Youngblood Showcase Pt. 2

This is Blue Monday's first 7" I believe. The earlier material is by far the best from this band. This and the second 7" I recommend to anyone out there.

This is Mainstrike's s/t 7" put out by Crucial Response. Mainstrike was a band from the Netherlands and is one of the several noted youth crew bands to come out of Europe in the past twenty years or so. Good stuff.

This is the Steel Nation 7" put out by A389. This band has gotten worse since this release, but this and some of the other earlier material are pretty good.

I picked this up along with the Where It Ends zine from Deathwish. This is the 3rd press of Dedicated to Babies... I still need to get a copy on White from the 2nd press. It's amazing how popular this band still is despite not touring at all really. Great band regardless.

I was happy to finally get a copy of the Lights Out LP from Sean Youngblood. I heard one of their songs on the Revelation Generations compilation. I immediately was intrigued, dug a little further and was defiantly in to it. I would describe them as a dirty style of hardcore, taking it's attitude from punk but still a pretty hard band.

This is the record release version of Iron Age's Constant Struggle, limited to 195 copies. I got to see this band finally and I'm kind of indifferent about it. It wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. Apparently that's the way it is usually from what I've been told.

This was the big release for the Showcase, Sacred Love's 12" EP. I haven't listened to this yet, but it looks pretty cool. The screen printed cover came out really well and the artwork is cool. These are numbered out of 100 and there were plenty left so I'm sure Sean will be putting them in the webstore soon.

Youngblood Showcase Pt. 1

I got two more zines. On the left is Where It Ends #2. I believe this is a New England zine. This issue features interviews with Jim of Champion/ON, Ned of Title Fight/Bad Seed/Disengage, Uriah of Dead End Path, members of Strife and others. Overall it's pretty good. I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty lame that it's in one of these plastic covers that I used to put papers in for school. Otherwise it's pretty cool. On the right is Thinking Cap #4, not sure what happened to #3. This one has Phil of Sacred Love featured. Not a bad issue, all of these are pretty cool simple pieces. I would like to see a full size zine from these guys at some point.

This is Rotting Out's latest 7". This is the second press out of 100. This is my first copy. This band is a bit different now that they have a different singer. I hope the next release brings it full circle so I can get back in to the band.

Here is Stay Cold from the first press. Another nice eBay pick up.

Here is the rarest Swamp Thing 7". This is from Sound and Fury '08.

Numbered out of 75.

Here we have 3 tapes. This is where we start the pick ups from Youngblood Showcase. Up top is the Noose demo. This Chicago band was just added to the React! family. They were pretty good at Youngblood, thus making me want to buy the tape. Below that is the Stick Together demo put out by Back to Back, the red is out of 400. At the bottom are my friends, the Warbound demo. There drummer just broke his hand so they are not able to play shows for a little while but they'll be picking things up soon.

I was told to pick this 7" up form a friend. Fields of Fire's The Kids Can't be Bought. I've also heard this is pretty bad so I'll have to listen to it soon.

This is Pulling Teeth's Witches Sabbath Vol. 2. It features Symptom of the Universe by Black Sabbath.

No Tolerance played Youngblood and I had been meaning to pick up their 7", so this worked out. Great band. Members of The Rival Mob and I think Step Forward, maybe some others too. New 7" on Youngblood at some point.

What Else, More Records

I made a hefty order from Victory when they put up the pre orders for the new Comeback Kid record. When I got a big heavy package in the mail I knew what it was. So I picked up the three colors of the new record Symptoms + Cures. Clear with black smoke out of 100, white with black smoke out of 300 and dark blue out of 600. The vinyl and artwork matches very well. Overall not a bad job with that. I actually like the artwork on this one, better than Broadcasting. The clear with black smoke is pretty cool looking too. The music however I'm not too sure about, I feel like they tried a lot of new things on this record, and though I think I remember hearing that the band said it would be similar to the older material, I don't hear it at all. I might have to say this is the worst album, but I've only given it a listen like three times. With the new record Victory put out a second press of Wake the Dead, which was pretty much the best part of the package. Wake the Dead is a great record and I would defiantly buy three more copies of it in a heartbeat. Again they had the clear with black smoke out of 100, red out of 300 and white out of 600. Not bad record colors, the red and clear smoke look the best though. I also picked up the other copy of Broadcasting I was missing, "Khaki" out of 1,058. Much more of a olive green mix but whatever. I believe this means I have all the colors now. I SERIOUSLY need to get some copies of Turn It Around.

I got a copy of Common Cause - The Power to Change off of eBay. This is the pre order press out of 180. Powered did a great job with this release. The artwork and layout are top notch. I took pictures of the tri-fold insert to show you what I mean. More labels need to put this much effort in to their releases. It makes you feel like you got something that had time and effort put in to it. It's a bummer this label is done pretty much, I should've been more on top of this label when they were active and exchange rates also weren't as bad.



Here we have another transition from the 3 song Down to Nothing self titled. I'm not sure what the actual color name is for this and I've heard different versions, like red white and blue mix and purple/black mix. either way this is the transition from that batch of the press. This doesn't seem a whole lot different from the regular version of the press, maybe some different color streaks. Here is a bunch of copies of this transition. I won this from Tre of Deathwish on eBay. If anyone wants to get me one of the five test presses of this one let me know.

This is my first copy of Gone But Not Forgotten's Demo. This was originally put out on tape I think and then React! pressed it on vinyl. This is probably the simplest looking release from React! that I've seen. The usual goodies are in it but just very simple black screen printed cover and layout. I wasn't in to this band a lot originally, but it's pretty good actually, I'm still not totally sold on the vocals. Really I just wanted to add this to the React! collection and when I went to buy a couple of lottery tickets for the recent React! lottery I figured I'd pick up some things I wanted while I was in the store. This and a Common Cause shirt were what I ended up with.

I was able to get the Mindset 2KGR8 tape. This was sold while I believe the band was on tour. It has two songs from Real Power on it and one song that eventually was on Time & Pressure. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm guessing they're probably demo recordings.

I picked this up at a Hot Topic, sometimes they have vinyl on clearance for great prices. This is The Fall of Troy's Phantom on the Horizon. This was essentially something that was done a while back in secret and wasn't actually released until about the time their last album came out. The band is no more, but this record was pretty good. It's probably the most different thing that they did. The clear was a special Hot Topic press, out of 1,000.

ON

Nick over at Alternate 1995 posted that he was looking to sell some stuff to get something big for his Misfits collection. So I made him an offer for two ON records I was missing. Here they are. The one on the bottom is from ON's first show/record release. The green flier on the right is from that same show. The other copy was for the West Coast Tour in the Summer of '08. As you can see, both are on transparent green.

Both are stamped and numbered out of 75. Very happy to have both of these. This 7" is really good.

About the same time I got my order for the second pressing of Double Vision. This is the the American press on React!/Reaper. 400 were on clear and 600 on black. This is the first version on clear, but the first press had a black pressing as well. Apparently to tell the difference, their is a "33 rpm" on the labels on the second press. Aram also included the React! 2010 cardboard mailer for me to, nice addition.

This is some friends of mine's band, Troops of Tomorrow. This is the pre-release tape for their upcoming 7", The World Won't Listen. Good up-in-coming D.C. band. They play a mix of street punk and hardcore. It's a pretty good recording I have to say and though street punk isn't really my thing, it's a solid release. I believe the 7" release show is on Wednesday in Baltimore with Rotting Out and Soul Search. Give 'em a listen here.

So I had to open an eBay case to get this record. Didn't get it in the mail for like 3 weeks, opened a case and it was at my door in two days. Funny. This is the record release of the latest Down to Nothing 7" All My Sons. I was unable to go to the show in Richmond, which was a bummer because I'm sure it was a banger.


This was done pretty well, one of the better special cover releases I've seen. Clean design, simple, stamped, numbered and it even has different labels on the 7" than the regular release.

In yet another installment of Down to Nothing, this is the On Thin Ice split from Grave Mistake Records. This is one of the rarer red ones, which apparently is out of 50 or so. The 1st press was supposed to be pink, which it is, but some came out darker than others, and completely red in this case. Here's a comparison of some of them for you.

Alex as usual completely hooked me up, got me some added goodies for the collection. I also asked Alex to put two zines in the package for me.

I'm starting to get in to zines. I feel like they need to come back in popularity. The left one is put out from a guy in Toronto I believe, or somewhere in Canada. Apparently all of these interviews are from like over two years ago and he just didn't get around to putting this out until more recently. Pretty solid material, nothing amazing with presentation, pretty standard. Worth checking out. The one on the right is great, Just Say Yo!. Pulling Teeth, Trapped Under Ice, Not Sorry and Police and Thieves are all in this one. Great artwork, quality print and good content. This and The Effort are the two best zines I've seen. If anyone knows of any good zines I should check out please comment on here.

This is I think is two copies of the Fireworks 7" from the second press, not totally sure. I saw this band a little over a week ago for the first time and they were pretty good. Dudes seem in it for the right reasons. Oh yea, there's a Kid Dynamite cover on here and they have some Misfits cover demos on the internet somewhere. These guys sound a lot like New Found Glory, to the point to where people think it actually is them.

I picked this up at a yard sale a few weeks back. The cover is a little beat up as the picture shows, and when I bought it I looked at the vinyl and it looked pretty good. Now that I've looked at it in better light, not so much. O well, I probably should've haggled the guy. I'll try and clean this one. I haven't cleaned a record in a while, so let's see if I remember how.

I won these both on eBay for pretty cheap for what I think they would go for. Both are second presses and out of 250. Apparently these came out when Bridge 9 also put out the Time Slips Away CD, thus the reason for the labels. The copy of Count Our Numbers is supposed to be purple, but apparently some came out blue, and this looks like one of them. Supposedly this may mean its more like out of 60 or 70. I would need one on purple to compare.

In another eBay pick up I got Juggernaut on red, the most rare of the regular pressing.

I made an order from Heart in Hand records to get the two Mass vs Cali compilations. I also picked up two copies of Control's A Step Apart, Life to Live Records' first release. Control was a D.C. youth crew band a few years ago. The band is still together and I think still has all the same members but is now Broken Bodies, which is a harder band, similar to Carry On I'd say. I'm glad I was able to get this.

After a long wait, I finally got this one in the mail. I honestly just didn't believe it was here. This is the UK Tour copy of Splitting Headache, out of 30. I think Rick from Speedowax still has a copy of this somewhere between Europe and the states, that's just chilling somewhere. The first time he sent this to me It took like almost two months I think to come back to his house. So he sent me a different copy, and that I think is the one that's lost now. He then sent me a third copy, I think his own copy? Odd, it got to my house in like a few days. All the waiting for it to take only like 6 days to get here the third time around. Either way thanks to Rich, and when I get the other one I'll send it back to you Rick.

This is an Australian pressing of All My Sons from Dead Souls Records. I think this is the preorder color out of 100, but when I ordered this it was the only copy available. Seemed strange to me to do just a pressing of 100 only, but whatever I made the order, and not for cheap I might add. So after I got this I checked back to their store for the pressing info. There are two more colors available now, great. So now I have to pay like $50 after shipping to get the two of them. Is Australia currency that much stronger than the dollar or am I just getting ripped off?

Weekend Posts are a Must

Here is the new Hands Tied 7" from Livewire Records. The red is out of 300, gold out of 200. Apparently this is an active band again. Not sure how long that will last, but this 7" is pretty good.

This is a copy of the Bracewar Juggernaut LP on clear out of 650.

I got this in a trade. It's the Swamp Thing In Shame LP United Blood version.

Numbered out of 30, pretty limited I have to say. The cover is pretty cool, nice old school tattoo design.

I traded my copy of The Rival Mob HC4HC SFU showcase version for the Swamp Thing LP and this Mindset 7". This is the Winter 2009 Tour cover, limited to 110 copies. I was very happy about this trade. I think I got the better end of the deal, but that depends on who you are I suppose.

I've been meaning to get a copy of The First Step's Open Hearts and Clear Minds. This is one of the best records in the past 10 years I'd say. This thing is just so incredibly raw, fast and refreshing. This is clear out of 400.

This is another Down to Nothing record I probably didn't need to get. This is Grey/Red mix and Blue/Yellow split. I think it's out of 225. I'm kinda lost on the pressing on this record. Hopefully Rich of Speedowax will hook it up.

I finally got a copy of Focus on the Light, the Powered pressing. Hopefully more to come. This is out of 510.

I picked up a few Effort records on eBay. This is the record release version of Iconoclasm with the special screen printed sleeve.

Numbered on the back out of 50.

Here we have the pre-order version with a special screen printed sleeve as well. This one is numbered on the front out of 75. I've been meaning to get some more versions of this LP. This is the best output by the band without a doubt.

This is the pre-order version of From Our Mistakes, with a numbered cover out of 100. This I believe means I have all of the first press.

Here we have three copies of the first Fired Up 7" that I picked up from Kyle Whitlow of Rivalry Records. From top to bottom this is Purple on 300 from the 3rd press, Black out of 400 from the 1st and Blue out of 250 from the first. I think the only one I'm missing is the regular version, not tour version, on clear.

Well I'm almost caught up, a few more to go.