Intent To Collect

A while back, I rediscovered the Naked Angels Hardline 7 inch. I'd originally picked up a copy in the early 90's, but over the years I'd kind of forgotten about it and it got stuck in a pile of 7 inches that were ignored. For one reason or another I stumbled upon it years later and decided to give it a spin to see how it held up. Goddamn, those songs hit me hard. I obsessed over that record and then proceeded to buy three more copies of it. That was the only record that I'd heard from Naked Angels, but since I was loving it so much I figured that at some point I should check out what else the band had released... seven years later, here we are.

I figured that my next jumping off point for Naked Angels was their 7 inch that was released on Doghouse Records, Intent To Kill. Doghouse was a pretty big deal back in the day, and since Intent To Kill was released alongside records from Endpoint and Split Lip, it seemed like a safe gamble. Oh hell yes. This is exactly what I was hoping for, and discovering this record almost 30 years after it was originally released was like finding a long lost treasure.

When I looked to pick up a copy, I noticed that there was a seller that had a copy of Intent To Injure listed as a "tour edition". This special edition wasn't listed on Discogs, so I was curious as to what it looked like. I desperately wanted to own it and unravel this mystery so without hesitating, I added it to my cart and checked out.

The limited tour edition comes with a cover printed on yellow paper and numbered on the back out of 50. I have a feeling that there aren't too many people that would be as excited as I was to receive this.

After sitting with the tour cover for a couple weeks, I was burning to get the regular green vinyl pressing into my collection as well. I don't know if it makes sense to buy another copy on green vinyl, but we are talking about collecting Naked Angels records here, so just let me be fucking ridiculous and happy, okay?

As I was buying NA records and getting stupid, I figured that I'd buy a pointless live 7 inch as well. Recorded while the band was on tour in'92, it contains a song that I don't think showed up anywhere else, Stranded. So I guess it might not be so pointless after all.

Might as well pick up all the Naked Angels 7 inches while I'm at it. No More Heroes was released in '95, and I was a bit skeptical that NA would be able to still record something that kept my attention at this point in their existance. I've never even heard about this record before, so it obviously didn't leave much of an impact, but I figured that I'd check it out anyway. When I initially heard it, I thought these two songs were seriously lacking the punch of their earlier records, but with each listen I find that I like this more and more. The band was definitely trying to grow and push their boundaries to try something a bit different. It was the 90's and this is exactly what hardcore bands like this did. I dig it.

Ill Blood

I've been a fiend for newer hardcore bands lately, and I've been willing to check out anything and give it a chance. Even if the record has an awkward and unappealing cover, and the band is named after a hardcore record from the early 2000's that I rarely pull off the shelf. Yeah, sure. I'll even give that a shot.

I don't think that I'd ever heard of Ill Blood before, but REVHQ recently had their 7 inch listed as a new arrival... and with talk of NYHC and Youth Crew... I was down to check it out. I was kind of surprised with out much I liked this record. At times the guitars make me think of In My Eyes, while the songs also remind me quite a bit of Risky Business (who are sadly probably forgotten by most). I may have missed it when this 7 inch came out a couple years ago, but given how quickly time flies lately, two years is nothing, so this is basically a new release.

To match the cover art, this record was pressed on a rainbow of different colors. REV had the yellow vinyl available, but I bet the purple, green and red options look great too.

This Is Boston, Not LA

I have a hard time walking away from a live bootleg record. They just look fucking badass, and that goes double for Maiden boots.

The latest live boot from Maiden that I picked up was from the Ed Hunter tour in 1999. I already had a live record from the Los Angeles date on this tour, so I might have ordinarily walked away from this one. However, this record was from Maiden's Boston show at the Orpheum (where I saw Testament, Nuclear Assault and Savatage eight or nine years earlier)... and with Eddie on the cover with an SSD shirt and standing on the steps from The Kids Will Have Their Say cover, I couldn't resist grabbing a copy.

This was Bruce's return to the band, and thier first tour together in six years. They were touring on their greatest hits release, Ed Hunter, and had yet to get in the studio to record Brave New World, so the band had a few songs from the Blaze Bayley era in their set. It is always so cool to hear Bruce sing songs like Futureal and Man On The Edge as I think that this was the only tour that he sang them.

This puts me at nine live bootleg records for Maiden. I still desperately need something from the Piece Of Mind and Somewhere In Time tours!

KK's Priest

When K.K. Downing announced that he had a new band after his ten year retirement from Judas Priest, I had pretty low expectations. I wasn't impressed with his exit from Priest and the mud slinging that followed... plus his launch of a "metal" men's cologne was laughable, so when he mentioned a return to heavy metal, I expected it to be weak tea. When it was announced that his new band was going to be called KK's Priest, I rolled my eyes. Christ, with Ripper Owens in the band, they could have recycled the Jugulator name or something. KK's Priest is one of the lamest band names in the history of terrible band names. Either way, I expected this band to shit the bed.

Maybe it was because my expectations were so low, but when I heard the first single, Hellfire Thunderbolt, I found myself pleasantly surprised. I mean, it didn't compare the the last couple of Judas Priest records, but it was some solid metal. I kind of got caught up in the hype and jumped into buying a signed copy of the Sermons Of The Sinner album.

By the time the record arrived in the mail, I'd talked myself out of the hype and was back to my low expectations. I just really wasn't in the mood for this record. I haven't found a lot of new metal albums that have excited me this year, so I was kind of down on this record before I'd even listened to it. I dropped the needle on this thing a couple of days ago, and by the end of it, I was kind of bored with the whole thing. I have started to warm up to this with a few more listens, and there are a few songs that really give me a kick...so this isn't as terrible as I thought it might be.

It's kind of a fun listen, but time will tell how well this holds up over the years.

Want List Full Of Metal

The Chromium Dioxide channel over on Youtube recently posted a video on the dangers of drinking and eBaying. It was a fantastic celebration of poor decisions and impulse spending for records, and I wanted a piece of that action. My Top Wants list for 2021 was staring me in the face, and I wanted to ignore price tags and see what kind of trouble I could get into. I don't need alcohol to influence me into doing some damage when record shopping.

The Fistful Of Metal album from Anthrax has been near the top of my want list for more years than I'd care to mention. I went nuts over those silver Megaforce labels for a while, but it has been a few years since I've picked one up, so it felt good to get back to it. I didn't end up with a triple digit price tag, so I don't think that I got suckered into spending too much, and this thing is in such great condition, so who fucking cares how much it cost.

Shortly after winning this eBay auction, the seller sent me a message to thank me for the purchase and he mentioned that he was 65 years old and was selling off his collection, listing a few records each weekend. It got me thinking about my own mortality and where I might be at that age. 65 for me is only in another 15 years. What the fuck? I've been doing this blog for 15 years, and to think that in another 15 I might be in a position where I've got to sell my collection kind of fucked me up mentally. Realistically, how long can I keep this up? Am I just wasting time acquiring things that I'm just going to have to eventually sell off. What's the point? Tough questions came to the surface that I fully intend to bury under the purchases of more records.

Cool Blue Whip

Look. I fucked up. I know I did. When I first heard that Chain Whip had preorders up for their new record, Two Step To Hell, I ignored it. I don't know what my problem was. I assumed that I had plenty of time to pick up the colored vinyl, but I blinked and they was gone. I've been waiting for one to show up on Discogs so that I can pay a stupid price for it, but I keep coming up empty there as well. I may have to suck it up and just get the black vinyl pressing.

When I saw that Chain Whip put a few blue vinyl copies of their 2020 demo in their Bandcamp store, I wasn't going to make the same mistake and I quickly added one to my cart and checked out. I had no idea what songs were on here, but I wasn't fucking around anymore.

Chain Whip play a frantic style of punk with some ragged edges and this demo presents a more raw version of that. Three of these songs ended up on the Two Step To Hell 12 inch, but the other five only appear on this demo. I'm glad someone pressed this to vinyl.

Never Say Die Tour

Earlier this year I picked up an Ozzy live bootleg from the Rock Brigade label. The cover art for that Ozzy boot was amazing. The black and white cover design with the gold OBI strip was a great look, and as soon as I saw that the label also released a live bootleg for Black Sabbath as well, I jumped on it.

Back in 1978, Black Sabbath went on tour to support their Never Say Die album, and they took Van Halen out with them as the opening act. Seems that most people love to talk about how Van Halen blew Sabbath off the stage each night... that Sabbath were dinosaurs and could not keep up with those young guns from California. Fuck that noise. Sabbath may have been on the verge of crashing during this tour, but this bootleg shows that the band could still bring some heat live from the stage. The band is tight and Ozzy sounds fantastic. In fact, this may be my favorite live recording of the song Black Sabbath ever... when Ozzy says "Let's dance with the devil" mid-song, it gives me chills. Plus live versions of Shock Wave and the title track from Never Say Die, plus Dirty Women and Rock 'n' Roll Doctor off Technical Ecstacy make this well worth the price of admission.

This live boot does have it's flaws though. It is a bit rough for me to sit through the drum solo, guitar solo, instrumental of Orchid, and then another guitar solo. Ugh...it is not interesting at all to me. Plus there is a drastic cut at the end of Dirty Women and Electric Funeral, to end Side B and Side C, that is jarring as hell. Still, overall, this shows how strong Sabbath still was on the road at the time, especially when you think that in a little over six months, Ozzy was out of the band and Dio came in to take his place.

Blue Beaker

Back in the early 90's I picked up the Phleg Camp split with Fuel and those two songs were fantastic. They drew obvious influence from what Dischord was releasing a few years previous, and they nailed that sound. A couple of years later I saw their Blind 7 inch at a local record store and I quickly snatched it up. That record was such a dud that it took me 27 years before I dared to give one of their other records a chance.

When I was picking up the Three Penny Opera LP from a Discogs seller recently, I noticed that they also had the Phleg Camp Beaker 7 inch available. It was on blue vinyl and it was released in 1991, so for a few bucks I decided to take a chance on it.

Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for, and it pairs with the Three Penny Opera record perfectly. I've been playing the two of them back to back repeatedly since they have arrived.

...Countless Trips

Earlier this year, I had a test press of the self titled Three Penny Opera record land in my lap. Getting my hands on that album had me revisiting the entire 3PO catalog, and I'd forgotten just how great this band was. It had been a while since I'd given this band much of my time, but I suddenly couldn't get enough of them and I was listening to them daily. I was only missing one of their records from the collection, so of course I needed to get on it immediately.

Three Penny Opera released their first album, ...Countless Trips From Here To There, back in 1998 on the Spectra Sonic Sound label. The label was run by Shawn Scallen, who was a photographer and I remember seeing his name attached to photos of a few great Canadian bands at the time like Shotmaker and Sparkmarker (who named a 7 inch after him). Well, apparently Shawn still has some of the old Spectra Sonic stock laying around, and I was able to grab this album from him on Discogs.

Man, I can't get over just how great this record is. It is funny how you can forget about a record for years, and then suddenly become obsessed with it. Right now, I can't get enough of this thing.

Blue Bomber

As we enter the last couple of months for the year, I wanted to make another move on the Top Wants list that I post in the sidebar for this blog each year. I'm typically unfocused and all over the map with my record collecting... I get excited about chasing a record, but then when I don't immediately pull the trigger for one reason or another, I forget about it and move on to the next shiny object that captures my attention... this list helps me set a couple of goals and not lose sight of a few records that I really want to add to the collection.

When I recently picked up a Motorhead bootleg, it got me thinking about the pressing of Bomber that I'd added to my Top Wants list at the start of the year. I've been wanting the UK Bronze pressings for the classic early Motorhead records for while now, and I've slowly picked off a few of them. The Bomber album was the next logical stop in my quest. For Overkill and Ace Of Spades, I went with the standard black vinyl pressing, and I was content with that... but for Bomber, I wanted one of those early colored vinyl pressings. It seems that Bronze did these colored vinyl pressings for some of their releases. I grabbed one for the Girlschool record I picked up a few years ago, and it was cool to grab Bomber on blue.

Just like Overkill and Ace Of Spades, Bomber is absolute perfection. Each song is a perfect fit into the record, and it plays so smoothly that it's over before I realize it... and then I immediately want to listen to it again.

Face The Flag

A day after picking up the Split Lip 7 inch, I was back to Discogs checking to see what other 90's hardcore records I could grab.

One of the records that I've had my eye on for the past few years is the 411 album, This Isn't Me. This record was a pretty big deal in the early 90's... especially to this scrawny kid from Maine that was just a little late to the hardcore scene and missed out on Dan O'Mahony's previous band No For An Answer. I got to see 411 play Boston in '92, but attendence at the show was pretty low... I think that Vision cancelled last minute, so maybe people bailed because of that, but man, I was still there and up front, screaming along to songs like Face The Flag with all the youthful excitement I could muster.

One of the reasons that I'd been wanting to chase this 411 album was because of how great that vinyl looks.

Soul Kill

Picking up the new Encounter 7 inch a couple months back had me down the rabbit hole of early 90's hardcore. It is so easy for me to fall into this obsession. One small push and I'll be wrapped up in bands from that time period for weeks on end. That Encounter record was originally recorded back in '92, so I inevitably started hitting my playlist from that year pretty hard. The first Split Lip record was released that year as well, so as soon as I heard those songs, I desperately wanted another copy of that 7 inch.

Split Lip perfectly embody melodic 90's hardcore. The Soul Kill record was their first so by default it is their most traditional hardcore sounding release, but the band grew and pushed those boundaries with each release until they changed their name to Chamberlain and ended up as some kind of alt-country indie pile of shit. Those first few records however... and I consider Fate's Got A Driver to be very much a Split Lip record... are fucking flawless.

The blue vinyl for the first pressing looks great.

Back in the early 90's, I did pick up the second pressing on white vinyl with the purple cover. Happy to another copy to the collection.

Fire Your Guns

When I started to chase AC/DC Australian pressings a few years ago, my plan was to limit this quest to only the Bon Scott albums. When it came to the debate of Bon Scott vs. Brian Johnson, I was always Team Bon. The last couple of years, however, has seen my appeciation for those Brian Johnson records grow and grow... and when I started looking to add The Razors Edge to the record collection, I made the decision to not go cheap.

I didn't pay any attention to The Razors Edge when it was released in 1990. AC/DC were too soft for me at that time, and for the most part I just wanted to thrash. I was familiar with the two singles, Thunderstruck and Money Talks, but they were worlds away from Megadeth's Rust In Peace and Kreator's Coma Of Souls so I wasn't going to fuck around with that weak shit. It probably took me a good 10+ years before I even bothered listening to The Razors Edge, and it wasn't until recently that I really started to love this album. There are some fantastic AC/DC songs here, with Fire Your Guns and the title track absolutely blowing me away with how great they are.

When I started looking to pick up a copy of this record, I knew that I needed the Aussie pressing. The center labels for both the US and UK ATCO pressings were boring, and I really dislike the reissue labels... so the Australian pressings was the only one that was going to make me happy. Yes, I opted to spend more money for the pressing with the better center labels. Either you understand or you don't...and if you don't, what the fuck are you doing here?

Pretty Low

I was in a foul mood a few weeks back. I was stressed at work and people were pissing me the fuck off. Nothing seemed to be going my way and so I put on some music that fit my mood. Listening to some Expire was just what I needed to vent some of that frustration. I wanted to put my fist into my laptop screen, but instead I just bought a record. Deep breath in... Buy It Now... and exhale. Namaste.

Expire released their second album, Pretty Low, back in 2014, and as much as I liked Pendulum Swings from 2012, it still took me seven years to finally check it out. When Pretty Low was released, it was an off year for me with hardcore. All I wanted to listen to was metal, and I couldn't be bothered with the latest Expire. This year, however, has found me absolutely obsessed with newer hardcore bands... where "newer" could be defined as anything from the past ten years... and somewhere along the way Expire showed back up on my radar, so I figured maybe it was a good time to check out that Pretty Low album. Oh man, this record is exactly what I wanted. It had been around eight years since I've listened to Expire, but this record punched me in the throat and made me apologize for ignoring the band and this album for so long. So much anger and aggression. Fuck.

Initially, I wanted to chase down a pink vinyl pressing for this album, but when I saw how good the brown and purple split looked, I changed my mind and grabbed that one instead.

ACAB

Bitter Branches released their debut 12 inch last year, and then Tim Singer quickly followed that up with a record from No Escape early this year. No doubt, during a pandemic year, Tim was a busy man. With that release of the No Escape record though, I was wondering if we'd heard the last of Bitter Branches, so I was kind of surprised to see a new 7 inch from the band this year.

The main thing that drew me to buy a copy of this 7 inch was the packaging. Designed to look like an old Sub Pop single, this thing looks great. I'm not interested in those old Sub Pop bands but I do like the look of those records, so it was cool to see Bitter Branches kind of pay tribute to them here.

While I thought the This May Hurt A Bit EP was pretty good, and I would give it the occasional spin, the two songs here are fucking great. Both Along Came A Bastard and Fraudulent have been getting repeat plays since this 7 inch arrived.

Shortly after receiving this 7 inch, I saw a pink vinyl pressing that someone had posted somewhere on the internet. It looked so good, and I was immediately tempted to rush out and pick it up as a second copy. Checking Discogs today, I see that the pink vinyl is limited to 18... so I guess I'll just stick with my splatter version.

Memory Screen

When I checked out the latest America's Hardcore comp a few months ago, Profile wasn't the only band that I was inspired to check out. The was a band called Memory Screen that caught my attention as well.

I'd never heard of Memory Screen before, but finding them squeezed between Dead Heat and Rule Them All in the tracklist for the AHC Vol 5 comp, I couldn't help but pay attention to the band...and man, they certainly held their own against the bigger bands that I was familiar with. I don't know anything about this band, and I'm not sure how to really describe them, but I really dig their melodic hardcore style. When I discovered that they released a 7 inch, To Nowhere, at the end of 2020 I quickly grabbed a copy.

When I placed my order with Tiger Records for this Memory Screen 7 inch, the black splatter vinyl was sold out and unavailable, so I went with the regular clear vinyl option. Looks like they managed to locate one more splatter pressing and send it to me. Not a fan of splatter, but I guess this one works for those Tiger Records labels. 100 pressed.

Senjutsu

Iron Maiden were dropping hints that we would soon be seeing a new album from them back when I caught them live on the Legacy Of The Beast tour back in 2019. Coronavirus threw a wrench into the works for a lot of bands as we rolled into 2020, and I'm pretty sure that Maiden put the brakes on thier plans to release that new album, and waited a year or so until things had calmed down a bit. Over this past summer, Iron Maiden started dropping hints around this thing called Belshazzar's Feast which lead to the announcment of the new album, Senjutsu, and the lead off single, The Writing On The Wall. I got sucked into the hype machine that Maiden were fueling big time, and could not wait for the album to drop.

It had been six long years since Iron Maiden had released their last album, Book Of Souls. Well, I make it sound like a long time, but 5 or 6 years is a pretty standard release schedule for this band. Either way, I was so hyped up that by the time the vinyl for Senjutsu arrived, I should have taken the day off from work because all I wanted to do was sit and immerse myself into this record.

Iron Maiden must be one of the more frustrating bands out there. I mean, you know that they aren't going to give us another Piece Of Mind, or even another Seventh Son, but you still hope for a couple of tracks that harken back to those glory days, but that isn't who Maiden are anymore. While, I still absolutely love all the post-2000 reunion albums I still keep hoping to hear the band with a bit of fire. So with my first listen of Senjutsu I was pretty disappointed...and while Bruce's vocals sound better than they did on Book Of Souls, my overall initial impression was that the entire one hour and twenty two minutes of this new record was stuck at the same slower to mid-pace throughout and I was tired of it by the end. I think that part of my initial exhaustion was due to the three ten minute Steve Harris epics that end this record. Repeat listens definitely had me appreciating Senjutsu more and after a few more spins I was really liking the first half of the record.

I'm starting to warm up to this record with more and more listens. I don't think this one is going to ever rank very high in their discography for me, but I still enjoy it...and it's Maiden so it will still get plenty of spins.

I only go to Walmart to buy Iron Maiden records.

Turnstile Love Connection

It has been ten years since Turnstile surprised me with that first 7 inch. The band seem to do their own thing, and over the years they have grown to experiment with their sound more and more, so with each album I've expected the band to disappoint me. I just keep expecting them to finally "outgrow" hardcore and push those boundaries too far where I just walk away.

When Turnstile released the first song off their new album, Glow On, I figured that this was when I was going to lose interest in the band. The song, Mystery, starts off with this weird electronic sound and my first thought was that I was too old for this shit. Next came Holiday which showed some promise, but the next song we got to preview was No Surprise and I was again left scratching my head. I was so conflicted about this new album. The jaded old dude in me wanted to hate it so much, but the hardcore kid in me was telling me to just give it a try...so I preordered the album and hoped for the best.

Like most Turnstile records, Glow On took a few spins to sink its hooks into me, but man, once it grabbed ahold of me I was in deep. This record is so much fucking fun and I can't listen to it without bouncing around like a fool. The flow throughout thie entire album is flawless as each songs blends into the next so smoothly that the 35 minutes flies by without any effort...and I immediately want to take it for another spin.

If I remember correctly, a lot of the more limited vinyl pressings were sold out by the time someone tipped me off that preorders were up. I think I only had the option of brown or pink vinyl. Ummmm...yeah, pink vinyl is the way to go here. There was a really nice looking colored vinyl option that was named "cloud" that would have been nice to have, especially since Discogs dipshits are dropping $600 for it. For a record released two months ago, people are dumb... even if it is a strong contender for my record of the year.

Bare Breast Boogie '85

Sometimes I'll just head over to the Hells Headbangers distro and do a random search for bootlegs. Often times I'll come up empty, but occasionally I strike gold. Now, I wasn't really interested in collecting Motorhead live boots... hell, I can't even be bothered to buy some of thier official live records... but I remembered that when I'd picked up an Ozzy bootleg record that there were a number of inserts in there promoting a bunch of other records that the label had released. That Ozzy bootleg was a lot of fun, so I figured that I'd search Hells Headbangers to see if they had any of the other Rock Brigade boots. I came up empty on that front, but I did get a hit on something from Motorhead, and when I saw the Bare Breast Boogie album title, I decided to take a chance on it.

I didn't have high hopes on the quality of this recording. I'd checked a couple Youtube videos that had audio for this show and they were muddy as fuck, but I still ordered it just to have a record titled Bare Breast Boogie in my collection. Like I said, I'm not too excited over live Motorhead records, but surprisingly this thing is a blast. The sound is actually quite good for a bootleg, and Lemmy is a fiesty motherfucker throughout this show. Lem asks for the girls to show their tits before the band tear into the song Jailbait, and he calls the people in the mosh pit a bunch of assholes for not paying attention to the music as they dive into No Class. It was still nine months or so before the release of Orgasmatron, but Motorhead still included three songs from that record in this set which must have been a real treat for the kids at the show. This whole set is just a lot of fun and I'm glad that I grabbed this record.

I'm not really sure what is going on here on the back cover, but it is a nice reminder to wear your mask to help prevent the spread the of COVID-19 and it's variants.

Let's hear it for those motorboobs.