2 records from 2 different Worlds...

Today I got 2 albums that I have been waiting for for fucking ages, (Although 1 is a re-issue, I assumed it was coming when the first LP was given the repress treatment) although both gave me very different feelings.



I should have been overjoyed by both releases getting their way to me (1 via Mailbox, 1 waiting at home with my wife) on what turned out to be a hectic day for me.

Onto the records:



First up is the Third pressing (I guess this is almost a repress given the time frame elapsed since the last pressing) of Mastodon's Leviathan. Now I fucking love this record. Maybe not as much as I love Remission, but it has definitely held a spot in my heart for a long time, and it has been an elusive (re)addition to my record collection. Not because it hasn't come up, I just couldn't push myself to pay the price commanded for the First press, and I was not too worried about the picture disc, as the sound wasn't what it could be (even though I have it on coloured vinyl...). But here it is, in all it's glory.





Now, this is where I start my story. This is how a record should look, and I hope to get my own releases to this level eventually. Heavy/Thick card stock covers, awesome gatefold, great printing and just a stellar package all round. The insert is black with a gold spot colour. Just lovely.



Now, this was sent to me in a nice sturdy mailer, wrapped in 2 layers of bubble wrap and a cardboard packing square to protect my purchase. It also arrived in less than a week. I wasn't surprised when I saw the little Red and White card in my PO Box, but I was when I saw the "RELAPSE" stamp on the package, as I wasn't expecting it to come for another few weeks.



I even posted a pic on my Twitter when I opened it and saw the packaging. This made my last day at my current role at work, all the more sweet (and the pink iced cupcakes my work colleague made me!). It was one of those times when you actually want to go home and just sit in your comfy chair and listen to records all day long.

My wife had told me that an LP box had turned up for me today, so as I stepped in the door, I kissed her hello (she isn't well today either), got changed into my home clothes and then went on the hunt to find the package (She has a habit of putting my mail down somewhere, but can never remember where she put it).

So, this brings me to my down side.



My pre order for the Break Even - The Bright Side LP turned up from Italy (after multiple delays, but these happen, not to worry. At least they got to me right?), and I was siked to get this bad boy onto my turntables, as I had just missed the weekends shows that Break Even had played, as the first was sold out (So I went out for dinner and then to play blackjack with my best mate Shane and old mate xStux), and the second I wasn't feeling the greatest, so I missed it.



I saw the box was a little battered, but that happens, hence why we pack them nice and safely, so that the outside may be a lottle fucked up, but the LP's inside are nice and safe...

As i opened the box, I started to worry, flimsy Euro mailer.

Heart sank a little more, no plastic sleeves/shrinkwrap on the records.

Sinks a bit more as see that there is no bubble wrap or cardboard mailer packing square protecting the LP's.

Almost into my stomach now, records have been mailed in the sleeves.

All the way out of the packaging and I am fucking furious!!
NB: (now those that know me well, know I am furious about a lot of shit, but this is my top bugbear!)



The spines are split and the corners are bent and I am not stoked at all. I have waited for fucking ever to get these records (delayed by a month, and as I said, I understand that this happens, and isn't my worry here), and they are not in the minty fresh condition that they should be. I start ranting and raving to my wife (who really has no idea why I am so upset), and then decide that I'm gonna do what anyone would do these days. Whinge about it on the internet, and that brings me to now...



Positives about this release: It's Break Even, and I fucking love this record. The band lost a good friend/brother and band mate after a tour a couple years ago, and a good chunk of what this record is about is about Rowan. This makes me happy, as you need to talk about people after they have left this world, and make sure that no one forgets them.

I actually like the vinyl configuration on the LP pictured (the other is blue/black inside out vinyl, and doesn't really grab me), even though I have moved right away from Splatter vinyl.



You should pick this record up at some stage, and when it gets a release. Cloud Street, which is the unreleased solo record of Rowans. It'll be out sometime soon, and I hope it gets an LP release too.



I now have 2 copies of this LP, that I am selling, as I will buy a copy with no creases in the sleeve or split spines, so if you want a copy of this for $10 plus postage, hit me up on c.wainwright@bigpond.com. Or write to me anyway.

I like email...

Baroness - First

Hola fair readers, today was a fucking good day for me record wise. I got shitloads of stuff in, but this little gem came as a bit of a surprise...



The story is, I was on Dead Format as I often am, looking at the classifieds for what was for sale, and a bloke in the US was selling a bunch of records that included Cursed's III for $15 and Baroness' second for $35. He stated that he was only shipping to the US, but I dropped a lone asking if he'd consider sending to Australia as the Baroness record had been eluding me for far too long now.



After agreeing to buy some other records (I missed out on the Cursed record, which I was gonna buy for me old mate Shane) but a final price was agreed on, and my paypal was a fair chunk lighter for it.



To be honest, it didn't really bother me because I was getting some good records for a price I wasn't about to moan about and I got to cross a top ten want off my list...



Then, today when the records turned up, I actually thought it was something else, sat down at my desk at work with my cup of coffee and opened that mailer, and I was fucking stoked! I started digging through the LP's, looking for my Baroness LP so I could bask in it's glory.

But...

It wasn't a copy of second. It was a copy of first.

This actually made my day EVEN BETTER! I fucking love this record.

I have now owned this 3 times. Once on smoke which I gave to one of my best mates Nigel, then again on Black and now on Black again. And this time it's fucking staying!



This is their best work, along with second, in my humble opinion. I rank it up there as one of my favourite modern metal records, alongside the first 2 Mastodon LP's.

Again, stoked!

Metallica - The $5.98 EP

Sick in bed. Again. Not into it to be honest. I really need a record playing in the bed room, or to get off my ass and put on in the lounge so I can chill on the couch when I'm sick and listen to records.

Anyways.

I dragged my ass out of bed long enough to go to the Doctors, and while I was at it I thought I would sift through my emails, work on some artwork for the The Omen 7 inch and listen to some comfort music. So I pulled this bad boy out.

This is another one of the records I hung on to. Mainly because I knew what I would have to pay to get the fucker back (and it is one that I would want to buy back at some stage), and because of how well I did when I bought it.

I have been a Metallica fan for a long time, and I have some older pressings of the first 3 albums, a couple re-issued singles from the same era (My favourite era of Metallica to be honest and I plan on buying the 45RPM represses at some stage too) and then this bad boy. I was shopping with my girlfriend of the time (Now my lovely and loving Wifer) at the Camberwell Markets (for those not of Melbourne, the Camberwell Markets are in a well to do area of the Eastern Suburbs, about 15 minutes from the City, and it used to be a fucking awesome place to shop for anything your heart could desire. For those in the US, it is like a swapmeet/flea market type vibe) and there was a dude with a couple crates of records. And not like the usual shit you find, where they have crates and crates of shit and maybe 1 or 2 good records in the whole lot, but 2 crates of fucking sick records.



This was sitting in the middle of the crate, and had a $25 price tag on it. Now I had seen this in Au Go Go for years with a price tag of $65-80 dependant on the seller at the time, and I knew that I didn't want to pay that for it, so I picked this up quick smart. The dude said to me that the record had a surface scratch on it, and pulled it out to show me. It did indeed have a surface mark throughout the whole of one side. He did say that he didn't have any issues with it playing and that he didn't get any noise from it either. For $25 I wasn't really worried too much, and picked it up, took it home, dropped a needle on it and it played fine. I really appreciated him being upfront though. I am pretty sure I bought my mate Gordy a Death Metal record from the same dude too for $10. I defs should have just bought a bunch of his shit. Oh well.



The cover on this is sick. I always loved the record sleeve for this. The back has some great photos, including James wearing a Faith No More shirt.



I like the blurb on the back heaps too. So much so I took a closer shot for all of you to enjoy.



A good fucking record, with some awesome songs.

Alkaline Trio - Crimson

I have been flat fucking out this week, as I mentioned in my last post, and the weekend was supposed to be a chilled out affair. Shit never happens that way now does it?



Yesterday (Saturday) I went record shopping with my homeboy Shane. Something we try to do once a month (as in hit 3-4 shops in town, rather than the pop in we do whenever we're in town normally), and this was a doozey for me. Spent a couple hundred bucks on some good records. Not a great deal of Metal or Hardcore, but a punk record or 4 and some other shit I have been meaning to pick up for a long time.



It's funny, I always thinks that buying online is cheaper, and it can be when I buy multiple records and save on postage, but a lot of the stuff I buy is BIN stuff on eBay and the record end up costing about the same when you add postage. I will admit that I do love get records in the mail though. Hahaha. But I am going to do my best to support my local record shops more, as I really want to make sure that they stay open.



I had planned to post about a record I got during the week that I had been chasing for a while, but then I was listening to this tonight, and I do really love this record. I listen to it almost daily in my car, and I really should have bought it on LP when it first came out, but I was broke as a joke then, so I didn't.



But here it is on my turntable now.



I love the colour of the vinyl on this pressing. It's listed as Lime. It is partially transparent when held up to the light, and you can see all the other colours in it then. This type of vinyl is making a big impression with me at the moment.

To be brutally honest, I am pretty over the DMM pressed stuff, and all of the crazy splatter vinyl. I have pressed stuff like that myself in the past, and I was alllll about it, but now I really like a good solid colour with deep grooves I can see, and the Direct Metal Mastering stuff doesn't have that same visual aesthetic. That's why I am loving the Epitaph releases at the moment. Great colours, good heavy vinyl and it always sounds fucking sick.



The artwork on this is nice and simple. Nothing too over the top.

This record is one of the best from the Alk3 in my opinion. From the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" rip off piano intro right down to the last song, it just kicks on through and does what Alkaline Trio do best.



This one is numbered out of 1000, and I don't know if that is per colour, or just the whole pressing. I need to look into that one a bit more.

I think it's still in print, but if not, you can get them pretty cheap on eBay.

Nice.

Darkest Hour - Undoing Ruin

I really feel as though I have been neglecting my little outlet for stories and those lovely slabs-o-wax that hit my Porch/PO Box every day or so, but I am in the midst of my "week from hell". This week is taken up with playing shows (Monday, Thursday and Friday), rehearsing with 2 bands Tuesday and Wednesday) and trying to cram in watching Masterchef with my wife. Normally I get between half an hour and an hour in between the time I get home and she gets home, so I can sit down in my extremely uncomfortable computer chair, put on the records I got that day, or enjoy something from the racks, and type away here. I love it, and with weeks like this, I really miss it.



I have had a bunch of records arrive in the last week (In fact, today I had one I have been chasing for fucking ages, but I will post about that one on the weekend), but I thought I would drag out this little gem from my ever growing collection and share/show off.
I love Darkest Hour, and they are one of my favourite bands (I don't like everything they have ever done, and I didn't like the Deliver Us record at all really) but they are a good band, a bunch of great guys and this record is in my top 3 records of all time.



Back when the band toured for Undoing Ruin, my old band, In Name and Blood, was lucky enough to play half of the shows (My wife and I also travelled to Adelaide to see them play with The Rivalry). This is where I came to realise that not only was it a sick record, but because they were super nice guys, I enjoyed it even more. It just felt like it was all for the right reasons. The production is spot on too. I really love what Devin Townsend has done with this record. So much so that I am considering asking him to mix my new bands album.





The artwork is also something that really grabbed me. It was downright fucking brutal, but not gory. It kinda challenged you, but you didn't really know why. This cover made me realise how much I was really into Chris "Crude" Taylors artwork.



I have owned a couple copies of this record, the first have a defect in the vinyl which caused it to skip, the second I took with me when I got my DH Tattoo and it got left behind as I had planned to get more work done at that studio, but never ended up going back (I will be honest and say that my wife was less than stoked when I turned up at home after getting tattoo'd with a dead child permanently applied to my forearm. Not stoked at all, but that's what happens when you're a dumbass and don't consult with your life partner about these kinds of things...).



And then I got a copy on White and was stoked (Although the gold copy I first had was my fav of the colours).

That was until I got my hands on this bad boy.



Someone on Dead Format was selling a bunch of records, lots of stuff I would have loved to have bought, but didn't have the cashola I needed, but this was listed, and had been for a few days. I was so sure that I wasn't going to get this record, as it should have been snapped up straight away. I mean come on, who WOULDN'T want to own a Test Pressing of one of the greatest Thrash/Hardcore records released in the last 10 years? It was also listed at the low price of $US50 postage paid. I checked my Paypal, check the bank account to make sure I could actually afford it, dropped a PM, and a week later it was sitting at my doorstep.

I am often dubious, as I have been ripped off a couple times, but old mate that sold me this was spot on (my dubiousness wasn't helped by the crudely drawn DH on the label), although he did neglect to tell me it had been signed by the whole band. I was over the f*cking moon. I could have gotten it signed myself I'm sure, but seriously, given I wasn't expecting it, and being the Uber fanboy that I am at times, this just made my day.



Even my wife was stoked on it, and usually she doesn't care much unless it's a record she really loves, but I think seeing me so happy with this little score got here stoked on it, and offered to have it framed. To be honest, I only played it once to make sure it was what it said it was (I also checked the matrix, etc against my copy on White, and of course it matched up), and it has been stored snugly next to my other copy in my record storage unit.

I just hope that they come back out on the new record, as I really liked that one.

That'd make me a happy little camper.