Two In The Bush

I get excited over the dumbest shit.

I get a bit of a charge over listening to stuff that I know the majority of the people love to hate. It's not that I'm doing it out of some kind of misguided rebellion, I genuinely like albums like St. Anger, the self titled Warzone LP, Token Entry's The Weight Of The World, Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath, and Blaze Bayley-era Iron Maiden. But still, hearing people bitch about any one of these albums gives me a devious little twist, and I'll rush to give it a spin and vocalize my appreciation. Hey, don't look down on me like you don't know what I'm talking about, as you try to explain that "no, Staring Into The Sun is actually a really good Uniform Choice album". We all make bad choices, and I'll proudly stand by mine.

So while people get themselves all wound up tight, going along with the crowd and hating all the right albums, I'm sitting here and thinking about making a serious run at collecting them on vinyl for 2016. And here you were thinking that this blog couldn't get any more lame. Surprise! I can sink even lower.

When it comes to Anthrax, most Metal purists tend to only fall in line with the Belladonna years. At some point, the verdict seems to have come down that we are to not speak of those albums that had John Bush at the mic...and while I'll contend that Spreading The Disease and Among The Living are the high point in Anthrax's career, I'm not going to back away from Bush's 10+ year run through the 90's.

Hey, I'll admit, for the longest time, I was in the camp of Belladonna or nothing. How could I not be? I grew up through the 80's...I bought Among The Living, State Of Euphoria and Persistence Of Time all on release day...and there was a time that I would have defended their position in the Big 4. But just because I didn't bother with the Bush-era Anthrax at the time, doesn't mean that I don't appreciate it now.

Fueled by my obsession with Armored Saint last year, I tentatively reached for an old burned CD of Stomp 442 that I had sitting on my shelf. I'd heard it as the butt of jokes for years, and couldn't remember the last time that I'd even bothered to give it a spin. In my Armored Saint mood, I figured that I'd give it a shot, and if I didn't dig it, I could dump that old CDR and make some room on the shelf.

I didn't just like it...it fucking consumed me. I couldn't get enough of this album, and it became a permanent fixture in my daily playlists for December.

I needed to own this on vinyl, but since the world had written off vinyl when Stomp 442 was released back in '95, that meant that only Germany bothered to press the album on wax. Because of this, it meant that it was going to be priced like Martin Shkreli selling AIDS medication. It was not going to come cheap. That's cool though...I found a seller in the Discogs Marketplace that was willing to unload his copy at a reasonable price, and I was a happy man.

Of course the catch in making Stomp 442 a good deal, was that I had to add the John Bush debut with Anthrax to my order to help sweeten the sale for the seller. What, am I going to complain about having to buy two Anthrax albums? Ummm...no.

While Sound Of White Noise wasn't pressed on vinyl in the States back in '93, there were a few countries that kept the vinyl tradition alive at the time. Sure, it saw a recent vinyl repress in '09, but get that shit outta here. It could possibly sound better on the double vinyl repress, but I'm going with the original single LP German pressing. Love the look of that alternate cover art!