Algernon Cadwallader - Parrot Flies

There's a couple of amazing things to do with this record. One is the LP itself. Two is the fact that it turned up. Everyone's favourite Kinsella-alikes Algernon Cadwallader's new album Parrot Flies is hands down wonderful. Noodly, twinkly 90's style emo at it's beautiful best, it puts me in an instant good mood and is the soundtrack to every sunny day I'll ever have. Gay enough for you? Good.

Brilliant arts & crafts front cover of a parrot, put together by vocalist Peter Helmis.

Pressed on a transparent blue, 200 of these made. This LP was leaked on the Internet (allegedly by the band) forever ago and i've played it a load, so it was good to be able to buy it on a pretty cool colour and limited run. I'm sure if you know where to look, the guilt free mp3's are still out there.

This was put out for us Europeans on a UK label, Big Scary Monsters. Bad experiences with this label in the past caused me to hate myself for ordering this from them when the pre-order went up, but they had me by the balls. So to speak. But lo and behold, it turned up ahead of when I expected it, and without a single complaint required. And without a bent sleeve, like the last record they sent me. Like I said, amazing.

All Pigs Must Die - God Is War 12"

All Pigs Must Die are pissed off. Featuring Ben Koller (the drummer from Converge) on drums and Kevin Baker (vocalist from The Hope Conspiracy on ... er, vocals) it's super loud, huge riffed hardcore. Kurt Ballou produces, presumably inbetween producing every other hardcore album and it sounds amazing just like everything else recorded at God City. Their first EP was self released on their own Non-Believer label and it seemed to get positive reviews from just about everywhere. So for this second release, their first LP, they've jumped up to Southern Lord Records.

Artwork is by the always amazing Florian Bertmer and features the severed head of Jesus in front of an inverted cross.

It's presented in a thick gatefold jacket with more artwork and lyrics on the inside. Lovely thick cardboard.

Pressed on 180 gram clear, limited to 500.

 Everything about this release screams quality. The artwork, the 180 gram record, the weight of the packaging, the musicianship and the production. An awesome addition to the collection. Southern Lord dispacthed this pretty quickly too, which was cool seeing as some pre-orders seem to drag on forever. All good.

End Reign 7"

The latest offering from the increasingly prolific and excellent Hemlock 13 , End Reign play heavy metallic hardcore and come from Durham in the North of England. Here in England everything is made from the colour grey, and its always raining. The wall of sound that ER have created on this 7" is a perfect musical accompaniment. Sounding a bit like Cursed on their 'Two' LP mixed with Trap Them on their 'Filth Rations' EP. I feel like the older I get, the more miserable and vicious I want my hardcore to get. This does both perfectly. If I was you reading that, i'd want a direct link to the H13 store so I could buy it. Ok then - http://hemlockthirteen.bigcartel.com/product/end-reign-7

This was pressed on two colours, a black/blue mix out of 200 and green out of 300. 

This was actually a split release from H13, Witch Hunter Records, Holy Roar and FITA Records. That's a lot of record labels for one 7", but totally understandable for the costs involved in pressing a record. And this release, for a debut solo 7" from a new, young UKHC act looks incredible. I think its pretty cool how 4 labels have thrown in together to get a new band a quality release like this out. All artwork by the brilliant Give Up.

A screenprinted cover was made up for people who got in and ordered it early. And seeing as i pre-ordered this about 8 seconds after it went up, i got one.

A load of stickers, patches and a hand written thanks from Nate were in there too.

Worth mentioning here that the next release from Hemlock has just gone up on the site, the Unholy Majesty demo, which from what I've listened to is going to be pretty special. Dark, metallic Holy Terror influenced hardcore played by a bunch of veterans from South UK. Only 70 of them made, don't sleep on that one.

Nomos - Notes From The Acheron 12" and Demo 7"

I Got into Nomos after a mate sent me mp3's of their demo 7". God bless the Internet. I loved it but for some reason never thought to actually look into what else they'd got going on. They hail from Brooklyn, NY and play a kind of Infest influenced, fast, no bullshit hardcore, with a scuzzy punk influence in there too. Dark lyrics & rugged production, its good stuff. I was browsing for something else when I came across this 12" - Notes From The Acheron.

Pressed on purple wax, limited to 100 and with an etched B-side. I was powerless. Released on Deranged Records. The B-side is etched with a portion of the artwork.

Big ass fold out poster with the lyrics on the back. 

All artwork is by a dude called Vinnie Smith and it's trippy. I checked out his website, he's got some pretty cool stuff on there. Similar pieces to this Nomos art and photography of American counter-culture. And so in the name of completion, I also grabbed the aforementioned demo from the same store. Also on Deranged Records, on black out of 900. 

The place I got this from still has some of the 12" in stock. I wouldn't imagine it's many seeing as they were only out of 100 so get in there, you won't be disappointed. And it's UK shipping for all you local readers, so it won't cost an arm and a leg to get it posted.

Gehenna - The War Of The Sons Of Light And The Suns Of Darkness. Andthe split with Blind To Faith.

When is buying records more enjoyable than usual? When you're not paying for them...

These two were bought by way of a Deathwish voucher, given to me from my brother for my birthday a few weeks ago. Deathwish themselves had nothing that tickled my fancy so I tapped up their brilliant distro for two Gehenna releases on A389 Records.

The infamous Gehenna. Dark & chaotic Holy Terror style. Their War Of The Sons Of Light and The Suns Of Darkness LP is a collection of early cassette, split 7" and unreleased tracks all from around 94-95. All out of print since forever and kindly reissued by A389 on grey/red haze vinyl. More of a red with grey explosion, but still looks good. Limited to 200. 

I'm into the Medieval satanic end-times artwork. Suits it all perfectly. Gehenna in the early days had a reputation for intense and violent live shows, rumours of stabbings and all sorts. A lot of it is probably well constructed mystique but there aint no doubting that they're the real deal. And vocalist Mike Apocalypse (or Mike Cheese or a bunch of other names) certainly gives zero fucks in interviews.

Definatley a party i wouldn't want to go to. All the demons is one thing, but being force fed frogs? I'm out. No matter how well it may enlighten the path to wherever. This LP is raw and nasty and totally brilliant. And so with the rest of my Deathwish Dollars, i snapped up the Gehenna /  Blind To Faith split.

This came out last year. Now im no scaredy little girl, but the Gehenna tracks are terrifying. Raw production, oddly placed psychedelic lead guitar drenched in reverb and Mike's creature-from-hell vocals. Its pretty amazing.

Great artwork too by Szymon Siech. Blind To Faith on the B-side feature members of Rise & Fall and play a stripped back, pretty dark metal punk hybrid. They've got a full length out on Holy Terror Records which i've got iPod style and it's brilliant. Something else for the shopping list. This split pressed on a grey marble. I have no clue about pressing amounts but i'd imagine its somewhere in the hundreds.

Touch Amore - Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me - Deluxe Edition

Briefly jumping forwards through my backlog to post about this one for a couple of reasons.

Reason one is the fact that this has taken forever to arrive. Pre-orders for this went up on Deathwish's Estore without much warning at the start of May and such was the rush of people to buy it, Deathwish broke. The site went down for around 2 days in total before fully coming back on line. During this time judging from forums and DW's tumblr and twitter feeds there were a lot of people flipping out desperate to know if their order had gone through and wether they had sold out or not. Confusion and chaos in this tiny corner of the interweb in full effect. Anyway, store went live eventually, and I snagged the Deluxe Edition (naturally) of Touche Amore's Deathwish debut - Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me. 1000 of these made, never to be available again. Encased in a 28 page 12" LP sized hardcover book and on 180 gram black. And then I waited.

And waited.

And wai.. yeah you get the point. Many a delay stopped this from shipping out and from Jake and Tre's regular updates it had something to do with the huge ass book the record comes in. Months went by, to the point where I wasn't even sure if I was bothered about it anymore. I was seeing pictures online of other people's standard editions in a variation of pretty colours and began to wonder if the extra cash for the Deluxe, the chaos of the order process and the long wait was going to be worth it?

In short, yes.  So reason two that this jumps the queue  - it's fucking gorgeous.

Deathwish & Touche Amore have really outdone themselves with this one.

The 180 gram record comes inside a sleeve inside that hand written lyric sheet. While we're on the subject of how nice this is, you should head over to this great post by my man Gav Weir. He drops all kinds of science about paper weight and stuff.

And it's got a really fucking cool label.

I'd be into it if all Deathwish releases had this label, a bit like how A389's are all the same. So, in the words of the Partridge Family, how long is too long? Well when it comes to the finished product being this brilliant, it's pretty irrelevant.

Burning Love - demo 7" (twice) & Don't Ever Change 7"

I've had a lot of good stuff all come in at once lately, some of which I've been waiting on for months but I'm working through it. I first heard Burning Love at the end of 2010 when their debut LP 'Songs For Burning Lovers' started showing up on a few hardcore blogs best-of-the-year lists. In all honesty I didn't think that much to them. Fronted by ex-Cursed rager Chris Colohan, I was a bit disappointed and dismissed them after one listen. But like many times, i was completely fucking wrong. Over time I kept going back to that album and eventually it grew on me. So I'll say this - if you think you don't like Burning Love, you're entitled to your opinion, but your wrong. Hardcore punk with a rock & roll swagger, massive grooves, bigger riffs. So get on with enjoying them. And in my spirit of spending money on records that I missed totally when they came out first time for half the price, I picked up a copy of their demo.

Released originally on cassette in 2009, it was pressed to vinyl and released by Canadian label Deranged Records the year after. 100 pressed on yellow with a yellow cover.

There were also red and black pressings, each limited to 100 again and with a corresponding coloured cover. But let's go back in time. Before all this was pressed, Thirty Days Of Night released the demo 7" in 2009 for us UK types to coincide with a Burning Love European tour. And luckily, while I was in the market for this demo, one of these appeared on EBay.

Pressed on purple and limited to 250. With different centre labels

I got it for a bargain too, £2. Which I'm pretty sure would be cheaper than when TDON first released them.

And to round off this Burning Love 7" trilogy, a single lifted from the debut LP. The dude I bought the yellow demo off was selling this too, and it seemed rude not to.

Don't Ever Change on the A-side, with a Nick Cave cover Jack The Ripper on the B-side. Pressed on blue, limited to 250 and released on Deranged.

It's a different version of Don't Ever Change than what is on the album for some reason, production is a bit rougher. And the Nick Cave cover is awesome. Helped by the fact that Nick Cave is awesome anyway.

Hatewaves - Taste The Beast

The 3 things i found about about this Hatewaves 7" just before I bought it were all I needed to know - 

1. It was released on A389 Records

2. It featured members of Pulling Teeth

3. It would sound a bit like Iron Lung.

I wasn't disappointed one bit. This is the pressing on good old fashioned black, although I have no idea how many were pressed on this or the clear version. I wish A389 had some sort of pressing info on their site but that would make them just too perfect. Seriously, i want to buy everything that they put their name to. So much cool stuff.

Blank flip side, the tracks on this are pretty short - 6 tracks in under 3 minutes. Really solid stop-start grind/pv influenced hardcore shenanigans.

The lyrics and subject matter are refreshingly weird and humorous so it sounds like it was a shit load of fun to make. It will always be cool to hear an NYHC style, gang vocal beatdown section ripping into 'Facebook Abusers'. They've got a new 5"coming out soon on A389 which will definitely be one to look out for.

Weekend Nachos - Two Things At Once

The band with the silliest name yet the harshest music.

WN play a mix of fast hardcore and crawlingly slow doom/sludge. They quickly became a favourite when i heard them earlier in the year. What has become evident as I pick up more of their records is the jet-black humorous streak they've got going on. Displayed by album covers of pleasant waterfalls and LP inserts showing band members sniffing flowers aswell as .... well, we can get to that. 

This release came out a few weeks ago just after their latest LP and is a re-issue/combining of two of their out of print EP's.

The cover art isn't exactly spectacular, showing the covers from the two EP's in boxes, on a silver background.

Put out on Cowabunga Records. I grabbed this on red, limited to 100. There's also a black pressing available on a run of 900.

The Bleed side has the 2 track EP which was originally released on Relapse last year. Both tracks are around 6 minutes long and as a one off, they ditch the speed completely and come out with 2 long, continuous sludge beat-downs. In a good way. 

The real treat though is the other side, Torture. Originally released in 2005 on Tooth Decay and long out of print, it's been remastered and sounds even more chaotic and insane than before. Easily worth it just for that. Also worth it for the picture inside of one of the band trussed up in full bondage gear, alongside the others dressed in jeans and t-shirts.

Short straw maybe? I've covered him up with a Burning Love badge. This here is a family blog.