sHEAVY

Before I'd ever heard of sHeavy and discovered the band when I was obsessing over doom and stoner bands back in the mid 2010's, Jeff had given me a CD of Synchronized. The band name was weird and the album artwork wasn't really appealing... hell, I'd never even heard of Rise Above Records at the time... and the CD quickly ended up on the bottom of a pile of things that I wasn't really interested in but also couldn't throw out. Even after falling in love with The Electric Sleep and Celestial Hi-fi, I still didn't really bother with that Synchronized CD.

Earlier this year, I stumbled upon the fact that Rise Above had finally issued Synchronized on vinyl at some point in 2024. There was a time when it seemed that every Rise Above release quickly sold out... and the clear vinyl die hard editions that are limited to only 100... goddamn, you had to be quick with your order if you hoped to get one. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the clear vinyl was still available for this record and I quickly grabbed one.

I don't know why I'm slow like this sometimes, because this album is so fucking good. I had plenty of opportunities to appreciate this record before this, and I ignored every one. So glad that this vinyl release finally set me straight. Great stoner doom metal, and it is a straight up crime that the die hard version of this is still available at Rise Above.

Not Amused

Last year I picked up a Straw Dogs record from Tim's collection. Boston was known for having their early 80's hardcore bands cross over into metal, and that's exactly what The F.U.s were doing here. They changed their name, signed to a label that was releasing metal records, and injected more rock into thier sound... and with the Straw Dogs, it works for me.

We Are Not Amused continues where their first EP left off. They are a bit more rock than most crossover bands, but I still dig this. It's shocking that I completely missed this band in the 80's, but hey, I guess that 40 years late is better than never at all.

This copy from Tim still has the shrinkwrap and hype sticker which reads, "We know of nothing on this record that could possibly be considered obscene, distasteful or offensive. However, since none of us are right-wing evangelists, feminists or homosexuals, your opinion may differ." Ugh the 80's loved its sexism and homophobia. Thankfully the lyrics here aren't as bad as this hype sticker would lead you to believe.

Hang The DJ

I've spent all of my hardcore life not understanding the attraction that punks had to The Smiths. I didn't get it, and I could be coarse and biting in my attitude toward them. Yeah, you could call me a hater. My friend, Jeff, has tried for years to get me into them and I've just been like, no please stop. But if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you are probably aware of when my brain glitched in 2023 and I changed my mind on a number of musical opinions.

My friend Sarah and I had been exchanging some songs for a bit that year, sharing things that we thought that the other person hadn't heard but may enjoy. She sent me two songs from The Smiths, This Night Has Opened My Eyes and I Know It's Over... and while I'd been surprised with how much I enjoyed all of the other songs that she'd introduced me to over the month or so that we'd been doing our project, I cringed a little bit when I saw that she sent me something from The Smiths. Still, I trusted her taste and the songs would pop up in my random daily playlists, and before I knew it, I really liked what I was hearing... and then that lead me to checking out and liking all of The Queen Is Dead... and then Meat Is Murder... and then, fuck, somehow I became a fan of The Smiths.

Jeff, of course, was thrilled that I finally came around on The Smiths, and when he was going through Tim's collection, he pulled out the Louder Than Bombs comp double LP and handed it to me for free.

Admittedly, I was a bit lukewarm on this collection of singles and b-sides when I first heard it... but I'm like that with anything from The Smiths that I'm hearing for the first time. However, these songs have grown on me quite a bit over the recent weeks with repeat listens though, and I'm really starting to enjoy this.

So somehow, in the past couple of years, I've gone from being like, I hate The Smiths, to okay a couple of songs are good, then oh I guess I like these albums but I don't need to own them... oh shit, maybe I do want these in my collection... no but wait, I actually want the original UK pressings... and after I started to appreciate this collection of songs, fuck it, I want to own the original singles too. Phew... that was a wild ride. We'll see where it goes from here.

Seven Sisters Star Pt. 2

I really like Seven Sisters, but it seems that like most newer metal bands and albums, I rarely go back an revisit them. I'll be really stoked on a record and listen to it a lot during its release year, but then once we turn that corner into January, its like my brain resets and I forget about it. Because of this, you'd think that I could live a life of contentment and spend the rest of my life listening to music that I already own... but no, I'm obsessed with finding and listening to something new... so of course I needed the new Seven Sisters album even though I own three other full length albums by the band and haven't listened to any of them more than ten times. This is my curse.

Seven Sisters is one of the only newer metal bands that both Jeff and I see eye to eye on. He tends to avoid anything that didn't originate in the 70's or 80's, but Seven Sisters has such a great old school New Wave Of British Heavy Metal sound, that even he can't ignore them. While I wasn't sure that I was going to pay any attention to the band's newest album, Shadow Of A Fallen Star, Pt 2, once Jeff mentioned that he'd ordered the colored vinyl, I had to jump in and make sure that I got my hands on one too.

I was a bit intimidated when the record arrived and I realized that there are only 4 songs here, and the last song, Andromeda Descending, clocks in over 20 minutes. I thought that it might get a bit dull with some slow atmospheric bits or some widdly guitar wanking, but surprisingly this entire record is just great straight forward metal. Seven Sisters still feel like they were lifted right out of the NWOBHM movement in the early 80's and I'm here for it.

Once again, the Seven Sisters vinyl looks so good.

Pummel's World

About a thousand years ago, before covid turned the world on it's head, I went to a show that Pummel was going to be playing at. I'd seen their name around at that time, but in my typical fashion of judging a band by their name, I prepared to ignore them. Pummel really impressed me and after seeing them play that show, I quickly preordered their 7 inch, Our Power, from Atomic Action, and eventually ended up with both pieces of colored vinyl in my collection. That record had a few different special covers that were made, and I was interested and hopeful in picking them up at some point. Fast forward five years, and I was happy to finally scoop one up.

After pissing about with other styles of music over the past couple of years, it feels good to be back obsessing over hardcore and buying records like an idiot again. Even though this limited cover of Our Power was probably still priced too high, I couldn't resist adding this to the cart when I was picking up other records from a Discogs seller.

According to Discogs, this special cover is listed as the Joey's World cover, which I feel too old and out of touch to understand what that is supposed to mean. Oh well, at least it looks good and it's limited to 40.

Tour de Life Force

I don't really follow many bands on Instagram. I'm not sure why that is... maybe because there was a time that I was looking for interaction and didn't want to fill my feed with tour dates that I wouldn't go to or reissues that I wouldn't buy... but still, there are a few on there that I did click to follow at one point or another, and apparently Life Force is one of them.

As I was scrolling through my feed a few months ago, I saw a post the Life Force had some Euro tour leftovers available in their store. I don't necessarily collect records for this band, but I'm a sucker for special tour cover, and even though this one is a bit bland and boring, I wasn't going to let the opportunity pass me by to grab one from the band... plus I still get a charge when a straight edge band covers their stuff with X's.

Interesting that the vinyl for this is from Blind Rage Records and not the more recent New Age pressing. Number 16 of only 30 made.

Posi Lights

I love Lights Out. Their Overload album is one of my favorite hardcore records of all time. I've been using the last.fm tool since 2006 to track everything that I listen to, and Overload is the album that I've listened to more than anything else over the past 19 years. I own the test pressing of the LP, plus the 5 other vinyl pressings for it, to make a full collection for the LP. Yet somehow, the only version of the Get Out 7 inch that I own is the green vinyl version.

I've been pretty hyped on hardcore this year, and picking up all kinds of records that fit that mood. When I was buying a couple of records recently, I noticed that the seller had a copy of Get Out with the posi numbers cover from 2004. Time to double my collection for this 7 inch.

This is a great record that I've unfortunately allowed to be overshadowed by the Overload album, and I've had a blast spinning it again.

This copy is number 86 of 170 made. Kind of blows my mind that hardcore bands were like, yeah we're gonna need 170 of these special covers for this one day fest, and they probably still sold out. Seems like a lot.

Caffeine Or Karate?

Last summer my opinion completely changed on Karate. I initially downloaded a few of their albums way back in the early 2000's, but they never really moved me, and after a while I ended up throwing out those old burned CDRs that I'd made. So no one was more shocked than I was when I decided to casually check them out after reading Ralf's post over at It All Comes Down To This, and then Karate quickly became one of my most listened to bands over the past 12 months. In that time, I'd picked up In Place Of Real Insight (1997), The Bed Is In The Ocean (1998) and Unsolved (2000), but I'd never gotten down to check out the eponymous debut from 1995.

Karate is one of those rare examples where I think that I like the band's later records more their first. There is a real cool jazzy feeling from stuff later on that isn't so prevalent here on the debut. Don't get me wrong, it is still great stuff, but it is a bit more straight forward indie than the more original sound that they developed in the records after. I still really dig this, and have been spinning it a lot since picking up the record.

There were a few different pressings to pick up for this record, but all of the ones that I've picked up for Karate have been recent Numbero Group colored vinyl reissues, so I went with that for the self-titled too... plus the webstore had it on sale for only $20.

Clear Savage

I'm not an overly complex man. I have simple tastes, and one of those is that I basically enjoy just about any metal band from the 80's. I don't get caught up in how good a band is, or if they are original... nah, give me riffs played at 100mph and lyrics about senseless violence and satan and that's all I need. I don't necessarily look for and chase bands like that down, but when it is served up to me, I'll probably take it every time.

So when I was looking through what Jeff had available from Tim's collection and saw a record from a band called Savage Steel... with a cover sporting some shirtless skullface dude in combat boots and weilding two swords, I immediately told Jeff to add it to the pile of records that I'd be buying. No clue what they sounded like, but it was from '87 on New Renaissance Records, so I wanted it on my shelf.

Dude, when the mood strikes me, records like this are the most crucial shit. Straight forward thrash played by kids that loved the music and only cared about being metal as fuck. Yes! Give me all the obscure bands that no one cares about 35+ years later.

Another thing that really pushed me to buy thiws was that it was on clear vinyl. I don't know why, but finding records for old metal bands on colored vinyl seems like such a rare thing. Labels just didn't seem to fuck around with colored vinyl back then so it always feels special when I find one.

Criminally Insane Remix

I've never given any thought to collecting Slayer singles... mainly because there aren't enough to really take note of them. Sure there is Haunting The Chapel, but that's an EP and not a true single. Slayer just haven't been a singles kind of band. There is one however, that I often overlook and forget about, and thats the Criminally Insane (Remix) single.

While I've mostly been indifferent to this single from Slayer, now that I own one, I'm kind of stoked on it. Nothing new with Postmortem, but it is one of my favorite Slayer songs, so that's cool... then the Criminally Insane remix is weird to hear after spending so long with the original... and finally Aggressive Perfector, which was on the Metal Massacre III comp and the Live Undead record. All in, this is a nice package, and I'm glad to add it to my Slayer collection.

I wouldn't have given much thought to buying this, but when I saw it available from Tim's collection there was no way that I was going to let it pass me by.

Loud 'N' Proud

Nazareth were one of those bands from the 70's that I discovered very late... which is no surprise since I didn't really start to appreciate a lot of 70's rock until sometime after 2000.

I remember when I first heard their Loud 'N' Proud album and just being absolutely blown away with how raw it sounded. I was like, "Oh this is the band that does Love Hurts" and then being floored by Dan McCafferty's voice sounding so raw on songs like Not Faking It. This was not how I expected the band to sound, but I guess that's what you get when you grow up hearing the radio hits... and some bands can't really be defined by what we were spoon fed by FM radio at the time.

It has been around 10 years since I put much thought into Nazareth's Loud 'N' Proud, but listening to this vinyl copy has been a great reminder of how much I loved this thing when I first heard it. I remember at the time searching eBay for a copy and strangely coming up empty a few times, so I never picked up a copy. When I was talking with Jeff recently, and I was telling him that I didn't own a copy of it, he immediately pulled a copy from Tim's collection and handed it to me for free.

Another Nazareth record that Jeff pulled from Tim's collection and handed to me was Hair Of the Dog. Like the copy of Loud 'N' Proud that Jeff gave me, this one is a bit beat up with ring wear and dings, but I'm happy to have Tim's copies on my shelf.

Hair Of Dog is the album that has Love Hurts, and while I'm still not a huge fan of the ballad, there are plenty of hard rocking songs here. Another great Nazareth record.