The Line Is Drawn

Since we are talking about bands that I missed the first time around, I might as well post about the Carry On record that I received recently. I'm not sure when they released The Line Is Drawn...1999/2000????....but I do know for sure that I was not buying any vinyl at the time. I was strictly buying only CDs, and therefore I missed out on a lot of great hardcore 7 inches from this time period. I didn't check out Carry On until around 2001 when Youngblood released the It's All Our Blood CD. I didn't start buying vinyl again until I saw Internal Affairs in 2003. My brother Paul and I had driven to Boston to check out Stand & Fight, and IA was opening the show along with Blacklisted. Internal Affairs impressed me so much, plus they did a Judge cover, so I figured that I'd check out their merch table after the show. They didn't have any CDs, so I bit the bullet and picked up their 7 inch. Although I turned out that I never really liked that record all that much, it was the official turning point for me to start getting back into buying vinyl. It wasn't until Champion released Promises Kept in 2004 that I really dove headfirst into collecting vinyl.

It's Risky Business

Once again, I'm late to the party. Where the hell was I during this time frame in Hardcore? First, I missed out on Iron Boots, and now I'm sitting here scratching my head on why it took me 6 years to finally check out Risky Business. This shit is so much fun...straight up Lockin' Out style. When they sing "turn that fuckin' frown upside down" on Loosen Up, man, I can't help but smile. Just a good time.

Look, I really like this band, but I don't know if they were really popular enough to warrant 250 copies of a tour press. Seems like a lot to me. Did they sell all 250 on tour?!? Well hell, they did tour Canada, the US, and Europe, and I apparently had no idea what was going on in Hardcore for 2004/2005, so what do I know?

Record Conventions Can Suck It

Man, there was a time when a trip to a record convention was cause for excitement. When my friends and I started going, back in the mid-80's, the conventions were huge, and there were all kinds of cool treasures to find. That time was worlds away, and the record convention no longer holds that same thrill level. For the most part, the shows nowadays are the equivalent of thumbing through so much flea market garbage...the majority of it is either beat to shit, over priced, or some 80's one hit wonder. Still, when Jeff and I drove to Massachusetts the other weekend, I somehow managed to walk out of there with around $40 of vinyl, and an overwhelming need to sanitize my hands.

Grim Reaper : Fear No Evil - This is a true classic from 1985 and a great follow up to their debut, See You In Hell. Man, the cover art with the Grim Reaper busting through some stained glass on a motorcycle...fuck yeah! Metal ruled in the 80's.

Dio : Sacred Heart and Hungry For Heaven - For the last 10 years or so, I didn't hesitate to kind of crap on the Sacred Heart LP, and dismiss it as a low point in the Dio catalog due to the prominent use of keyboards. I recently gave it another listen and was surprised at how wrong my memory had become. This record is amazing! I also grabbed the Hungry For Heaven 12 inch single as well.

Black Sabbath : Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - I love the cover art on this album. Very cool. I only owned a clear vinyl pressing of this through the Earmark label (which has a reputation of sounding like shit), and figured that for $7, I'd add an original Warner Brothers pressing to the collection.

Malice : Licence To Kill - An underrated Metal classic from 1987. Strong Judas Priest influence in this band, and this album just...ummm...kills.

Accept : Breaker - I base most of my Metal time line off of Iron Maiden, and to think that Accept released this album when Maiden's Killers LP was hitting the shelves...I'm left feeling a little impressed. Shit, this album is almost 30 years old and it still packs a hell of a metal punch.

Angel : Helluva Band - An odd find for me. I've been digging into 70's hard rock, and came across this band in one of Martin Popoff's books from the Ye Olde Metal series. Their Helluva Band LP is one of their heaviest.

I hate album covers with the promo saw cut. I flat out refuse to buy anything off of eBay that has this cut in the cover. However, since the vinyl for the Malice and the Dio record looked like it had never been played, and the price was so low, I compromised and picked them up anyway.

I know that I've mentioned it on this blog before, but I'll say it again...I love the look of the Vertigo labels with the UFO's.

Right Brigade

Right Brigade were a kind of hardcore super group from Boston around 1999. Jesse Standhard from Follow Through was on vocals, Clevo from Ten Yard Fight was on bass, and over on guitar was Pat from Fastbreak. You would think that this record was destined for greatness, but by the time their album was released on Revelation, the band was falling apart at the seams. I seem to recall some messageboard chatter at the time about how Jesse left the finishing touches of the album up to the band, and that Pat(?) fucked it all up with the noisy extras he added. I believe that Jesse was so disgusted with the album that he was telling everyone to not buy it. But man, this first 7 inch showed so much promise.

When I received the Straight Ahead record from Brian Murphy, he threw this one in as a free bonus and since I only owned this one on CD, the vinyl was a welcome addition to the collection.

No Rush

This post has taken forever for me to get up. To start things off, Six Feet Under Records fucked up my order. I was pretty disappointed to open my package for the True Colors pre-orders and find that I was missing both the yellow and red copies of their new Rush Of Hope LP. I emailed Dave at Six Feet Under and let him know that I was missing a part of my order...a week later, he responded that he was going to be out of the office until after Christmas, and he would correct the error when he got back. By the end of January, they were finally being shipped with a second order that I had placed. Hey, I'm not the kind of guy to stress on record labels when things take longer than expected. I'm the trusting type with plenty of patience, so the wait didn't bother me. Dave made good on the order, so we're cool.

I was happy when Six Feet Under announced that they were going to be doing a U.S. pressing of the Rush Of Hope LP from True Colors. As standard variation between the original Powered pressing and the one from Six Feet Under, we get a new color on the album sleeve for the US pressing.

100 were pressed on red, black and yellow tri-colored vinyl.

221 were pressed on clear yellow vinyl.

600 were pressed on clear red vinyl.

When pre-orders went up, Six Feet Under was also selling a True Colors package of both albums with silk screened covers. Kind of a cool idea, plus it was an opportunity to add to my True Colors collection, so I was down with it. 78 copies of white vinyl were pressed for the special silk screened covers. White labels were stamped with a T one one side, and a C on the other.

79 copies of the yellow vinyl for Rush Of Hope were used for the silk screened covers.

Straight Boots

You know how much I know about the pressing for the Straight Ahead record? Nothing really. I know that it was released as a 12 inch on I Risk Records back in 1987, and that it has probably been bootlegged a half a dozen times, but that's about it. I was checking out Brian Murphy's recent eBay listings and I spotted a Straight Ahead bootleg, or "fan pressing" as he referred to it. I figured that I didn't own ANY pressings of this record, so I figured that I'd throw a low offer on it and see what happened. To my surprise, I won. More to my surprise, there were songs on this record that I had never heard before! I thought that I had downloaded all the Straight Ahead songs at one point, yet three of the songs on this record were new to me.

This 7 inch pressing is on orange vinyl, and comes with a nicely designed and quality sleeve. Brian's auction mentioned that he has also seen this pressed on purple vinyl.

A couple of days later, I came across another 7 inch boot for Straight Ahead. I figured that if I could pick it up a decent price, it would be kind of cool to see how the two of them compared. I not only won it, but it ended with the exact same price as the orange copy.

This pressing was on black vinyl, and the sleeve was not as well put together. Seriously, this one looked like the cut and paste bootleg sleeve that you would expect. This pressing also included the songs that Straight Ahead had released on the End The Warzone compilation on Side B. Interestingly enough, I bought the End The Warzone comp on a 7 inch boot back in the early 90's...before I was seriously collecting records, and before I really had any idea what a bootleg was. Yeah, bootlegs probably aren't all that impressive, but I'm happy to finally have a version (or two!) of this record in my collection.

Boiling Over On Green

Back when I ordered the Not Sorry records from Lifeline, I also picked up the second pressing of the Boiling Over 7 inch on green colored vinyl. Damn, this record is fucking harsh! Crushing, angry and bitter hardcore, and to top it all off, they are Straight Edge. Very cool.

The three colors of vinyl for this record look great together.

This Is Thirteen

Since this is my thirteenth post for 2010, I figured that it would be an appropriate time to post my latest purchase of Anvil's newest LP, This Is Thirteen. Originally self released in 2007, VH1 Classic Records re-released this last year, giving it the vinyl treatment.

I haven't followed Anvil's career very closely. The last album of theirs that I purchased was their live Past And Present CD, back in 1989. The band was getting a lot of press through 2009 for their documentary, Anvil! The Story Of Anvil, and I figured that I'd check in and see what they've been up to. The documentary was amazing. A truly fascinating story about a band on the verge of stardom, yet failing to make it to the next level, and then spiraling downward through Metal's dark days of the 90's. Yet somehow, the band perseveres, remaining true to their Metal roots and continuing to release albums every few years. The film follows the band through their lives that appear ready to fall apart at any moment, and through their dismal dead end jobs. The only thing holding them together is their music. At one point, Anvil gets an offer from a promoter to do a European tour that proves to be another disaster in the bands career...from playing some hole in the wall bar in Prague where the owner refuses to pay the band since they were late, to a soul crushing experience of playing the Monsters of Transylvania festival where only 174 people show up to the 10,000 seat arena. Still, at the end of it all, the singer/guitar player, Lips, says "at least there was a tour for things to go wrong on". Positive Mental Attitude. The dude just does not give up. At the end of the film, the band records This Is Thirteen with Chris Tsangarides, who helped produce some of their biggest albums from the 80's, like Metal On Metal. The album itself is fantastic...a great slab of Metal. I've got to say that This Is Thirteen is on par with the bands 80's classics. So amazing that a band that has been around for as long as Anvil have, can still deliver. The story of Anvil is truly an amazing one.

No Apologies

Not Sorry recently joined the REACT! crew, so if you've never heard them, that should give you a pretty good indication that we are talking about a quality edge band here.

Lifeline Records, who also have a history of solid hardcore releases, recently put up the band's first 7 inch, Moving On, for pre-order. 100 copies on white vinyl with a yellow insert.

500 copies on clear red with a white insert. Yeah, I think the singer looks like Dan O'Mahoney on the insert.

Say It

Goddamn, Said and Done are at it again. Seems like I just picked up the Endless Roads 7 inch, and here they are dropping a 3 song EP at the end of 2009. Pim posted on the REACT! board when the pre-orders went up for the latest EP, Feel It. As soon as I saw it, I ordered one. The whole order process was a little strange, as I didn't have to pay until after Pim had shipped the record. Quite a trustworthy guy. The 7 inch itself, is amazing. While past Said and Done recordings have a strong Best Wishes-era Cro-Mags sound to them, these three songs seem to have added a bit of a more punkier vibe to them. Excellent, well played hardcore that doesn't stick to a formula. Seriously, more people should be losing their shit over this band. The preorder pressing for this record came with a special linol print cover and was limited to 50. I wish that overseas shipping didn't sting like a kick to the crotch, because I really want to order the other pressings for this record.