The Purple Dawn

I never really paid too much attention to The Suicide File back in the mid 2000's. Those were weird times for me with hardcore and I was pretty disconnected from what was happening... so The Suicide File was one in a long list of bands that I never spent much time with. A few years ago I really sat up and started paying attention to some of those bands, and had a stretch where I was obsessed and spinning The Suicide File on repeat. I was looking for colored vinyl from the band, but for one reason or another it was proving more difficult that I expected and I ended up empty handed.

After adding some records to my cart over on Discogs, I started to browse to see if the seller had anything else that caught my eye. As soon as I saw this Suicide File 7 inch, I was excited to finally grab this. I still haven't bothered with the full length album, but these early songs from The Suicide File are so fucking good. One of the best records from 2002.

380 pressed on purple vinyl.

RTA LI

When record labels started pressing stupid amounts of colored vinyl options... frustrating me to the point of giving up collecting multiple versions... Rule Them All were one of the bands that snapped me out of that mindset and had me chasing multiple copies again. I loved the band that much and it brought that collector spirit back a little bit.

With their first 12 inch, An Alignment Of Polarity, I didn't think that I'd make much progress on that collection. The record was only pressed on black vinyl, but it did see a couple of limited covers made in small numbers, so I figured that my chances were small in getting my hands on them.

Last year I was surprised to have the opportunity to pick up the Silent Majority ripoff cover from a Discogs seller, and as I was writing the blog post back in January, I decided to see if anything else had popped up there. I was happy to find someone looking to sell the limited Long Island map cover, and I quickly added it to my cart.

Discogs doesn't have much info on this one... it just lists it as "300 copies pressed", so I was happy to find that it was numbered out of 50. I wonder if I'll have any luck finding a test press for this one and completing the collection.

90 MPH Ordination

I love that 90's hardcore/emo shit so much. I know that my love for 90's hardcore punk covers a lot of ground, but let me live in that sweet spot of Ebullition style with bands like Mohinder, Plunger, Moss Icon and Shotmaker because that style never gets old for me. That sound seems to only live in that timeframe, and I don't know if it could successfully be replicated today. Prove me wrong... please. But one of the bands that I loved from the mid-90's time period was Ordination Of Aaron.

Ordination Of Aaron came out strong around 1994 with a 7 inch, a split with Indian Summer, and some amazing songs that ended up on a few compilations, and I loved that shit so much. For one reason or another I wasn't able to pick up their LP, Immersion In A 90 MPH World, when it was released the following year. By the time 1996 rolled around and I picked up the discography CD, and I heard those LP songs for the first time, I was disappointed. They didn't really move me like I'd hoped they would... plus the youth crew revival was starting to take off at the time, and so I didn't spend much time with those songs and I quickly moved on to chase high fives and stage dives.

At some point last year, I decided to revisit the songs from that Ordination Of Aaron album (it was the 30th year of its release after all, so I was motivated) and I was surprised with how much I loved what I heard. Damn. This is that classic 90's emo stuff that I love. I had those songs on repeat, and early into 2026 when a US seller finally had a copy of the record available, I jumped on it.

Bitter Animals

I'm continually surprised with how many records Tim Singer is turning out these days. Between the new No Escape a few years ago, a new Deadguy album last year, and Bitter Branches... it seems like there is always something new from that guy.

Still, I was shocked to see preorders go up for a new Bitter Branches record from Equal Vision this year. Your Neighbors Are Failures was one of my favorite new releases back in 2022... it surprised me with how good it was... so yeah, I jumped on the preorder for their newest, Let's Give The Land Back To The Animals.

This new Bitter Branches record hits just as hard as the last one. There is so much rage in the delivery of these songs that it feels like it could boil over at any second... and this fits my mood lately, so I've been spinning this record a lot. "But I'm the weird one. I'm obscene. Why are you not screaming?"

Great gatefold packaging. 150 pressed on clear and red ripple colored vinyl.

William, It Was Really Nothing

Going through Tim's collection early on, he had a copy of Hatful Of Sorrow from The Smiths available. It was a version that had a misprinted cover that was missing the black dot separating two song titles on the back cover. I can't even remember what Jeff had priced it at, but at the time I felt that I didn't need to pay an inflated price because of a missing dot, and I let it pass me by. I was buying Louder Than Bombs from his collection, so I should be content with that, right? Wrong. I regretted not just putting up the money and buying Hatful Of Sorrow too, and earlier this year I was sharing those thoughts with Jeff. Much to my surprise, he reached into a stack of records and said that he had an extra in his collection and that I could take it for free. Good deal!

It still shocks me how much I love The Smiths these days, and this collection of singles, b-sides and other recording sessions is so good. Also, I love the way this package looks with the blue cover, lyric sheet and record labels.

So now the only two records I own for The Smiths are compilations. That's cool, but man, I'd really like to track down UK copies of Meat Is Murder and The Queen Is Dead soon.

30 Years Of Absinthe

I'm big on celebrating anniversaries. What was I listening to twenty years ago.... forty years ago? Hell, I'm keeping a list over on Letterboxd to watch and rank all the horror movies that I can from 1976 for a fifty year anniversary challenge. So yeah, I'm always interested in that stuff. I'd already done a couple of posts for the blog's 20th anniversary, so I've been in a celebrating mood... and as soon as we rolled into 2026, I started digging into my 1996 playlist to see what I was listening to 30 years ago.

At the start of my 1996 playlist was the Absinthe EP. I always loved Groundwork, and while Absinthe features a couple of key players from that band, I never really latched on to them the same way. Absinthe seemed a bit more harsh and chaotic compared to Groundwork, and I wasn't too interested back in the day. Seeing how much I fell in love with stuff like Disembodied last year, I approached this record with that mindset and found that I really loved what I was hearing. This thing got multiple repeat plays early this year, and I've listened to these songs more than I have over the 30 years that I've owned the 10 inch.

So yeah, while I do still own the 10 inch that I orginally bought for this record around 1996, it was the black vinyl version. Seeing how much I was listening to this, I couldn't help but feel the itch to pick up the colored vinyl version for it as well.

Free And Pink

I love some late 60's and 70's rock, but in recent years I've found that I don't reach for it nearly as much as I once did. My brain wants more aggresive shit these past few years. However, one cold and snowy weekend at the start of this year, I wanted to pull some of those old albums off the shelf, and stuff like Cream and early Bob Seger had me back in that frame of mind. At some point over the following weeks, I dove into the band Free on Spotify and I was surprised to find that I started obsessing over their self titled album.

The song Lying In The Sunshine had a chokehold on me and I couldn't get enough. It has such a lazy carefee summer vibe and it contrasted nicely with the harsh snowy January weather. I just kept returning to that album and I was surprised with how obsessed with it I had become. I needed the record in my collection and because I was listening to it so much, my brain thought that it would be very cool to pick up an original UK pink label Island pressing from 1969.

I really wanted this record, and I know how fickle my tastes can be, so I knew that if I didn't pull the trigger at the peak of this obsession I'd soon move on and forget about it... then a couple of years from now I'd find myself wishing that I'd struck while the iron was hot. Not wanting to regret letting it pass me by, I found one and jumped on it... making it my second $100 record purchase of 2026, and we were only two weeks into the year.