Preach The Legacy

I'm still over here mining thrash classics from Tim's collection. This time I took the opportunity to grab a couple of Testament records.

Testament's Practice What You Preach album was a big deal for me at the time. It was released on my birthday in August of 1989, and when I found out that they were going to be playing at The Channel in Boston that November, I decided that I wanted to go see them. I'd never gone to a show out of state, so the thought of it was both thrilling and terrifying. I convinced a group of friends to make the trip with me, and we all piled into my car and headed to Boston for the day. This was obviously back in the day before GPS, so we just grabbed a map and hoped for the best. The two hour drive to The Channel ended up taking us more like four as we continually got lost within Boston's confusing roadways, but we eventually found the club and it was a life changing show. Until that point, I was only used to big arena shows for those few bands that toured as far north as Maine... but to be on the floor of a packed club opened my eyes to how great and intimate a live show could be. Honestly, I don't remember much about the band playing because I was probably acting a fool in the mosh pit, but from that moment on I started making regular trips to Providence and Boston to see bands play.

While probably not considered as strong as the previous two Testament albums, The Legacy and The New Order, Practice What You Preach is still a classic from the band, and I'm so glad to finally have this in my collection.

Technically, I guess that I didn't need to buy this copy of The Legacy, but personally I kind of needed it. Mark Sandwell gave me UK pressings of The Legacy and The New Order when he was visiting the US back in 2019, and I was most thankful for his kindness with this gesture. That said however, I was a little bit disappointed that I didn't have US pressing for these albums. I felt like for classic US thrash bands, a US pressing was the proper way to go.

I was content with the UK copy from Mark, until I had the chance to pick up the US Megaforce version from Tim's collection, and I took the opportunity when it was in front of me.

Pink Has The 10 1/2

A few years ago, I picked up a couple of Black Flag records on colored vinyl. Those purchases were a couple of highlights for me for that year, and last Fall I wanted to get back to it and feel that kind of rush again.

Black Flag's live album, Who's Got The 10 1/2?, was kind of big deal for me as a kid. I didn't own Loose Nut or In My Head at the time, and this live record is full of songs from those albums so it got a lot of playing time from me. The whole set is just so catchy, and Henry's banter is top notch... perfect live record. When I was looking for some colored vinyl for Black Flag, I was happy to find this available on Discogs.

Man, that pink vinyl looks so good.

Red Rise And Control

Often times, as I'm posting a record here on the blog, I'll stumble upon another version that I need and I'll immediately buy it as I'm caught up in the heat of the moment.

This is what happened after I picked up the white tour cover for the split 7 inch with I Rise/Soul Control at Wanna Hear It when I was there last year with Sandwell. Adding that to the collection made me want more, and when I saw that this red vinyl version was available on Discogs, I immediately bought it.

The discogs seller ended up being Kyle Whitlow, who used to run Rivalry Records and did his Seeking The Simple blog. He was delayed on shipping out this split 7 inch, and sent me a message apologizing for it, saying that he was going to throw in some extra records from his Rivalry days to make up for it. This ended up being a copy of both the Red Handed and Soul Control LPs (that I already own), plus two more copies of the Soul Control record on red vinyl (with no sleeve), and then about 15 posters from various Rivalry bands... so basically it was a bunch of stuff that I didn't need and now I need to store it or get rid of it myself.

Spiritual Gang

Back at the end of September, my friend Gina was in town with her husband as they were starting their honeymoon vacation trip touring the New England coast. I met up with them that night and took them over to Green Hand Books to drool over the expensive horror paperbacks, and then on the walk to the restaurant, they wanted to stop and check out Coast City Comics. I'm not big on comics, so I'd never been into this store, and wasn't really expecting anything of interest. Wow, I was wrong. There were all kinds of fun horror movie things like pins and magnets, and I grabbed a few packs of Evil Dead trading cards to send off to my friends Alex and Sarah. I'm not one to be social and talk with people that work in stores... I will typically just pay for my shit and leave... but I ended up in a conversation with the guy behind the counter about punk bands and horror movie soundtracks while everyone else was shopping and I genuinely had a really good time there. I need to make it a point to stop in there more often.

As we were in Coast City Comics, I discovered that they had a small record section, so I started flipping through them. I wasn't really expecting much, but when I saw this split 7 inch with Spiritual Cramp and Chubby and the Gang, I was very excited and immediately placed it with the small pile of things that I was buying.

The split 7 inch is part of a comic book series called What's The Furthest Place From Here. Each edition in the series comes with a split 7 inch with bands performing a cover song. For this one, Spiritual Cramp does a Radio Birdman cover, and Chubby and the Gang do a song originally by The Kids. I was not familiar with either of these songs, but I love what SC and Chubby do with these covers. I think that I'm going to have to check out both of these old late 70's punk bands and see what I've been missing.

Live Undead

Another first press Slayer record that I was able to pick up from Tim's collection.

Slayer's Live Undead has always been a "nice to have" type of record and has never been something that I've actively tried to track down.... maybe that's because it was originally only pressed as a picture disc, and I'm not really fond of the format. Still, that was the format that I remember seeing advertised in magazines as a kid, so as I'm building my Slayer collection, this picture disc was really the only way that I was going to be satisfied.

The original press only contains three live songs on side A, and then side B has three studio tracks tacked on from their Show No Mercy LP and the Haunting The Chapel EP... which makes it really feel unnecessary, as later pressings include four more songs from that live session. I still have my 2011 reissue so if I'm going to put a Live Undead record on the turntable it would most likely be that one... but still, there is something special about finally owning this original picture disc.

Combat Onslaught

I'm slowly still working through the backlog of records that I picked up last year, but haven't had the time to get posted up here. I've been taking my time picking through Tim's collection, but there is still plenty left to be excited about.

Onslaught was an 80's thrash metal band out of Bristol in the UK. I remember seeing the band's name around back in those days, but I didn't end up hearing them until '89 when they enlisted Steve Grimmett from Grim Reaper to do vocals for their In Search Of Sanity album. That was a good record, but it seemed that the main consensus was that the first two Onslaught records was where it was at. For one reason or another, those early Onslaught albums were more difficult for me to find in the stores at the time, so it was many years later and in a file sharing music download age before I was able to finally check them out.

Both Power From Hell and The Force proved to be fantasic slabs of 80's thrash, but because I was so late in hearing them, I've never really spent much time with either one. As soon as I saw The Force in Tim's collection, I knew that I was going to have to buy it... and 2026 seems like a great time to really spend some time getting familiar with it.

Thrash till the death!

20 Years True

As I was preparing for the 20th anniversary for this blog, and looking at releases from 2006 that I could celebrate with, there was one more record that I wanted to pick up in addition to the Sinking Ships album. So consider this part 2 of yesterdays post.

True Colors were another band that released a record in 2006 when I was starting up this blog, but I didn't end up hearing about them for another year or so when they released the Focus On The Light album. Man, I loved this band over those early blog years, and collected a decent amount of TC vinyl, but somehow never managed to pick up a single version of that first 7 inch from 2006. It seems a bit difficult to find True Colors vinyl available these days, so I was very happy to find this version of the 7 inch available from a US seller for my 20th anniversary.

I never really spent much time with this record, but I've been listening to these 7 inch songs a lot this year. It gives me exactly what I want right now as I'm in this mindset for those often overlooked mid 2000's years of hardcore.

This preorder camo sleeve is rad, and I'm so happy to score one. Number 91 of 100 made.