Me. You. Youth Crew 2016

Latest installment of this compilation series. Featured are - surprise, surprise - current bands that play Youth Crew hardcore. The cool thing about this series is that bands from all over the world are featured, not European or American bands only. It's also a collaboration by many different labels from all over the planet. My favourite bands so far are Spirits (of course), Tomar Control and Modern Problems. I'll have to give it a spin a couple of more times. Maybe some of the other bands will grow on me. I'm not sure which variant this is. Officially there are yellow (/95), green (/102) and dark green (/195) as far as colours go, but this copy is neither. It looks like solid green with some yellow marble going on. Could also be a 'dirty' green or a greenish yellow. So I'm chalking this one up as transition colour.

Gift horses

With my last order from Speedowax I received two records I hadn't ordered. I always appreciate labels throwing in bonus stuff, even with small orders.

The first one is a split between The Hip Priests and Mannequin. The Hip Priests play garage mixed with punk'n'roll (?). I'm sure they're not bad at what they're doing, but it's not really my cup of tea. Mannequin are somewhere between pop punk, alternative and demo, sort of? I like the music, but the vocals for 1708 are a little annoying. Colour is a pretty decent song though.

Busted Outlook are more up my alley. Sounds like early 80's hardcore, sprinkled with some youth crew. I've just looked up this band and found out they're playing Fluff Fest this summer, which means I can catch them live. 150 copies on clear vinyl.

To sum up, two new records I hadn't ordered, three unknown bands, one of which I don't like, one I'll keep an eye out for, and one I'm looking forward to checking out live. Not a bad quota at all if you ask me.

Fade

Since I read a lot of good things on various blogs about the Fade demo 7", I took the opportunity and ordered a copy while ordering the Spirits / Tomar Control splits over at the Speedwax Records webstore, and holy shit, the three songs on this demo are so good. Incredibly good. Can't wait to pick up the other two 7"s.

Spirits Meet Tomar Control

And another release by my new favorite band. It's really hard to keep up with them, but you gotta do what you gotta do. This time they teamed up with Tomar Control from Peru. I was a little underwhelmed by the Spirits songs at first, probably because I absolutely love their LP, but with every spin I gave the split they've been growing on me. 

I'd never heard of Tomar Control before (Peruvian hardcore hasn't been on my radar at all) but I really like the songs on their side of the split. 

Both pink and blue are out of 125 copies and since Speedowax had a few tests for sale in their webstore for a really good price I picked up one of those as well. 

Spirits Get A Grip

Okay, I admit it: I've become a Spirits fanboy. Not really that big a surprise if you've read the last couple of entries on here. This split 7" with Get A Grip is their third release in what, less than a year? Quite productive. Actually, the songs on this split are the first official recordings by this band. At least that's what I read on Screaming For Records. You can definitely hear that the band was still searching for its sound. Probably the weakest release so far, but then again, weak is relative. The songs are still pretty good all in all. The Get A Grip side is pretty good as well. Short and fast hardcore songs. Good one.
There are two variants for this split, honey coloured vinyl, out of 125, and and skittles coloured vinyl, also out of 125.