Lion Of Judah

Another follow-up pick up. Two months ago I got Lion Of Judah's Soul Power Plus 4 and I really liked that release, so obviously I wanted to get some more of their material. Universal Peace is the band's one and only LP. It originally came out on Youngblood Records in the US. Powered Records released a European press. This is the Youngblood pressing, but I don't know if it's a first or second press. The Youngblood website states that both presses are identical anyway. Quite an unusual sound for the mid-2000s, but a pretty strong release if you ask me.

Empowerment Meets Abfukk

Part 3 of the split series that Empowerment is doing. This time they teamed up with Abfukk, who play fast, pissed off hardcore PUNK. Who would have guessed with that kind of name, right? Once again you get one brand new song by each band plus one cover song of a German punk classic. With me, it's either total hit with Empowerment or total miss. There's no middle ground apparently. This is sadly a miss. Maybe it'll grow on me, but I have my doubts. The Abfukk side is pretty good.

Death Injection

Man, time really does fly. I really liked the Death Injection demo, which I shockingly already picked up in July 2014. I honestly thought that I bought that 7" late in 2014 or even later. Damn. Anyway, Death Injection recently released a LP on Triple B. This is the black variant out of 400. There was also a variant on clear out of 100, but I rarely order from labels directly in the States these day cause shipping costs right now can suck it. I'm quite happy with black vinyl though, cause I think it goes really well with the cover. Musically not much has changed from the demo, so if you're into Boston style SXE hardcore, you'll probably like this LP.

On a different note, I'm really excited about a couple of upcoming BBB releases. According to the Triple B web shop, a new Clear LP and a new Protester 7" are going to come out soon. Stoked on these releases.

Good Riddance

Good Riddance is one of those bands that apparently is unable to release a bad record. I love all their older material, so when I saw on Instagram that the pre-orders for their new LP were up, I had to get one. Funnily enough, I hadn't known anything about them releasing a new record prior to seeing the info about the pre-order being up-and-running. Peace In Our Time turned out to be a pretty good record, both by general and Good Riddance standards. I don't listen to melodic punk rock bands on a regular basis anymore and if I do, it is mainly for no nostalgic reasons - with the exception of Good Riddance. I still listen to them quite often. In my opinion they always stood out from all the those bands on Fat Wreck. Russ Rankin always managed to pull of really well written lyrics, too. That's probably why. As I said before, I think Good Riddance has a flawless discography, which is not a bad feat for a band that has been around that long.
I couldn't find any information on the pressing info for this release, but seeing that this is a Fat Wreck release, I'm inclined to say there's one variant on colour, the rest is on black vinyl. The orange vinyl with that brown/black blotch looks pretty good. The LP also comes with a one-sided bonus 7". On the b-side there's an etching of the Good Riddance bomb logo.

Fever Hunting

Last week I went to see Modern Life Is War. Now, I'm always a little skeptical when it comes to reunion shows. My emotions usually oscillate between sheer excitement and said skepticism. The show took place in a rather big venue, I guess about 800 fit into the room. Now, that is just a little bit too big for my taste. On the other hand, the show was sold out from the looks of it, so anything smaller would have robbed a lot of people from seeing a band they apparently really wanted to see. Worst case scenario: the show itself would be crappy, but I still get to hang out a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time while eating great vegan food. Pretty good worst case scenario if you ask me. However, all my skepticism was blown away with the first chord. MLIW fucking killed it that night, and from what I heard all the other nights on that tour as well. Such a great live energy coming from that band. The audience went absolutely nuts from start to finish. Haven't seen that many (old) bodies in the air in a long time. Hands down one of the best shows I've ever been to.
While checking out the merch, I noticed that MLIW were selling records too. Taking a closer look, I saw that they had some first press copies of their last LP on olive vinyl with them. There are 3,500 (!) copies on olive green, but it was still a little bit surprising to see that variant since there is already a third pressing out there. Now, a few weeks ago I wouldn't really have thought about picking up this copy. I did have a pretty decent MLIW collection a few years ago. Then the price for the final show box skyrocketed up to the point where it reached four figure numbers. That kind of took the possibility away to have complete collection because I wasn't and am still not willing to pay that kind of money for the box. So I sold off or traded away a lot of records. I just kept the nicest looking copy of each release plus the Posi Numbers cover of Witness, since I really like that cover. With the show coming closer and closer, I listened to MLIW almost daily for a few weeks and my love for that band was rekindled and I thought collecting them again would be kind of fun. I also don't necessarily aim for complete collections anymore. Plus, the prices of the box have dropped considerably again…
On a sidenote: My wife got pretty excited about the idea of starting a MLIW collection, too, so I was pretty much sold on that idea. If you throw our MLIW records together, we actually have a pretty good starting point. Little advice for my fellow record collectors here: if your wife/girlfriend likes a band and doesn't think record collecting is a crazy pastime, don't tell her that you used to have a pretty decent collection of said band. Who would have thought our first quarrel as a married couple would be about an issue like that, haha...

The Damage Done

Lately I've been listening to a lot of bands from the early to mid 2000s. One of the best labels from that time was Rivalry Records. So many good records came out on that label. The guy who ran the label, Kyle Whitlow, was a record collector himself and you could see that in all the releases on his label. A few years back he sold a large part of his collection and created an awesome blog documenting his collection. Not only do you get to see a mind-boggling collection, you get also a lot of interesting background information on releases and bands. It is now of my favourite blogs out there, so make sure you check out Seeking The Simple if you haven't already done so. While reading the blog I came across this band The Damage Done, which was Kyle's own band. He put out the final release of his band on his own label, which only seems the logical thing to do. He must have started Rivalry Records shortly before his band's final release came out since this release is Rivalry #03. I picked up this 2nd press copy for dirt cheap (notice the punch holes in the cover and the dust sleeve) simply because I wanted to check out the music. Good enough music but nothing that gets me overly excited. There are 600 copies on solid orange.

Boy Sets Fire

I don't care what people say about Boy Sets Fire nowadays, their early releases are fucking killer. This is their first ever release on vinyl, or to be more precise it's the repress of their first release. Originally the Consider 7" was self-released by the band in 1996, and Initial Records rereleased the record a year later. Green Hell Records took over the distribution for Europe.
Now I didn't notice there were several pressings, I just was glad to be able to pick up a copy. Otherwise I'd probably have gone for a first press since that came with a 12-page booklet. The reissue doesn't have any inserts and the lyrics aren't printed on the sleeve either. No lyrics at all is always a bummer. The music is great though.

Anniversaries

So Bane has been a band for 20 years as of 2015. Such a crazy long time for a hardcore band. There are only very few bands who have been continuously active for that long. 10 years ago the band and Equal Vision, the label they have been affiliated with for a long time, commemorated the 10 year anniversary with a special release. The '10 Year Anniversary' 7" - as I know the story - came originally as the CD you can see in the middle in a 7" sleeve because the vinyl wasn't ready for the show. You could later send a code to Equal Vision and get the actual vinyl. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that. There are only two songs on this 7", Reckoning Day (which had originally come out on the demo tape) and a cover of the Bjork song 'Enjoy'.
I've had the blueish/yellow were for a few years now. It came as full package, meaning with cover and the CD. The white/yellow variant was a completely different story. Despite the fact that there are 450 copies of this 7" in total, they rarely pop up. I often struck out when I contacted people who had a copy and on one occasion where I found someone who was willing to sell me the record, it got lost in the mail. Or he never send it to me. I don't really know. Either way I still didn't have a copy. I also found two copies on Discogs but due to the time difference the copies that were advertised in the automated mail I get daily had already been sold by the time I woke up. Finally I managed to get a copy on Discogs that hadn't been sold yet. It doesn't come with the CD or a cover, but I got for under $10 plus I was just glad to get any copy at that point. I might upgrade this version at some point, but for now I'm happy as it is.

Blue Monday Again

The seller I got the Blue Monday LP from also had a copy of their 2nd 7" War Wounds up for sale, so the it was a no brainer to get this records as well. Pretty good record as well. There is this version on clear blue and there's also a tour version, but I have no detailed pressing information here.

Blue Sunday

A while back I posted that I re-discovered Blue Monday while making a mix tape. So the next step was to pick up all their releases. Give it some time and patience and you will get what you're looking for, and for a reasonable price, too. Rewritten was the only LP Blue Monday ever released. It came out on Bridge 9 ten years ago. Damn, that makes me feel old. Oh well,... I've been listening to the LP a couple of times so far and it's really, really good.
The first press of this LP came on purple with white swirl and the green with white swirl you can see here. The purple one is out 650, the green one out of 250. There was also a special cover for some festival. The second press was a picture disc (yikes) and there was also a different cover, I think for another festival.

Inside Out

Got another variant of one of my favourite 7"s of all time. This is the first pressing of Inside Out's No Spiritual Surrender. You can recognize it by the white 'bar' you can see above the cover. This effect is created because the back cover is slightly bigger than the front cover for whatever reason. You can also recognize the first press by checking the insert, which came on colour for the first pressing. I didn't include the insert in the picture, but it is indeed a coloured one. There are 4,000 of these, plus the 1,000 on blue vinyl. Damn, Rev and Inside Out were huge back then.

Banesanity

There are some collections that border either on pure dedication or near insanity, depending on your point of view. This may be on of those. At Both Ends was a great fanzine in the '00 years. One of the best out there for sure. The final issue came with a double 7". One of bands featured was Bane, so I had to get a copy. To be honest, I got a lot of copies because I ran a little fanzine distro at the time. So I got like a dozen copies from Stephen Fallis directly. When I checked on the records that came with the zine, I noticed they came on a lot of different colours. So I ordered some more, sold most of the doubles (colourwise) and kept the rest. I got something like six or seven different versions by doing that. For a few years I didn't really bother to pick up other versions,  let alone search for them. Then along came Discogs and looking for records became much easier. So I started looking for different variants of this release and I managed to get my hands on a few more. Here's the latest addition: the Bane/Grade 7" comes on clear green vinyl, the Unrestrained/Between Earth And Sky on dark blue with black streaks. If you have any variant I don't have, get at me!

As I wrote in the beginning, this may be one of the more stupid collections I pursue. The reason behind that thought is that nobody knows the pressing info for this release. In the picture you can see that there are a lot of different colours out there. What's more, there are also a lot of transition colours, e.g. the different shades of grey and purple, which always makes it harder to get a detailed pressing info.

I took a close-up picture of the two green ones in the top row. Yup, the one in the middle in the top row is not on black vinyl, it's a really dark green. You can only see that it is actually green if you hold it up against the light.

The Suicide File

Things Fall Apart was the final regular 7" release by The Suicide File, if you don't count the Live on WERS release. The grey vinyl looks pretty good together with the cover art. There are 550 on grey vinyl and another 550 copies on white vinyl.

Death Is Not Glamorous

Death Is Not Glamorous is one of my favourite European bands from the last 10 years. I've probably said that before, but I can't say that enough. I once got a CD promo copy of this LP and I was hooked immediately. Yet somehow I never bothered to pick up a vinyl copy of this. A few weeks ago I came across this great looking colour combination of this LP and had to get it right away. The picture doesn't do the colours justice, I'm afraid, but I'm too bad a photographer to get a better picture. The red in the record is a nice looking purple in real life, and thus fits the sleeve much better. It really looks great if you actually hold it in your hands. This is the pre-order variant out of 300.

Sweet Jesus

Sweet Jesus released one of my personal highlights 2014 as far as new records are concerned. A few days ago Sam of Triple B Records posted a list of records he was looking to sell on Revcollectors. One of them was a test pressing for the Box 7". I jumped right at it, and while I was at it I also asked him if he had any copies of Box on white left. He did, so I have a nice little Sweet Jesus collection for the moment.


Sweet Jesus - Box - Triple B - test pressing - /15

Sweet Jesus - Box - Triple B - white - /330

Different Shades Of Green

I got a mint green copy of Champion's Come Out Swinging a few weeks back. Not long after that I managed to track down a copy on 'regular' green.

 I took a picture of both 7"s next to each other to have a better comparison of the shades of green.

The Things We Carry

Record collectors usually frown a little bit on black vinyl since a) black is not really a colour and b) black is usually the most common variant. As always, there are exceptions, of course… The Things We Carry has seen a lot of different pressings so far. The first pressing amounted to 1000 in total, but it is split up in two different colours and three different sleeves, accounting to four different variants for the first press alone. All subsequent pressings were out of 1000 each. And then there's the 4th pressing. The 4th pressing you could purchase from Bridge 9 or from distros around the globe was clear red. However, Bridge 9 also pressed 100 records on black vinyl since they had found some gatefold jackets that had been used for the first two pressings. These 100 copies were sent out randomly, so people were in for a big surprise when they got their order. Seeing that this is the 3rd most limited variant of Have Heart's debut LP, it has become quite the collectible, despite the fact that it's just on black.