caliban - shadow hearts

you remember the times when caliban wasn't shit? the times as they just wore casual clothes on stage, instead of some weird blood splattered, uniformed shirts? the times as their presence on stage was enough for a good show and they didn't need cheesy stage decoration. the times as their live clear singing wasn't accurate by all means, but didn't came from tape (at least that was what it sounded like as i saw them on this years elbriot festival)? yeah i know, i sound old and bitter but i remember those times. and sometimes i wish them back, even the horrible hair style and kajal eyes of andy.

but that's ok with me now. i know that bands develop, and sometimes it's just not the direction that i want to follow. i can let go. fortunately records document a certain period of time of a band. everything post 2004 is simply unlistenable to me. but before that, there was some nice stuff. definitely my favourite is 'shadow hearts'. raw and full of energy. the cd of this album had been sitting on my shelf for a long time, and finally i have its big brother on vinyl. watch the video to 'forsaken horizon'. a banger!

i scored this one on ebay for a very fair price. an amount of money that is common for a new hardcore record of today. the shape of the vinyl is immaculate. i like the vinyl that lifeforce used for their records back then. they pressed 1.000 copies in whole and here is the breakdown: 200 on black, 200 on clear red, 200 on clear orange, 200 on clear blue and another 200 copies on my clear yellow vinyl. lifeforce records. 2003.

by the way, don't expect anything new in the coming week. finally holidays and i'm off to london. see you...

born from pain - in love with the end

i love old born from pain stuff! and with 'old' i mean the times as che snelting was on vocals. my first album was 'sands of time' from 2003. man, what a record! one of my favourite euro hardcore records generally. in the past i was able to score most of the born from pain vinyl, i was out for. one piece managed to elude me consistently, and i couldn't even say it was undeserved. hollow man records from belgium handled vinyl things for metal blade back then. hollow man is/was a division of hypertension records and when i looked through their stuff two years ago, a clear copy of 'in love with the end' was sitting there for lousy eight bucks. but i didn't pull the trigger.

why i was doing this bullshit move? well, read about it in my post for born from pain's 'war' record and shake your head again in bewilderment. anyway, after waiting was well deserved, an option from discogs came my way. even though my record-limit was spent for the month, i wouldn't let myself be the idiot again. listening to the record again after maybe five or six years, my impression i had of it wasn't changed at all. a very strong first half, that gives you the feeling of holding the record of your life in hands, is followed by a medium good second half. check the whole album here.

i think with this album, born from pain was on the peak of their career. i remember them playing some big festivals, such as wacken and with full force. i saw them live a couple of times back then and they killed it every single time. good memories. can someone please press their first album 'reclaiming the crown' to vinyl? that'd be great. don't know how many copies were made on this lovely crystal clear vinyl. but i suppose, by the rarity of appearances on ebay and the like, it might be something in the range of 100 copies. hollow man records. 2005.

cattle decapitation - the harvest floor

the next re-issue in the 'a decade of decapitation' series. this time around 'the harvest floor', number four for metal blade records. it's exciting to me to listen to the development of this death metal band. with this record they found their very own sound, it seems. 'to serve man' and 'humanure' were just preperation (while i don't count 'human jerky', but simply because i don't know it), 'karma.bloody.karma' set the tone and 'the harvest floor' took it further.

cattle decap worked out their noisy and melodic elements a bit more in comparison to 'karma'. it is definitely no easy listening but i like it that way. one needs a couple of listens to comprehend it in its full diversity. music like this pays off in the end and won't get boring after a few days. the sound is great too. very clear and crisp. i especially like the drum sound. very forceful but not too much in focus.

i like the artwork and how cattle decapitation plays with the thought of exposing people to the same horrors that animals have to endure on a daily basis. the information of the release date came to me through nuclear blast, but for this record i payed metal blade germany's ebay store a visit. i will tell you why later on. after a smooth transaction, the record arrived well packed at my door.

it was a nice touch of metal blade to include some gimmicks. i got a bunch of stickers, posters, a metal hammer and a fuze magazine and a patch. not all of it is useful but nevertheless, a very nice touch! the record itself comes with the obligatory poster and this time i snagged a splatter copy, #93/200. 'pollution harvest' colour, aka grey w/ black and blue splatter. metal blade. 2009/2014.

above you can see the reason why i ordered with metal blade, even though the records are a bit more expensive as they are with nuclear blast. every customer who buys a cattle decapitation record, gets a collector's box for free. as long as they last. and i got one and am very happy about it, because i love boxsets! it's my first lp box but i got several on cd. yeah, i know, like they would count. written on the back of the box are all the records included in the set. that means now i'll have to get a copy of 'to serve man' too. goddamnit, but i can't leave it uncompleted. i'll give you more pictures when everything is in place. bleibt sauber!

high on fire - death is this communion

i am fully immersed in metal at the moment. i pretty much exclusively listen to it. that goes that far, i even missed to buy some crucial, yes, let's say existential hardcore releases of recent date. which will be corrected very soon, by the way. the hardcore stuff of my latest posts were all records from the pile sitting there for quite some time. today's post is about a new passion of mine going by the name of high on fire.

in my blogger starting days i was reading one other blog very closely - lenny's 'the emerging addiction' blog. every now and again i would re-read some of his post. such happened with his high on fire posts. back then when i glimpsed at them for the first time, i simply liked the covers but never bothered to take a listen. additionally the term stoner metal put me off. but now, as i opened my musical horizon for a band such as mastodon and liking them a lot, i thought i should try some high on fire as well.

destiny made me check out the title song of 'death is this communion' first. yeah, i liked the gloomy atmosphere but it was a little bit too slow for my taste. i put the band in a distant corner of my mind. but the idea of myself liking this band was persistent. i downloaded the whole album, listened to it and suddenly the song appeared in a whole different light. together in the whole musical context of the album, the song totally clicked with me and the rest, too. i love the record and if the last third of it was as fantastic as the two preceding, it would simply be among my ten all time favourite records. man, just look on the art. so close to perfection...

i bought this shining copy on ebay for a fair price i think. it's a first press copy and, besides 100 grey copies (and the 100 not for the public clear copies), the rarest colour of the press. which isn't that hard because after the 600 opaque green copies there were just 1200 black copies pressed. so with the help of count count that makes 2000 copies of the first press. to this date four more pressings followed, with the fourth pressing now coming on double vinyl. check the whole album here. relapse records. 2007.

unveil - destruction wherever i go

this is the last of the three 7"es i bought together from one and the same seller on ebay. it became four actually, but this will be a different story. this unveil 7" was actually the very reason i was on all of the other auctions. the main point among them, so to speak. i wanted this more than the rest, the other records were just bonus. so i put in a pretty high bid, but unveil doesn't seem to generate much interest these days. i won it for a very decent price.

on the one hand that is understandable, because unveil simply never was much hyped at any point of their short-lived existence. but on the other hand there is the music. just listen to the songs and tell me you don't have to nod with your head along to the music automatically. the four songs here are that strong! the 'hypnopaedia' 7" was good and the full length 'a flame with nothing to feed on' was even better, but this first 7" is the shit. go listen to it! and listen to the lyrics as well. next to the obvious vegan straight edge theme, they also deal with the chinese oppression of tibet. a largely disregarded subject in western media.

you can download it in full from the start a fire website for free. 'destruction wherever i go' completes my unveil set. and what i was able to snag on the bay is the following: start a fire did a release show edition on clear vinyl. 77 in numbers. 27 of these came with an extra cover and fifty of them with the regular cover. i got one of the fifty. don't know why they came up with this strange procedure, but it is what it is. another fifty on red vinyl as pre-order edition and 300 on black vinyl. start a fire records. 2009.

tamora - tamora saves!

who hasn't done it before? buying something on a whim on ebay. sometimes just because a record almost ends without a bid, and one feels obliged to give it a caring home, sometimes because one has to make up for a lost auction and another sometimes because a seller has multiple auctions going on and one bids on many stuff, even though there are just a few, one is really out for.

in this case that one is me and that something is tamora. but wait, who again? tamora? to be honest i never heard of them before and even after some extended internet research my knowledge is quite limited. all i know is that they are/were an all vegan five piece from san diego, usa. i would assume they called it a day. someone knows more? especially where i can find some mp3's of that release.

musically this absolutely kicks ass. i'm a big fan of everything throwdown, particularly their first three records. if you also think these first three records are the shit, you will love the four songs here. first-class, relentless, mosh laden metallic hardcore. i wish i could provide you with some linked music but unfortunately i can't find anything on the net.

it's very hard to come up with info on them. dicogs doesn't even lists this 7", neither does deadformat.net or musik-sammler.de. from the numbering on the sleeve i know that there are 300 on this lovely orange/yellow split colour and that it was released on tear it down records. the label has a site but they don't even list the record in their discography. strange all this is. tear it down records. 2006.

sink or swim - in one piece split 7"

back on track. the summer, the sea side, barbecuing and kicking on the beach with friends ate up all of my free time. and right so! i wasn't really in the mood to sit down at the comp and writing about records at a thirty two degrees celsius, while i could rather take a dive into the northsea. but temperature cooled down a bit here, and so i'm back with a record sitting on my shelf for a very long time. since october last year, if memory serves.

the vinyl in front of me is listed as start a fire records #01. this lovely little d.i.y. record label from germany had put out some great stuff in the past five years (read about them by clicking the 'start a fire' tag below). furthermore 'sink or swim' were the predecessor band of a group now known under the name of wolfxdown. so i didn't have to think much about bidding on this thing on ebay. the sink or swim part is great and if you like wolfxdown, then this will be right up your alley.

in one piece, the other band of the split, plays some similar stuff. angry metallic hardcore. according to discogs, this is their only release and i doubt the band still exists today. this baby is long sold out but you won't have any problems tracking one down via discogs. you can download the whole split from the start a fire website. 1000 copies were made in total. 500 on black vinyl, 100 on clear red vinyl (fifty of that as pre-order edition and another fifty as record release edition) and 400 on clear green vinyl. start a fire records. 2009.

earth crisis - breed the killers

earth crisis is one of my favourite bands. i love their mid-tempo kiloton riffs and their very own interpretation of metal and groove-laden hardcore. they have a signature sound and that is rare in today's scene. earth crisis is a band others get compared to, and quite rightly, if you ask me. this is their musical side. next to that, there are karl buechner's formidable lyrics. i'm not always in agreement with his statements but he is never trivial. always stuff to think about and to grapple with. hardcore. period.

it's hard for me to pick a favourite among their records. such a damn good discography. but if i have to pick, it would be, by a narrow margin, 'breed the killers'. it was the second ec-album to hit my ears and i can't tell what it is exactly that makes it special to me. i mean, musically, i can't say that i like it more than 'gomorrah's season ends' or the three records after their re-union, but 'killers' is different. it's probably the records one hears first that binds to a certain band and that leads to idolisation. check 'ultramilitance' and 'one against all' and get lost in controversy. be it because of the lyrics, or be it because of rob flynn, haha.

somewhere along the way i read that 'breed the killers' was also pressed to some coloured vinyl, next to its black counterpart. but i never saw one pop up, nor did i find someone who was willing to sell it for a price i was willing to pay. so i played the waiting game and won eventually. a nice mate on discogs happened to sell his well cared for red copy for some fair money. i took the chance and am now a proud owner of one out of 500 produced copies. by the way, does anyone know what the cover art shows? i just don't get it, no matter for how long i stare on this. roadrunner records handled the cd version. equal vision records took care of the vinyl. 1998.

mastodon - leviathan

when i wrote about the 'call of the mastodon' compilation i bought recently, i mentioned the purchase of their sophomore record 'leviathan'. beause i really wanted the colour variant i ordered directly from the label. which means i ordered from the states. which means it took up to three weeks to arrive here in germany. ahh, waiting, the most gnawing tormentor of all. but anyway, it arrived here in perfect shape. and thanks to the label and the people working there, i didn't have to pay any more fees either, because of a well-meant customer declaration.

first thing that blew me away holding the actual record in hands, was this stunning piece of artwork. i knew the look of the cd artwork being different to its lp equivalent, showing just an excerpt. and that is fantastic in its own right already. but the whole thing with the whale's complete shape and the gloomy dark-blue colour scheme around the picture's principal point are simply outstanding. on top of that, the inner sleeve shows an even more extended art and the back looks amazing with its art nouveau ornamentation.

compared to the 'call of the mastodon' pieces, 'leviathan' sounds more like a whole (quite normal as 'call...' is compiled of two 7"es), is better thought out and got a clearer production. i was reading some reviews about the record beforehand and read about the album being lyrically based on herman melville's moby dick. yes, i love stuff like this. you know, i'm a big fan of all things jules verne, i love star wars and indiana jones, i love comic books and stuff, and therefore moby dick is just my kind of adventurous tale to arouse my deepest curiosity. i knew about the story vaguely and so decided to even buy the book for better comprehension. i'm still at it and it's a very good read so far. recommendation!

back to the music. without knowing 'remission' as yet, they included some more sung parts and in turn reduced the grunts. i really like that, it gives the album a more stoner/doom metal approach which makes quite an entertaining mix with the hardcore and death metal tunes. check out my favourites 'seabeast' and 'aqua dementia'. leviathan is in its eighth pressing by now. lucky me that the demand seems to be still high and relapse keeps on repressing it after ten years of its initial release. spares me the agony of price over at discogs for a coloured copy. 504 copies made on tri-colour vinyl as a mailorder exclusive. relapse records. 2004/2014.

sick of it all - just look around

it seems only natural that, when a certain label carries the plan to reissue sick of it all's debut 'blood, sweat and no tears', relativity records or whoever holds the rights to this recorded nyhc-history now, throws in a 'just look around' from 1992 for free. it's like pay one, take two. 'blood, sweat...' was re-pressed three times in 1999 (kingfisher), 2006 (street justice rec.) and 2010 (reflections rec.), and everytime 'just look around' came with it. this time as well. i purchased both records through an ebay retailer on pre-order in early april this year. the release date was set on april, 30th. 

the day came and went, so does the following week. i asked the seller. he said that cargo records, which distributed the record in germany, postponed the roll-out because of delivery problems by strength records itself. the next date came and went. another delay of two weeks coming my way. in the meantime i saw copies pop on other german distros, and began to play with the thought of asking for a refund and order somewhere else. after another round of questions, the ebay retailer gave me a final date. and this time it wasn't just to stall me.

after almost two months of waiting both re-presses dropped at my door eventually. and yes, they look fine. for 'just look around', strength records chose a red a shade lighter and white for the merge mix. real good choice, i say. this time i could have done without the splatter but it doesn't ruin it for me either. lovely 180gr vinyl and done is a solid re-issue. don't have to tell you about the music. you know that already. a classic that is at eye level with 'scratch the surface', as long as i am concerned that is. strength records. 2014.