Last Act Of Defiance

The other record I traded for in the record store was the latest Sick Of It All LP. I love Sick Of It All. They were one of the gateway bands for me when I got into punk and hardcore and I still love their early material. Every time I see them live, they just seem to get better with age and it's always so much fun. Having said that, I feel like they're losing their touch when it comes to writing new songs. Other people might disagree, but for me the decline started with Death To Tyrants. It still had a bunch of good songs, but it didn't grab me at all. Based On A True Story is kind of the same for me. Considering I don't really like these LPs I still have a lot of variants of said two LPs. As much as I love Sick Of It All, based on the two previous LPs I wasn't in a rush to check out their latest record, which came out three years ago. And sadly I must say I don't feel like I missed out on anything the last three years. One copy will suit me just fine. Standard black copy on Century Media.

30 Years

Sick Of It All is one of my earliest and still biggest loves in hardcore. They've been going strong for an incredible 30 years as of this year and it doesn't look like they're going to stop anytime soon. To celebrate that anniversary, they released a cool photo book which includes a 10". The rarest variant on clear vinyl was limited to only 100 copies and sold out faster than you can say Alleyway Crew. There's also a version on red, but I learned about that only after I picked up this copy on black at one of the record stores my buddy and I hit in Stuttgart. The book is done really well with cool pictures, which cover the entire band history, and stories about the people in the band and the band by other musicians from the hardcore scene. I wish there were more stories and also a little bit of a band history or stories by the members themselves, because it would have been a pretty interesting read to be sure. Maybe they're saving that for the 40 year book. Who knows? The 10" is pretty good as well, although I think their latest material is not as good as their first 7" or the first few LPs. Be that as it may, I'm still glad I picked this up.