Hellish Expectations

I had every intention on getting my post count back on track this month, and then it all fell apart and October is shaping up to have my lowest post count in the past 15 years. It kind of bums me out, but I just haven't been able to get my attention focused on this thing. Granted, I was gone for over a week on holiday this month, and then I had trouble finding motivation to write about a four album Black Sabbath boxset, but I still hoped to have my post count higher than this for the month. Still, I've bought some cool new records, plus have been excited to add some old classics to my collection recently... so maybe November will be more productive for me.

Midnight released their sixth album, Hellish Expectations, back in March this year, but I've had a hard time working up the interest to check out new releases this year. So while I liked what I'd heard, I just couldn't stay motivated to stick with it, and since the record wasn't available at a local record store, I couldn't be bothered to track one down online. Basically, I was uninterested and lazy.

Here we are, seven months later, and my interest in new records has been sparked. I'm listening to new shit more these days, and after revisiting the new Midnight album a few more times, I knew that I needed to get a copy before the year was out. Hellish Expectations is pure Midnight speed metal. It is exactly what I want from the band. If my mind was right earlier this year, I would have jumped all over this because it is so good.

"Sangria" colored vinyl.

Black Box

I can't believe that this is the second box set that I've purchased this year. I try to stay away from these things nowadays, as I generally find them a big waste of precious shelf space. Still, I needed the Shotmaker box because they are such an underapprciated 90's hardcore punk gem, and then this Black Sabbath box was absolutely crucial.

The Anno Domini box from Black Sabbath finally delivers what hardcore fans have been begging for... the Tony Martin albums, remastered and reissued. Originally released during some of metal's lowest years, it seems that most Sabbath fans look down their nose at those albums with Tony Martin singing for the band. Clowns gonna be "Ozzy or nothing", but to ignore Martin's output with the band is straight up criminal behavior. Of course the Sabbath camp hasn't made it easy to check out those albums as they let the fall away into obscurity, and haven't seen a release since their original pressing in the early 90's... until now.

Headless Cross was the last Sabbath album that I bought on CD before basically abandoning metal throughout the 90's, and I've wanted to pick up the original pressing of the record for years. Owning this box set is good enough for me, and I can stop wringing my hands over having to pay close to $100 to own this.

Tyr was originally released in 1990 and is probably the Tony Martin album that I'm least familiar with. I wasn't completely checked out of metal at this point, but I was on my way out the door... but still, I don't remember hearing a thing about this record when it was released. Ten years later, as I was looking back and catching up on what I'd missed out on, I discovered that this album, plus their next one, Cross Purposes, even existed.

After Tyr, Dio came back to Sabbath and recorded the excellent Dehumanizer, before the line up imploded again. Tony Martin came back to the band and in 1994 they recorded one of my favorite albums with him at the mic... Cross Purposes. Martin tends to have a bit of Dio's sound to his voice, but here, I can really hear it.

Finally, we have Forbidden from 1995. I do seem to recall hearing about this album around the time it was being released, but I think that was only because people were talking about how bad it was. While it is the weakest of the Tony Martin albums, I do still enjoy it... but this is coming from someone that tends to really enjoy universally panned albums like St. Anger or the self titled Warzone record, so take it as you will.

This is a solid box set. In addition to the four records, there is a nice booklet with tons of pictures and information, plus giant Headless Cross poster and a reproduction of the tour program. So glad that Sabbath finally released this!

Bad Brains Blue Note

I never really paid much attention to Bad Brains beyond Rock For Light. Sure, I'd listened to I Against I, and I appreciated it enough to spin it once a year, but it wasn't an album that I listened to that closely or spent much time with. A few years ago, however, I Against I started to catch my ear more and more... then last year, I really became hooked on the title track, and I listened the fuck out of that song. Of course that obsession eventually bled over to the full album, and suddenly I found myself really wanting to chase down a copy. When Ralf started posting colored vinyl versions of the album earlier this year, it only fueled my desire to track down a copy... but then I got side tracked by a rad looking reissue.

The cover design here pays tribute to those iconic Blue Note jazz records, with the tinted photography and clean bold text. These "Punk Note" versions look fucking sharp for the Bad Brains reissues and make me want to finally listen to Quickness to see if I want to bother chasing down more of these. Collector mentality is going to make me listen to records that I'd never given much thought to, isn't it?

Because I'm an idiot, I can't remember who messaged me about this reissue of I Against I being available. If it was you, let me know. Either way, as soon as I saw this great looking cover art and colored vinyl, I was all over it. Discogs has this listed as "coke bottle clear" vinyl, but this copy looks more clear with some blue swirled lightly into it. Is this the same thing?

Every Day Is Leg Day

There have only a few new releases so far this year that have really surprised me and had me excited. There have been plenty of discoveries for me this year that have given me a charge, and I've enjoyed listening to some new records that have come out, but for those that I've really obsessed over... they have been few and far between. One of those that has really caught my attention though, has been the new Whores album.

I've seen the Whores name pop up a few times as a recommendation on Spotify, and while I wouldn't say that the band name turned me off, let's just say that it didn't exactly make me rush to check them out. I don't know... I guess that I assumed they were some super sludgy sounding band , and I wasn't interested. But I recently saw that Whores were going to be playing near me, and with a new album I figured the time was right to finally put those assumptions aside and actually give them a listen.

Oh shit. Very quickly after I started to check them out, I wanted to buy the album and catch their live show when they come through town. Well, since I'm out of town when they will be playing their live show here, I guess I'll have to just be happy with one of those things. This record, from start to finish, is great. It isn't as sludgy as I expected, and some of these songs move alone nicely, but overall this thing hits hard and heavy... my mind keeps thinking My War era Black Flag (with less depression and more fuzz). Fuck. This one surprised me and I'm eating it up.

I wasn't sure which colored vinyl pressing I wanted. I didn't think that the option were all that great, but decided that I'd order the third press of blue in clear vinyl from the label, and that would be good enough. Instead they sent the second press of orange in yellow, which is a color combination that doesn't even make sense here. Ugh. I should have just bought what I wanted through Discogs.

The Kids Are Back At Donington

My friend Jeff gave me this record as a Christmas gift last year. He has recently acquired a bunch of old classic hardcore and punk records to sell for a friend, and since I'll be slowly buying some from him in the near future, I figured that I'd better get this album up on the blog before I get to the more interesting shit.

While I do really love the early Twisted Sister records, I probably wouldn't have bothered to chase down this live set at Donington from '83. This live recording has been available for years as a bootleg, but it seems to have received an official release back in 2022. I'm not wild about the record cover... especially using a photo from a year or so after this recorded show... but the live songs themselves sound great, and as a gift, I'll happily add this to the collection and give it the occasional spin.

The colored vinyl doesn't look too terrible, but could have done without the black splatter. Splatter ruins everything.

Chemtrails Over An Alternate Cover

I've posted some questionable things on the blog before... most notable was my brief obsession with Japanese singles for those early 80's MTV hits. Those records, however, were very much a comfort for me during a period where America's political climate had me angry and depressed a lot of the time, so I felt justified posting them here. But with this latest record that I picked up, I wasn't so sure if I should include it on a blog that mostly focuses on hardcore and metal. When I saw the post that Marcus did for Olivia Rodrigo a couple of months back, it cleared my head of this doubt. Even though this falls outside of what I normally buy for records, it is very much a snapshot of where my head is at... plus if I've learned anything over the past year it's that I won't limit myself to the restrictive musical views I've held in the past. This is my mind wide fucking open.

Last year, my friend Sarah introduced me to Lana Del Rey with her song West Coast. I found it somewhat interesting upon first listen, but it wasn't something that I expected that I'd really spend much time with. It was way outside of what I typically listened to, but it provided a nice break in my routine, and after hearing it a handful of times it really started to work its way into my brain. Soon after, the song would pop up on a random shuffle and as soon as I'd hear those funky opening notes my ears would instantly perk up and I'd be like, "wait, who is this again?", and I started to be interested in checking out what else Lana had to offer. Through the Fall of 2023, I started making a personal playlist on Spotify for Lana Del Rey songs that I found interesting, and before too long I was really enjoying it and revisiting those songs daily.

Yeah, I was shocked as well... but still, I figured that I was really only going to get into some of her songs, and she wouldn't be a full album artist for me. That changed this year, as I started takind a deep dive into Born To Die... and then when that wasn't enough I started repeat listens of Norman Fucking Rockwell, and Chemtrails Over The Country Club. I don't know, man, there is just something about her voice that is melancholic and sad, and it gets me every fucking time.

Look, if you've been a long time follower of this blog, you know that I'm a sucker for alernative artwork for records. I can't resist a special limited cover... and Lana Del Rey has a number of those for her albums. So while I was thinking about buying my first Lana album, and checking those different covers, it only fueled the fire to want to get one into my collection. I'd been listening to Chemtrails a lot recently, and the album has a couple of my favorite songs from Lana with Let Me Love You Like A Woman and Dark But Just A Game, so finding the red vinyl special cover for that album, at a really reasonable price, had me adding it to my cart and checking out. Writing this has me checking out other alternate covers for her records, so who knows where this will lead me, but I kinda want more.

Crooked Bat Claw

The new Bat album was released back in May this year, and while I've really enjoyed the other records from them, 2025 has been a strange year and I haven't been able to work up any interest until now. Something clicked in my brain a few weeks ago when I was posting the latest album from The Obsessed, and suddenly I felt the urge to check out some of the more newer metal records. The new Bat album came to mind, and I headed over to Spotify to finally check it out.

Bat haven't released anything since before the Covid pandemic... so, like 100 years ago. No worries though, because Bat keep doing what Bat does best and channelling that old Venom sound (with a healthy dose of Motorhead's Orgasmatron) directly into Under The Crooked Claw. Initially I wasn't too excited about the cartoon bat cover art, but after a friend showed me examples of what other bands were doing with their generic AI looking covers, I suddenly felt a lot better about this one.

Shockingly, there seems to be only one colored vinyl pressing of this album. 1,500 on clear with black marble. Happy to be able to grab this copy at a local record store instead of Discogs for a change.