss out on the pre-order of that thing. i was early in the game and so i snagged the most limited colour way. when it finally arrived last week and i dropped the needle on it, all my worries had been causelessly.

the doomier parts that were missing on 'deperate and miserable' are back and beside their noisy and fast outbreaks, the slower, ominous parts round out this bastard. great stuff! optimist on the other side is one hell of heavy old school death. does anyone out there remember the band end of days? they released a full length called 'dedicated to the extreme' in 2005 on alveran and century media.

optimist is kind of the follower band and do sound pretty similar, not least because of kevin otto's voice. skull crushing death metal in the vein of obituary. like the bitterness exhumed side better, but that's just my personal taste. optimist delivers! the presentation is lovely. nice matte card slip sleeve, big poster with all lyrics, the split on cd, a sweet obi strip and clear red vinyl with black smoke. all out of 100 copies. thumbs up! beatdown hardwear. 2015.

killing the dream - lucky me

burnout store hamburg is a convenient thirty minutes drive away from my home. i try to visit my favourite physical store pretty regulary. round about once every two months. when flicking through the racks, there is always a small amount of records that seem to collect dust for a considerable time already, records i come across since i visited the store for the first time.

killing the dream's third full length 'lucky me' is such a record, or better was, because i finally decided to give it a try. killing time is one of that typical deathwish melodic hardcore bands. the carrier and carpathian were two names that came to my mind when trying to find similar sounding bands. maybe killing the dream has a little bigger screamo slice.

'lucky me' is a solid output. i like some killing the dream from time to time, but it's nothing that spins on heavy rotation. so i'll pick up the other records when they are coming my way and the price is right. just like i did with 'lucky me'. listen to the whole record here. will take only twenty minutes of your time. short, crisp, good.

the first and only press to date got three colours. 300 copies on green merge, 700 on green and black split and 1000 copies on opaque green. as you can see i have the latter variant. love the jacob bennon artwork but wasn't the picture from the inside gatefold featured on converge's 'you fail me' also? i see some similarities at least. deathwish inc. 2010.

red sparowes - at the soundless dawn

red sparowes is an instrumental band from los angeles, california. they are consisting of current and former members of renown bands like isis and neurosis, plus some other bands i don't know about but might be also pretty popular. the first encounter between red sparowes and me, was on lenny's 'the emerging addiction' blog.

at the time i wasn't ready for some instrumental post-rock, which is the term i come across pretty often in connection with their sound. after i lost my heart to toundra from spain, being an instrumental band as well, i thought i might give them a shot. after some internet research i listened to some stuff via the tube and the next minute i was scouring the market for some red sparowes vinyl.

discogs became one of my biggest friends in the past when it comes to get used and sought after vinyl, without the pain of bidding on ebay. a great source for collectors. i found a german seller offering a copy of red sparowes' first full length 'at the soundless dawn' from 2004 for a reasonable price and a few days later it was mine.

the record is pretty complex and it doesn't reveal its full beauty by the first listen. it takes time to fully embrace the multi-layered soundscapes. but once you did, it won't let go. beautiful music. beautiful vinyl, too. the first time i see a clear coloured merge pattern. usually this pattern comes with opaque colours. clear dark green with clear light green merge, or 'swamp' coloured out of 500 copies. robotic empire records. 2011 re-press.

all for nothing - miles & memories

all for nothing is a dutch powerhouse. they released their first record over ten years ago and are still here. i believe they do this more or less completely on a weekend basis. you can feel they're doing the band as their off-time pleasure and not because they have to make a living with the music. especially when playing live, as i was able to witness last persistence tour together with ryker's, ignite and sick of it all.

they play melodic hardcore with a metallic edge to it. the sound they produce might not be the most innovative of all, but it's honest. give me more of that. but now onto the music pressed to vinyl here. it has already been a long ass time since i ordered this record. 'miles & memories' is their second full length album, coming after 'can't kill what's inside'. besides, if anyone out there is willing to let go of their orange copy of 'can't kill...', get in touch!

'miles & memories' saw the light of day in 2009 and was released on cd through gsr music first. it somehow took the album half a year to finally get pressed to polyvinyl chloride. it seems that gsr didn't do any vinyl releases pre 2012, so demons run amok from germany was willing to give the album the format it deserved.

i think i ordered this record together with the human animal / additional time 7" of the last post. i just picked the colour-way that sounded best, not knowing that i chose a 2010 tourpressing leftover. well, not as special as i thought, because all colours are still available. check some tunes and give this underrated record a caring home. 109 copies on white/blue marble vinyl. demons run amok. 2010.

human animal / additional time - split

i just recently wrote about my first human animal 7", called 'dark days'. after i recieved it, it wasn't long until demons run amok announced the release of a split 7" with additional time. a band from west-germany, that features the owner of now defunct dead serious records on vocals. i posted about their first release three years ago.

i pre-ordered the record and my interest in this split was really just about the human animal part. judging from their first 7", i knew additional time's contribution would be solid but not too exciting. when i finally got my copy, i was a little bit disappointed by the human animal songs.

somehow they sound as if they had been written before 'dark days', a step back so to speak. the additional time part is just what i expected beforehand. solid hardcore at the metallic end of the spectrum. you can check the whole output at d.r.a.'s bandcamp. there are three colour-ways available through the label. clear, clear green and clear yellow, all limited to 100 copies. demons run amok. 2014.

bongripper - hate ashbury

irony of faith. who would have thought that a band with a name such as bongripper could land on an x'ed up blog like mine? me at the very least. but this blog was never about the consumption of drugs or the complete denial of it. it's about the music. that is what counts to me. and the music on this slab of wax is the shit! i heard of bongripper before, because they have a split together with my favourite british band conan. i didn't buy the split yet because i thought instrumental doom wasn't my cup of tea.

how wrong i was. as i am warming up with instrumental prog/avantgarde/metal through bands like toundra or red sparowes, it was the right time for me to check out some serious doom/sludge instrumental metal. i was browsing through the burning world records home-page, looking for a different release i will soon write about, and stumbled across this re-press of 'hate ashbury', the band's 2008 release. it looked pretty good and so i went to the tube, to see if i would like the music as well.

what can i say, this record is as close to perfection as it gets. the songs have no titles and flow into each other seamlessly, so it's like listening to one coherent piece. the album has some relentlessly good hooks and the downtuned guitars pummeling through your belly like a sledge hammer. man, i really like this record. bongripper played this year's roadburn festival in the netherlands. for this occasion great barrier records, which is the band's very own label i believe, pressed a 'roadburn blue' edition of 250 copies. burning world has some left. great barrier records. 2008/2015.

cynarae - s/t

boy, what the hell just hit me? that or something very similar was the initial thought that came to my mind after i listened to the first tunes of this record. but let's start from the outset. hanging around at burnout store hamburg i stumbled upon the cover of the first and self-titled cynarae album. not long before i read an entry on some blog about this record, stating it was peculiar and heavy.

a little curious, because that description leaves a lot of space for interpretation, i pulled the record out of the rack and made my way to the next turntable. i dropped the needle and then it just... well, you know what i thought. this washington state band plays some pretty hefty and crusty shade of hardcore. dark, fast and angry. check out 'prescribed burn' and be sure to fasten your seat belt.

the whole album clocks in just under the twenty minutes mark. thus the album fits on one side of a 12" record. someone involved in the process of making the record, band or label, or whoever it was seemed to think it might be funny to press the songs played backwards on side two. peculiar, indeed. just as the cover art. what is this? anyway, the vinyl colour is a pretty good match. 'bark/bone' mix, or brown with white merge. a389 records. 2012.

agitator - bleak

i am after this record for quite some time. actually since it was released in 2013. measured against the band's fame, which isn't that big apparantly, it took an inappropriately long time for me to finally get a copy. the main reason for me was that i wasn't able to get coloured vinyl over here in germany and i definitely wanted to avoid oversea shipping costs.

i was pretty close in last year's august. wei from dead moon massachusetts and me were having a little chat about expire and shady lyrics. in this context we came across agitator sometimes having lousy lyrics too and how i am blessed with not noticing because my mother tongue isn't english. anyway, he stated he might have a spare copy but it came to nothing in the end.

by some circumstances that are unknown to me, core tex mailorder from berlin managed to get some coloured copies this year and as i recieve the regular newsletter, i didn't hestiate to finally pull the trigger on this baby when i heard the news. check out the probably best hardcore video ever for 'contempt'. ooooh yeah! 215 copies on clear gold. six feet under records. 2013.

sick of it all - s/t 7"

sick of it all put out my favourite nyhc record of all time ('scratch the surface') and is one of the few long-life hardcore bands of which i dig every single release. that said, i never really pursued to get all their stuff on vinyl. their old material, everything pre-'00, plus the fat wreck records are pretty hard to come by on coloured vinyl.

i am not too enthusiastic about paying the current asking prices and as i have the most of the releases on cd, i will just wait for re-issues. time, soia's popularity and the current eagerness for vinyl re-issues are on my side. just as happened with their self-titled 7" from 1987 on revelation. almost unusual that the last re-press before this blue 7" came out already four years from now. speaking in revelation terms, that is.

anyway, they bring us a clear blue version which is the ninth press already. i am not the biggest clear blue vinyl fan in record collecting history and i think, with this platter i still won't be in the near future. but i got it for six bucks and that's fair enough. rev did this re-press in the fashion of the fifth press from 1997, the first in almost ten years. thus it comes with an insert with some liner notes of lou koller. love stuff like this. don't how many have been pressed. revelation records. 1987/2014.

culture - born of you 20th anniversary

twenty years of 'born of you'. my dear, what a long time. the band name culture is synonymous with that classic metallic hardcore sound i hold so dear. my first encounter with that sound was through european bands. foremost from belgium and germany. stuff like congress, arkangel, liar, heaven shall burn and early caliban. i posted of their records in one form or another.

of course, across the pond that musical style was played as well but i never really dived in. the only representative band from the states of that era i know pretty good and enjoy very much is undying. and earth crisis, indeed. but when it comes to bands like morning again or culture, i am not too familiar with the matter. i decided that this has to change.

how convient that demons run amok came up with a re-press of culture's classic. as told at the start 'born of you' celebrates its twentieth anniversary and d.r.a. really went the extra mile with their incarnation of the record. back in the day it was released on conquer the world records from the states. in 1998 it got its first re-release on the infamous goodlife recordings from belgium.

i always preferred the conquer the world album cover. demons pays hommage by chosing the center picture of the u.s. release as the cover. looks bad ass. also the red 'culture' lettering is embossed. another nice little gimmick is the inside of the slip sleeve is 'coloured' too. the folded insert comes with all the lyrics and some interesting liner notes of band members.

though, the real star of this re-press is the colour of the vinyl itself. it doesn't come across in the pictures too well, but the orange is a very, very bright shade. almost neon that it kind of glows. i couldn't make it visible but to give you a glimpse on how awesome it looks, i held it against the light now looking almost pink. get it and convince yourself. 100 copies as a green hell mailorder exclusive. demons run amok. 2015.