Every Knife Has A Home

I've never really actively hunted out the A18 7 inches. For some reason, the albums had always been enough for me. However, I picked up a copy of Defining The Color Conviction last year on a whim, and it felt good to get one into my collection. Back in April this year, I was buying a couple records from a Discogs seller, and I noticed that they had a copy of Every Knife Has A Home for cheap, so I added it to my cart. About a week after it arrived, I heard the news that that singer, Isaac Golub, was dead... killed after being struck by a car while riding his bike. Fuck. I was shook. The guy sang on Truth Gives Wings To Strength, which is one of my favorite hardcore albums, and it was very sad to hear of his passing.

Every Knife Has A Home and Defining The Color Conviction are taken from the same recording session, and share four of the five songs on the tracklist. On this 7 inch, we get Miscalculated Sonnet Number One as the exclusive song. It isn't all that exciting, as it is basically just Isaac reciting lyrics over some guitar feedback. Definitely not a necessary song, but with his passing, it was cool to finally check it out. Who knows... maybe I'll buy more variants of these things as I stumble upon them.

Stamped labels and numbered out of 250.

The Color Vinyl Conviction

Outside of the A18 albums finally getting a vinyl pressing in 2016, I really hadn't given the band much thought over that past 10 years or so. Discovering the Dear Furious 7 inch last year kind of put them back on the radar. When I was picking up a record from a seller recently on Discogs and saw that they also had an A18 7 inch available for only $4, I grabbed it.

I've never paid any attention to the A18 7 inches, so I wasn't sure what I was getting with this one. Initially, I was a bit disappointed to see that the Defining The Color Conviction record contained a couple of songs that ended up on the Forever After Nothing album. Everything was cool once I heard these versions though. The songs here were recorded a couple of years earlier than the Forever album, and the versions on this 7 inch are raw as fuck. These are great songs anyway, but man, here they are so vicious. Throw in an exclusive song and an Antidote cover, and this record is definitely worth owning.

620 pressed on red vinyl.

The sticker that was included on the poly bag for this 7 inch made me chuckle. "Southern California's Most Hated"? Did people have beef with this band at one time or is there a joke that I missed here? Ha ha...I have no idea what is happening.

Dear Furious

When I bought that Cast Iron Hike record from Victory a few weeks ago, it was a strange experience. The label hasn't released anything remotely interesting since probably '97, so it felt a little weird to be buying something from their webstore. I was talking to Marcus about it after I'd paid and checked out, and strangely enough, he'd been visiting the store as well. During the conversation, he mentioned the A18 albums that were available on vinyl for the first time. I had completely overlooked them on my visit to the store, so shortly after talking with Marcus, I was back in the Victory webstore placing another order.

I remember A18 coming on to the scene in the early 00's. Featuring Issac from Chorus Of Disapproval and Hartsfield from Outspoken, it was a Straight Edge kid's dream come true. I really liked both of the A18 albums at the time, and listened to them religiously when they were released...but over time, they got shoved into a corner and ignored. This vinyl release is a nice reminder of how fierce the band was. "What the fuck do you know about dedication?"

322 pressed on red vinyl for Forever After Nothing.

Back in the early 00's, when these albums were released, most people were idiots and preferring CDs. This pushed vinyl into near extinction, and with the demand so low, even some Hardcore labels stopped caring about the format. They were dark days indeed...well in retrospect, since I was one of those morons that found CDs superior to vinyl at the time. Good to see Victory breathe some new life into these A18 albums with a proper release on wax.

326 pressed on clear colored vinyl for Dear Furious.

New Age Continues...

Sure New Age takes a while to send out orders, but they have never ripped me off...and really, since I typically have so many records arriving in the mail, I don't mind the wait. Sure their mailorder makes me nervous, but they have always come through.

I love the new re-presses that New Age has been doing. In the early 90's, I was really starting to get into hardcore, straight edge and vegetarianism. Bands from New Age Records like Mouthpiece, Outspoken, and Strife were a huge influence on me. Somewhere along the way, these bands dropped out of my everyday playlist, but recent discographies from Outspoken and Mouthpiece, plus the re-issue of the first Strife 7 inch, has reintroduced me to these bands. To my surprise, I'm finding that they really stood the test of time. In fact I may like them more now than I did when they originally were released.

The newest re-issue from New Age is for Outspoken's A Light In The Dark LP. Somehow, I missed the 77 pressing when I placed this order...I'm sure that I didn't see it in the webstore at the time. I do see that New Age has it listed right now, so I'm going to have to place yet another order. There are 193 pressed on coke bottle clear vinyl with black streaks. Damn, this is a good looking piece of vinyl.

Blank b-side labels and stamped with "We Must Continue...". Nice touch. With the Conversion Records logo, and the Mission Viejo address, it looks like the label just had a bunch of old covers laying around that they used for this pressing. However, when I pulled out my original pressing, the first pressing covers had quite the slick sheen on them, where the new ones have more of a matte finish. Strange decision to reprint the album covers and not remove the Conversion logo and to keep the old address on there.

There are also 275 on orange "creamsicle" vinyl.

Again with the "We Must Continue..." stamp on the b-side label.

With this visit to the New Age store, I also decided to pick up a couple copies of the first Amendment 18 LP...back before they moved to Victory and shortened their name to just A18. The new pressing of this album is crazy limited. Only 55 were pressed on glow in the dark vinyl. The labels are plain black with A18 hand written by Isaac Golub.

New Age must have had a few pieces of solid green vinyl laying around from the first press, so they stuck them in a new silver sleeve, stuck a small sticker on the front and called it the 10th Anniversary press. Is it kind of cheap and thrown together? Yes. Do I care? No. It is limited to 48, and I have one. That is all that I care about. I've always enjoyed A18's two follow up albums to this one, but giving this a listen now, I'm really digging this.