Safe And Sound

One of the few bands I actually wanted to see at Fluff Fest was Safe And Sound, but what do you know, of course I missed them. And I didn't manage to see them on their tour before or after Fluff either. Bummer. However, I finally managed to snag some of their releases on vinyl. Good hardcore in the vein of early 2000's hardcore bands. Right up my alley. Here you can see their debut 7", The Tides. 200 copies on blue vinyl.

Time Is now

Ecostrike bring back that typical 90's metallic vegan straight edge sound. Quite good, but I'm not sold 100% on it yet. 500 copies on red vinyl.

When Then Becomes Now

Along with the demo I also picked up the first proper 7" by Abuse Of Power. Equally as good as the demo. I really hope there'll be a full LP at some point. Standard press on pink vinyl out of 600 copies.

Abuse Of Power

Great new band from the US. Abuse Of Power has this cool 90s vibe to me. I missed out on the demo tape, so I was happy when New Age Records stepped up to the plate and pressed it on vinyl. 300 copies on clear orange.

Cutting Through

One of the better demos that came out these last few years was the Cutting Through one. It was released as a cassette demo, which should be the way to go for demos (Sorry, Marcus.), but received the vinyl treatment. 110 copies on red vinyl. Can't wait for their debut LP to drop.

Sect

One of the better shows I went to recently was Chokehold / Sect / Racetraitor / Through Devastation. I didn't see the last one, which was the opening band, and Racetraitor ("got stuck" in a chat with friends), but Sect and especially Chokehold were awesome. I saw Sect again at Fluff Fest and again they put on a really good show. Sadly, the vinyl had already gone by the time I went to the merch tent, so I had to order the record. This is a beast of a record. I really like the colour scheme and the band gets 10/10 DIY points for releasing the record themselves. Everything about this release is really, really good.

How Much Is Enough

When the Miracle Drug demo came out two years ago, I was really into it. Since then I'd been looking forward to new material of the band. However, the mini LP is a little disappointing. 6 songs on a one-sided LP? Come on. But I can live with that if the songs are really good. The songs on this record are good, but I'm not as hooked as with the songs on the demo. Let's see if this one will grow on me. On the plus side, the black smoke vinyl looks pretty awesome. 250 copies.

Give Blood (again) & A Pan

Record collectors are especially fond of rip-off covers, so today I'm doing a rip-off post... Maybe you can figure out who I ripped off. Shouldn't be too hard.

Collecting records, or for that matter anything, is a weird hobby, because as soon as you have a (near) complete collection, the fun part is kind of over. Luckily, that doesn't happen too often, because there are usually records that are hard to come by. It will always bug you that the collection is not complete, but you also know you don't want the collection to be complete because looking for records and finding stuff is so much fun. I have a pretty solid Bane collection I'd say. Right now it's basically only tests that I'm missing. And I know that most of them I'll never obtain because there are so few around for the older releases and the ones that are out there are locked in serious collections. But as I said before, the search is the fun part anyway.
Sometimes you get lucky even when you're not actively searching. A few days ago I saw a copy of Give Blood up for sale in Facebook group. I was intrigued by the part of the record that you could see in the picture, because it looked unusually dark. I asked for a picture of the whole record and to my surprise it was a variant I hadn't seen before. The LP comes on brown marble, which I call molten kinder chocolate, that must have been created when the brown and clear for the brown/clear swirl hadn't mixed properly yet or it was towards the end of the pressing. I'm not an expert on record pressing, but that's my best guess. I'm really stoked on finding this variant. I wonder what other unique records are out there.

Here's a picture to compare the brown marble one and the regular brown/clear swirl one.

One more picture showing the brown marble, clear and brown/clear records.

If you've made it this far, you may wonder where the rip-off part comes in. Well, the same day I received the Bane LP in the mail, I also received a new pan (forget the greenish tint, that's just from lighting/the contrast paper I use). I remembered a post on another blog from years ago combining a Bane record with cookware, so I decided to take a rip-off photo.

Blue Witness

One more part of the steadily growing Modern Life Is War collection. This is a first press on clear blue vinyl, which was used as tour press. 100 copies were made. I still need the friends press on gold, the record release edition and a test press. But I'm quite happy so far as it is.

Close up against the light. Some nice black and purpleish veins running through the vinyl.

Hardcore 1990: East Meets West

3rd and last record I got for free with the Verse LP. I already have a copy of this compilation, which is pretty good, so I'm giving one copy to a friend. Work on my karma a little bit.

American Violence

One of the two 7"s I got for free with the Verse LP is American Violence by Reign Supreme. I already have a copy of this record on clear red vinyl (/700), but this copy on red and black haze looks much better (and is rarer), so I'm keeping this one as a welcome upgrade. I'll give the other record to a friend most likely and work on my karma.

Retaliate

The purchase of the Verse LP was probably the most lucrative record purchase I ever made. Sometimes sellers toss in a little something extra. If you're lucky, the seller actually wants to be nice and throws in a good record, but often the seller uses this opportunity to get rid of a record that isn't really good to begin with. Which is fair enough, because it's still a nice gesture and tastes are different, but often you get stuck with a record you never would have bought and probably don't like. With this purchase the seller threw in three extra records. That's right, I bought one record and received four. I'd never heard of Retaliate, but this LP is actually quite good. Would make a fine playlist for the gym together with Terror or Reign Supreme, haha. 500 copies on gold/red swirl.

From Anger And Rage

Another case of "I'll trade that now, no problem. I can pick up another copy soon." Only took me a few years. Oh well. I love this record. And I love this specific colour scheme. The copy I used to have was a little prettier than this one, but I'm happy with this one. From Anger And Rage still holds up really well after all these years. Verse live when this record came out was always on point as well. I remember a great show in one of my favourite locations. Pre-order variant on red/yellow swirl out of 270 copies.