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.

20 Years Disconnecting

Today is the 20th anniversary of this blog. I started this thing on a whim when a friend of mine said that he was starting a blog about his journey getting into stand up comedy, and I felt the urge to document something here as well. I'd just started getting into record collecting the year before and it had become an obsession. I was constantly scouring eBay, and I was creating checklists for things like my short lived plan to collect all of the Bridge Nine pressings (truly a sign of my 2006 mindset LOL), and starting a "record nerd" blog to write about the things I was buying just seemed to make sense. Who knew that 20 years and 2,644 post later I'd still be doing this thing?

To say that this blog has become my personality would be an understatement. I'm not sure who I'd be right now without it. I love writing about this shit and documenting my musical obsessions, and sometimes I question if I'm buying records because I need to own them or if I'm just using it as an excuse to talk about it here. Either way, I still get a kick out of this thing and don't see myself stopping anytime soon.

When I noticed that I was coming up on 20 years here, I started to put some thought into what I should do to commemorate the event. I wanted a record to post today that was going to fit the 20 year anniversary theme and it seemed that something released in the year that I started this blog would be a good way to go. I started checking my 2006 playlist and discovered a couple of records that I'd never picked up over the past 20 years and figured that now was the time.

It took me a long time to really get into Sinking Ships. I had a brief obsession with them a few years ago, but still I've never really paid much attention to their album from 2006, Disconnecting. After giving the songs a couple of spins last month, I knew that I needed the record for this 20 year anniversary post.

It might have taken me a while to get there, but I am loving this album right now. So happy that I was prompted to give it my attention.

99 pressed on blue vinyl.

Iron Chic Ys

Iron Chic were a punk band that were huge for me around 2012/2013. Their albums were such a surprise... so catchy and so much fun... and it felt like I was listening to them constantly during those years that I first discovered them. They released a bunch of singles at the time as well, but for one reason or another I didn't put much effort into chasing them... part of that may have been because they did a few split 7 inches and I just wasn't interested in some band that I'd never heard of on the b-side, but in the case of the Ys EP it just wasn't easily available at the time.

The Ys 7 inch was released from a label in Australia, and I remember at the time that it was just a difficult one for me to get my hands on. It seemed like it was only available from overseas sellers, and I wasn't interested in paying the postage to get one so I threw it onto my Discogs want list and figured that at some point I'd be able to pick it up for a decent price. Fast forward 10 years, and I was finally able to grab a copy.

It's kind of nice that it took me this long to get my hands on this 7 inch as it is some new Iron Chic material that I hadn't heard until now. Two new songs and a cover of Dog Bite from Dead Kennedys... yeah, this sounds good in my ears.

Purple To Write Home About

2025 was a big year for me when it came to discovering some 90's bands that I really didn't think that I liked. While bands like Disembodied and Harvest were the two that took most of my attention, I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that I was surprised to find myself spending a bit of time with Saves The Day and The Get Up Kids as well. I listened to both of those bands a bit in the late 90's, and I enjoyed their sophomore albums from 1999, but soon after that I didn't bother much with either band and they have largely been forgotten over the past 25 years.

After talking with my friend Alex last year about music, and hearing her talk about how much she loved Saves The Day and The Get Up Kids, I figured that I'd check out their first couple of records again. Admittedly, I didn't hold out much hope in revisiting these two bands again. I'd generally filed them under "bands that I never need to hear again", so I was shocked when I found that I really enjoyed checking them out again. After repeat listens I figured that maybe I wanted to get something into my 90's record collection for either of them.

The first album from The Get Up Kids is definitely my favorite from the band, but Something To Write Home About is a nice slice of emo from that time as well. I was having trouble deciding what I wanted to pick up from the band. I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend the money that discogs sellers were asking for Four Minute Mile, and when I saw this purple vinyl version of their second album, it just felt like the right choice.

I wasn't going to get too wrapped up in my obsession for the band last summer, and I didn't need to commit to a first pressing... nah, this second pressing from 2009 on purple did the job nicely.