Foundation - When The Smoke Clears

Prior to the release of the new Foundation LP, Bridge Nine gave everyone a teaser with this three song 7 inch. These things don't excite me too much, and I didn't bother ordering one until the LP was up for pre-order.

The thing that interested me most with this 7 inch single was the exclusive b-side track, which is a Path of Resistance cover of Counter. To be honest, if I recall correctly, the last time I listened to Path, I was pretty underwhelmed, as they didn't really hold up over time. This cover from Foundation, makes me question that, and I want to dig the album out again.

Foundation have always been one of those bands that don't really grab me with the first listen. Every time that I write about them here, I always say the same thing..."good stuff, but it took a few spins for it to grow on me". The new album, When The Smoke Clears, is no exception. The first few listens, I didn't think it was too exciting, but sitting down with the vinyl last night, I opened up the lyric sheet and immersed myself in the album. Once it sinks in, it is pretty powerful stuff.

I'm also really liking the album cover and layout for this. Nicely done. 300 pressed on orange with black splatter vinyl.

Gatefold cover with plenty of pictures of the band up to shenanigans.

Remission Euro Press

A record so good, the Europeans needed a pressing for themselves.

Remission's 2009 debut LP, Accept, was recently repressed by Assault Records. The label did a great job with this pressing. Dark purple vinyl and a new design for the cover. While the cover doesn't look as nice as the original that was pressed on Amendment Records, I'll still give them props for using something different for the Euro press. My only complaint on this whole thing is the logo for Assault. A pair of crossed guns, looking like some kind of vegan warrior record label from the early 90's...lame.

As soon as Assault Records announced they were repressing this, Amendment mentioned that they would stock a few in their store. This would save me from overseas shipping so I played the waiting game, and grabbed a copy as soon as they were available.

363 pressed on clear purple mixed with black.

The vinyl for this looks great, but my original pictures didn't really capture the color that well. I had to photograph the record back lit from my bedroom window for the full effect.

Prior to Remission, Philippe and Daniel played in a band called Remains To Be Seen. To be honest, if it wasn't for this connection, I probably would have never bothered to go back and check them out. Boy, I'm glad that I did. Sure you can make comparisons to Remission, but the songs on this record have a strong influence from bands like Insted and No For An Answer. So good.

This is the second pressing for this record. 125 on red vinyl.

FNI at UB

I've been known to ebb and flow with my obsessions. I'll be hot to collect one band for a while, and something else will catch my attention and I'll move on. Someday, I'll get back to that band, but for that moment, my eye is on another prize. The hot band on my virtual Want List lately has been Fire & Ice, and I've got plenty of FNI vinyl to post over the next few weeks.

Fire & Ice had a couple different pressings of their Gods & Devils 7 inch for United Blood in 2010. One of the pressings came wrapped with the special Agnostic Front Live At CBGB rip off cover. Man, this looks so good.

The AF cover is limited to 50.

In 2011, Fire & Ice made another trip back to United Blood. This time around, they were selling their Collections LP with a special cover. Kind of disappointing when compared to the Gods & Devils pressing from the year before. This year the vinyl was packaged with a simple DJ sleeve, with a sticker in the corner. Not very exciting, but I'm thinking it would look nice next to the test pressing for this LP, which has a similar look and feel. Tempting.

Thankfully, I didn't need to search ebay for the UB 2011 pressing. Triple B was gracious enough to throw some in their webstore after the fest.

Hell Bent For A Killing Machine

This was originally planned to be another post for Dio vinyl. Today is the one year anniversary of Dio's passing, and this would have been my 5th post featuring Ronnie James in a little over a month. It was, however, not to be.

I had recently picked up the new Back On Black pressing of the first Rainbow album, but to my surprise it wasn't on the expected purple colored vinyl. Instead, I opened it to find that it was on black vinyl. Disappointing. Since I already own the colored vinyl repressings of Rising and Long Live Rock N Roll, I really wanted the purple vinyl pressing. Instead of keeping the black vinyl, I did something that I rarely do...I made a trade. Jeff had an album that I was interested in, and he was looking to unload it. Done deal...and since Rob Halford replaced Dio's spot on the mic with Black Sabbath for two shows in 1992, I can somehow make this post relevant to RJD in someway.

For years now, I've wanted a vinyl copy of Judas Priest's 1979 classic LP, Hell Bent For Leather. But I didn't just want any copy. No, I wanted a copy of the record with the original name of the album, Killing Machine. Sure it didn't have the amazing US bonus track of the Fleetwood Mac cover, The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown), but for this album, I really wanted an original pressing. I wanted a copy as the band had originally intended it to be released...before the US record labels insisted the name be changed.

As a bonus, the copy that Jeff was trading was a Japanese pressing, and we all know that I get a hard on over OBI strips.

6th Press and 2nd Press

Is nine copies of one record too much? Considering that I've set the bar at eleven with Champion's Promises Kept, I'd say that nine copies isn't that ridiculous. If you do think the numbers are obnoxious, you have no business hanging with this blog.

With the 6th pressing of Have Heart's The Things We Carry, I'm now up to nine copies of this modern day classic.

I believe I said it with the 5th pressing of this LP, but the vinyl on this is looking amazing. 1,000 pressed on clear vinyl.

To go along with the 6th press of The Things We Carry, Bridge Nine also released the 2nd pressing of the live 10.17.09. I've got mixed feelings on this LP. While I think it captures the energy and passion of Have Heart in a live environment, I think that some of the between song banter was cut in order to make it all fit on one album. If that is the case, I'd rather Bridge Nine stretch this out to a double LP and include everything.

1,000 on yellow vinyl.

The guy in the No For An Answer t-shirt, suck in Pat Flynn's armpit...yeah, that's me.

Radio Moscow

After watching Black Snake Moan, especially after watching Samuel L. Jackson sing the amazing song Stack-O-Lee, I was in the mood for some modern blues-rock in the vein of The Black Keys. The only thing was, I wanted something new. I hit up last.fm and checked the Black Keys page to find similar artists, and pulled the name Radio Moscow from the list. Downloaded the first album and was pretty impressed.

Produced by Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys, and released back in 2007, the first self-titled album just oozes with that blues-rock sound. Parts of this are very reminiscent of Cream.

Great 60's psych inspired cover art. Limited to 500 on orange vinyl.

The 2009 follow up album, Brain Cycles, kind of loses some of the heat that was contained on the first album. The album is still good, but it is a bit more controlled, with a bit more polish.

500 pressed on clear pink colored vinyl.

Yeah, we get it, you worship the late 60's and smoke dope. How clever.

Winds Of Promise On Clear

REACT! Records tends to press a run of colored vinyl, limited to 100, for each of their releases. This press is given to the band for them to use for a record release show, or to sell on tour, or use as a friends press...pretty much for them to use as they see fit.

Remission decided to sell their copies to anyone one that wanted one. If you were interested, all you needed to do was fire off an email to the band to get the pricing, and then send the payment. Right now they have them up in their bigcartel store, so go grab one while you can.

Man, I love this record. Three songs in the vein of One Step Ahead/Verbal Assault...straight ahead, early 90's melodic Hardcore. It is ridiculous how good this record is, and will be earning a spot at the top of my Top 10 list for 2011.

100 pressed on clear vinyl.

REACT! Reissues

Fact 1: I order a lot of records.

Fact 2: I forget and lose track of what I've ordered.

To keep track of it all, I keep a Post-It next to my computer, with a running list of my outstanding orders and what I'm waiting to arrive. A couple weeks ago, my waiting list from REACT! dropped from three to two orders when I received my latest package from the label. Aram constantly has something going on with his label, and I'm always rushing to be first in line with every pre-order that he posts. Hmmm...I'm wondering if he will get the Get The Most/Noose/Clearsight orders out before the Skin Like Iron pre-orders go up.

Back in December REACT! posted that pre-orders were up for the reissues for the latest Mindset and Praise records. 500 of each, and this is the final press for each of these EPs.

200 on tan and 300 on black. Second press has the white with black labels.

I wanted to see the difference between the first and second press labels, so I took out all my Praise records for a picture. Yes, I am missing a first press on black vinyl. Someday, I'll fix that.

Initially, REACT! posted that the color vinyl for the second press was going to be mint green. I'm glad that in the end, they went with baby blue instead. 200 on blue and 300 on black vinyl.

For the second press, REACT! went with a different b-side label.

What the hell, since I took a picture of my Praise records, I figured that I'd snap one of my Mindset collection as well. I had a hard time setting this one up. I had an uneven number of 7 inch records which made it difficult to balance the layout for the picture. I obviously need to pick up another Mindset record at some point.