Doing Nothing

Other than sitting on a board and riding it down my driveway when I was 10 years old, I have never skated. I've never felt coordinated enough to even attempt it...knowing that I would soon end up on my ass. So even though I've never done it, I can still appreciate a good skate band. Whether you are Possessed To Skate with Suicidal, catching a Frontside Grind with Underdog, going to Skate and Destroy with SSS, or "grinding slappies all day long" with Nothing Done...I'm down with it. I've been scouring eBay for Nothing Done's Idiot Stomp 7 inch for a while now, and was pretty excited to finally find and win a copy...even if was only on black vinyl and limited to 720 copies. This was released on Not Just Words Records back in 2004, and has been sold out for a while. Man, this EP rages. Hardcore punk with plenty of attitude.

Taking Hostages

When I saw Hostage Calm play at the last show for The First Step a year ago, I was hopeful that they would have vinyl for their newest LP, Lens. I was disappointed to find that they only had it available on CD. Thankfully, Redscroll Records made sure that this saw a proper vinyl release at the beginning of 2009. I'm kind of at a loss on how to describe Hostage Calm's sound, because they don't really have a sound that I can easily compare them to. They do a nice melodic hardcore style that typically turns me off...but really, I'm loving this. Listening to this today, I can't help but be impressed. Packaging on this is pretty slick as well, with a nice big fold out lyric sheet. The copy that I picked up was on a white and black split colored vinyl, and limited to 200.

Mob Rules

I had never heard of The Rival Mob until Sven turned me on to them a couple of months ago. I was blown away. It was rough, raw and ugly. Hardcore. I loved it and immediately set out to get myself a copy on vinyl. It was released on Lockin' Out Records, and to be honest, I had no idea that this label was still around, nor did I know where to pick up their stuff. I was checking through the distro list at the Six Feet Under store, and managed to find a copy there, so I picked it up. To my surprise, The Rival Mob ended up playing Have Heart's last show on Edge Day. I didn't think they were a part of the original line up, but it was cool to check them out live. To balance out their negativity, they did a cover of Crippled Youth's Positive Scene, which was a nice touch.

Edge Day 2009

The Edge Day show this year was both a ton of fun and a huge disappointment. The show itself was a blast. Rob, Paul and I drove down to Massachusetts yesterday, and compared to our previous roadtrip to Toronto, this drive flew by and before we knew it, we were at the club. It was complete chaos trying to get into the show, as the club kept redirecting the lines to get inside. Pat Flynn started off organizing everyone, and seemed to have everything well in hand, and then the people running the club continued to move the lines about 5 or 6 times...moving people from one side of the building to other. By the time they wanted all 1,500 people to organize into a single file line, the crowd lost any semblance of order and started getting unruly and crowd surfing. We were at the front of the line, so we were one of the first ones inside, and therefore were amongst the crowd of 50 that got to see No Tolerance play their set. I was really looking forward to checking them out and they did not disappoint. Waste Management, Rival Mob, Step Forward, Foundation and Cruel Hand all played fantastic sets as well, but the highlight of my evening was when Sweet Pete took the mic and they started ripping through a handful of In My Eyes songs. In My Eyes is one of my favorite hardcore bands of all time, and I went off for Pete and his makeshift band...stagediving left and right, and taking the microphone from him to sing along (I'm in the photo above, next to Pete, with the No For An Answer shirt). By the time Bane and Have Heart hit the stage, I was pretty beat and had to work myself to the back of the crowd for each of their sets. All in all it was a great send off, for a great Straight Edge band. Have Heart, R.I.P.

The big disappointment was the lack of a Have Heart Last Show vinyl pressing. Once inside, I rushed to the merch tables, but no one had any limited Edge Day vinyl...I was pretty bummed. Given the number of special covers and tour presses Have Heart has for their records, I was really looking forward to something really epic for their last show. The only piece of vinyl that I picked up was a tour pressing for the Foundation 7 inch on Six Feet Under. This record really impresses, sounding like it came straight out of the early 90's hardcore scene. Comparable to Unbroken's Ritual LP, or maybe Chokehold's Prison of Hope. I'm liking it.

Following Through On The Edge

Since tomorrow, October 17th, is Edge Day, I figured that it would be appropriate to post a record that I received recently from a great mid-90's Straight Edge band. It would probably make more sense for me to actually make this post tomorrow, but since I'll be celebrating my 18th year of the Straight Edge at the final Have Heart show in Boston, I figured that I'd get things started a little early.

Led by singer Craig Mack and bassist Jesse Stand Hard, Follow Through never seemed to reach the legendary status as Ten Yard Fight, In My Eyes and Floorpunch, but damn, they should have. With songs like You Booze You Lose, this Connecticut band were unapologetically Straight Edge and proud. I've had this on CD since it was originally released in 1997, but when someone posted a list of vinyl they were selling on the Livewire board, I didn't hesitate to take this Edge classic off his hands and finally get it into my record collection...and for the $3.00 price tag, I would be a fool not to. Now, you'll have to excuse me while I drop the needle on this album, and practice some stage dives on to my couch.

Don't Fear The Reaper

The vinyl for the ON LP was a split release between React Records and Reaper Records (not to mention a Euro release from Powered Records), and both labels had their own pre-order colors pressed. Needless to say, between the three record labels, I spent a ton of money the day that pre-orders went up. The first to arrive was a huge order from React, but I soon heard that numerous people had received their Reaper orders weeks earlier. I still hadn't seen mine, so I fired off an email to Patrick from Reaper Records to ask him if my order had shipped. I'm not sure what had happened, and I was getting a little paranoid after my Alert 7 inches didn't arrive from Life to Live Records, but a couple of days later Patrick replied...apologizing and promising to send it out right away. Not sure if he didn't mail it the first time around, or if the Post Office black hole sucked into another dimension to keep my Alert records company. Either way, Patrick responded quickly and within a couple of days, I had my Reaper pressing for the ON Double Vision LP. I thought that originally it was going to be on clear vinyl, but it seems there was a change of plans and it was pressed on a nice looking grey wax.

In addition to the ON vinyl, Reaper also threw in a copy of the new Maximum Penalty LP. To be honest, I wasn't really familiar with the band. Yeah, I knew that they were on the Where The Wild Things Are comp, but I've never really paid any attention to them. In fact, other than Gorilla Biscuits and Breakdown, and can't really tell you who else is on that comp. For New York Hardcore comps, I was drawn more to The Way It Is, so I never really paid it much attention. So back to Maximum Penalty...the sticker on the cover states that it was produced by the same guy that did albums from Lamb of God and Ill Nino...which was a big load of "who the fuck cares" to me. Seriously, it really lowered my expectations for this album. I'm not a fan of "tough guy" hardcore with a metal influence, and I was really not excited for this album. I convinced myself to give it a shot, and I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't a Hatebreed/Terror style of hardcore that I expected, but reminded me more of Leeway. Not bad. I'm still not entirely comfortable with some of the singing on this album, but really, it's not bad. Packaging on this is top notch and the vinyl comes with a slick looking download card, but you have to download one song at a time which is a pain in the ass.

Deluxe Paranoia

Picked up another Black Sabbath deluxe vinyl pressing. This time around it is Sabbath's second album, Paranoid. I'm not sure what the difference was between this one and the self titled Black Sabbath album, but for some reason, Paranoid was around $10 more. Still, it didn't stop me from buying it. Quite possibly the best Sabbath album. Sure it has songs like Iron Man, Paranoid, and War Pigs which have been played into the ground, but as a whole, this album is near perfect. Seriously, drop the needle on War Pigs, turn it up loud, and try and tell me that the drumming on this one is not amazing.

Somewhere Back In Time

One of my first concerts was to see Iron Maiden on tour for the Powerslave tour. It set a standard on stage shows for all other Heavy Metal bands to follow, and for very few to ever meet. When Maiden decided to tour last year, only doing songs from their "glory days", which includes their albums up through the Seventh Son LP, Jeff and I made sure that we got our tickets to see them for the Massachusetts show. The show was an amazing one, exceeding my expectations. It was no surprise when Iron Maiden released a live album to document the tour, and it was probably no surprise to anyone that knows me that I ended up picking up a copy in every format that was released. On release day I bought the CD, then Rob ended up buying me the DVD for my birthday, and for the final piece of the puzzle, I bought the picture disc double LP with the last of the birthday money I had received from my family.

I am typically not a fan of the picture disc, but come on, there is no denying that this looks amazing. Nice, heavy dust sleeves that are loaded up with full color pictures from the tour to accompany the vinyl. All in all, great packaging, complete with a nice looking gatefold sleeve.

A New Cover Is Revealed

Every time that I find a different pressing of the Reveal 7 inch, I'm surprised. I know nothing about the pressing info on this record, so I get excited each time I find something new. This time around, I stumbled upon the pressing with the limited edition cover...except this one was blue and not orange, like the one I already have. Anything else that I was watching on eBay took an immediate back seat, as I set out to win this at any cost.

Just like the orange cover that I own, this one is hand numbered out of 100. I'm assuming that this is just one run of 100 on black vinyl with the big hole, and they just a couple different colors for printing the covers.

The question now is, are there any other different pressings that I don't know about?

Lost And Found

Sometime around 1991, I really started to immerse myself into the hardcore scene. It really became everything to me, and I felt like it was something that I could call my own. Even though I was 20/21 years old, this music really helped define who I am today. The bands from that time period hold a lot of sentimental value for me, but apparently I'm alone in this opinion as I was able to pick up Encounter's Lost 7 inch, for only $5.50. Seriously, I would have paid 5 times the sale amount to get this into my collection. I already own this on black vinyl, but I didn't hesitate to pick up this copy on grey colored vinyl. A classic from Redemption Records.