Rebuy, Repeat

Another variant of Miles Away's 3rd LP. Black vinyl was part of the first pressing and there are only 216 copies. This one comes with a nice poster and a sticker.

(Not So) Young Man On A Spree

To be honest it feels a little bit like I'm binge collecting these last few weeks, but I can't help buying a whole bunch of records from one band if they all come from one seller. This is the last Modern Life Is War record for now though. 3rd press on purple vinyl out of 500 copies. The record looks pretty red in this picture, but purple is always a colour that is hard to take accurate pictures of. This copy is part of the original run on purple vinyl since it comes with a gatefold sleeve, whereas the still on-going pressing on purple only has a regular sleeve.

Hair Raising Accounts Of Nerdism

Both of the first two Modern Life Is War LPs have aged incredibly well for me and I've been listening a lot to both of them lately. 1st press on blue-white swirl out of 1000. I feel like I have reached a decent level again as far as the MLIW collection goes.

My Love My Way

Another one down. I have to say the Modern Life Is War collection is coming along rather nicely these last few months. I received a few nice addictions and there are more in the mail already. This copy on white vinyl is part of the (original) first press on Martyr Records. Kyle Whitlow wrote on his blog that there are about 300 copies, but I also found 332 as number for this variant.

Live At Sound And Fury

Have Heart. Live. Three of their best songs. Inside Out cover song. More than enough reasons to get this record. I actually traded for it, which is something I really enjoy, but don't get to do as often as I'd like to. The cool thing about this trade was that I traded with someone from Singapore and in addition to the 7" I wanted, he threw in a couple of releases by bands from South East Asia, which I most likely would have never heard of otherwise.




As mentioned above, I got a couple of extras that weren't part of the trade itself. I got tapes by Overthrown and Losing End, and this split between Random Violence and Value Lasts from the Philippines. Both bands on this split are female fronted, which is pretty awesome.

Rev 25

While at it I thought 'Why not expand the - to be honest rather sad - Gorilla Biscuits collection?' Same seller meant no extra shipping cost either. So here we are. Back in 2012 Revelation Records celebrated their 25th anniversary. There were a bunch of showcases with former, reformed and current bands on Revelation. For one of these showcases, the one in Chicago to be precise, Rev made a special set of records which included represses of the GB 7", YOT 7", Into Another 7" and Texas Is The Reason 7". All of them came with the same layout: black sleeve with the logo on front. The records also came on the same colour, which in this case was clear. Rev did a really good job with these. The records look really classy and befitted the occasion.
Had I been at the show, I definitely would have bought a set. A few days after the showcase in Chicago Rev sold a few of them online, but of course I missed out on those as well because of the time difference. So I had to wait a few more years. Again, it was well worth the wait. To be honest, the only record I really care about is the GB 7". The others would be a nice addition, but I don't consider them a must have.

Bananacore

I'm pretty sure that everybody who's into collecting vinyl has certain records that could be considered milestones of their collection. It doesn't have to be the most rare or most expensive record or variant of a record, but rather one that feels very special for some reason. For me personally, the s.t. 7" by Gorilla Biscuits on yellow vinyl is a prime example of that. It's just always been one of those records I knew I just had to have at some point. I always hesitated though when I had the chance to acquire one of these the last few years since the price - like for many early Rev releases - has gone up considerably. But at some point you just have to pull the trigger. On that note, I've become a big fan of the 'Make Offer' button on Discogs lately... It was well worth the wait though because record and sleeve are in awesome condition for a record that age.
Officially 2000 copies of this variant exist, but it wouldn't be an early Rev release if there weren't a bunch of variants out there. There's also a yellow/off white variant, 50-90 copies have a Warzone b-side label, and some come with red letters on the sleeve instead of the purple ones you can see here. So it's rather difficult to pinpoint a number of how many there are exactly.

Right Brigade / A Poor Excuse

My friend and trading buddy Tom surprised me with a nice parcel last week. He sent me a copy of an old zine called Open Your Eyes (#3) and a copy of this split. We had been talking about Right Brigade on the phone before, and we both agreed that the early stuff is pretty great, but that the LP on Rev sucks. I mentioned to him that I didn't have anything on vinyl by them, so nice guy that he is he helped me out here. Thanks again. This is actually a pretty cool variant. 150 copies with this sleeve were made for the weekend release shows on 11 February and 12 February 2000. This is #129.

Neon Lights

This is the other record I bought to rationalize ordering a CD in the US. I didn't know anything about Ambitions, except they had releases on Think Fast and Bridge 9 in the mid 2000s. That time period in combination with these labels is usually a good frame of reference. I like the three songs by Ambitions, but I'm not a fan of the Misfits cover.

Embrace Today

The next two postings are going to be a little bit embarrassing because I bought both records for the reason that I didn't want to pay shipping for only a CD. Yes, I admit to buying a CD. My excuse is that it was a promo CD from one of my favourite bands ever. It still feels wrong somehow, but, oh well. The reason I decided to pick up the Embrace Today 7" was mainly because it was released on Life Records. Alright, and because it was cheap. It's good enough music, but it won't become a favourite of mine.

Hardcore Breakout

This compilation from the late 00s years features only German bands, as you might have guessed from the title. Listening to Hardcore Breakout BRD brings back a lot of good memories from that time, so I'm okay with being eight years late to the party. If I'm not mistaken there's only/still one band active from that time. 165 copies on yellow vinyl.

For The Sake Of Dedication

This is a rad compilation from the late 90s. Pretty much all of the bands contributed good songs here and the youth crew revival that was going on at that time is documented pretty well I guess. I can't stand Floorpunch though, and them having a song on this compilation is kind of the fly in the ointment. Musically I quite understand why Floorpunch was and is appealing to many hardcore kids. Their lyrics, however, suck for the most part. I've never been able to get behind overly zealous edge bands, so reading lines like "I pray to God you OD on that shit" makes me really cringe. The only thing you're doing by writing lyrics like this is demonstrate that a clear mind is not necessarily the better state of mind.

EDIT: I just remembered that the seller tossed in this 7" for free. Building were a straight edge band from Belgium from the late 90s and they sound exactly like what you would expect from an edge band from that time.

Shopping For A Record

I like to think that I have a pretty good Good Clean Fun collection and I always thought I was well informed about the pressing info of each release. As it turns out there's one variant that I'd never seen or even heard of. Shopping For A Crew was originally released on 7" format by Underestimated Records. Then it was rereleased by Dutch label Reflections Records, also as a 7". A few years later Dead Serious from Germany released a compilation of the Shopping For A Crew and Who Shares Wins 7"s, which was also called Shopping For A Crew. The compilation comes on black, black-brown splatter and purple vinyl. And I thought that was it. I once mailed the label about detailed pressing info and the possibility of acquiring a test press, which surely must exist, but I never heard back from them. A few years back I stumbled across another variant of this compilation, which I'd never seen or heard of either. It comes with a special Crucial Youth rip-off sleeve and was pressed on red vinyl. Since there are only ten copies of that variant, I somehow thought it was a test press pressed on coloured vinyl for some reason. It never entered my mind that this could be part of a whole different colour pressing and just comes with a limited sleeve. A few weeks back I saw a picture of a red vinyl copy on Instagram, so I went over to Discogs and checked the Good Clean Fun releases, which is something I never do as I happen to have most of them. As it happened to be there was a copy readily available.

Modern Life Is Pink

Since I decided to rebuild my Modern Life Is War collection, I've been checking the Lifeline Record's website more regularly than I used to. The obvious reason is that I want to know when Joe Lifeline puts out new variants for any Modern Life Is War records, the other reason is that he also opens the Lifeline vault from time to time and sells some goodies.

The first record I picked up is a repress of Modern Life Is War's debut LP on red vinyl. There are 650 copies on red. Officially. Actually I think that this is a repress of the repress. I'm just guessing here, but I could imagine this record is not part of the original repress on red vinyl since that came out a few years ago. He did the same with the Witness LP, which as been repressed on purple vinyl, and then on purple vinyl again.

Here's another reason why I think this might be a repress. This pink variant you can see here was also offered a few weeks ago at the Lifeline store. It was labelled 'mispress', so either it was a mispress when the original red ones were pressed and Joe has been sitting on them for five years, or it was a mispress when he repressed the red vinyl more recently. But since I haven't seen any pink copies like this one these last few years, I'm leaning towards it being a recent mispress.
I love the little details that have been added, like the lyric sheet that is printed on pink paper and the pink hand coloured 'My Love My Way' writing on the front cover. Nice, subtle little touches that make this record look really awesome.
The fact that there are only 65 copies on pink vinyl makes this the third rarest variant of all Modern Life Is War LPs after the mispress of Witness on clear red (/12-15) and the record release edition for Witness (/62) and ties it with the final show box set, which is also out of 65 copies. Great job Lifeline Records.

Fall From Grace

Second 7" by Ensign. 4339 copies on black vinyl, as can be seen here. There are a whole bunch of colour pressings as well. 100 copies come with a cool Side By Side rip-off sleeve. I like the first 7", I also like the second one.