Cruel Is King

Last night, I hit up the local Cruel Hand show with Rob and Paul. The last time that I had seen them was at the final Have Heart show, and the band really impressed me live. This show was about 20 minutes from my house, so I figured that I'd go check it out. I had never heard of any of the other bands on the bill, and walked into the Deering Grange Hall with pretty low expectations. Sure enough those expectations were met. Bad set of bands, and it was accompanied by some of the worst moshing that I have ever seen, as the pit was full of windmill spins and donkey kicks. The band on stage would be playing some slow doom riff, and yet kids were still thrashing around full tilt, like Exodus was launching into The Toxic Waltz. Total retardation. Of all the opening bands, the only one I held the slightest interest in was War Animal. The singer looked like a Lemmy clone, and wore a bullet belt. As they set up, I turned to Rob and said, "Well, this looks promising". Too bad that the sound system turned their sound into a blur and other than the occasional cool riff, I couldn't hear much of their sound. Cruel Hand played a good set, with a few songs off their album Lock & Key, that will be out next month. Seemed like their set was short, but the band sounded tight. Man, they must have one of the best drummers in hardcore...that guy just kills it every time I see them.

On the way to the show, I joked with Rob and Paul about Cruel Hand having a special "Grange Hall" press. Turns out they did have a record release pressing for their new 7 inch single on Bridge Nine. This release comes with a special sleeve, with Maine's favorite author Stephen King rockin' the mic and sporting a Cruel Hand trucker cap.

When Rob was buying his copy of the record, the guy at the merch table dug into the box and handed him number 12. Numbers 4 and 5 were on display at the merch table, and I wanted number 4. I don't know why it matters, but I'm a geek and I like low numbers. I picked up number 4 and told him that I'd take one 7 inch...still he dipped into the box and pulled out a record for me to take...number 11. Damn it. I handed him my 10 dollar bill. He said that he needed to go get change, and as he stepped away, I set my number 11 on the table and took the number 4 that I wanted. Why did it matter? I have no idea.

I checked my number 4 copy on the way to the car, and found that there was an additional, crinkled and mangled cover included with the record. So I ended up with two release covers for this one...4 and 16.