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.

Keeping It Going

Here is Pulling Teeth's Witches Sabbath IV. Its got a cover of The Ramones' Teenage Lobotomy. Just happy to have one of these.

I got another version of the Swamp Thing 7". This is on black out of 300.

This is The Effort's From Our Mistakes on clear. It's the cloud variant I believe out of 200.

This is US Tour version of Perspective. Numbered out of 75. Only missing the Wide Awake cover and a black one.

I picked up the copy of It's All Our Blood I was missing. The red was the React! exclusive color. Nice to have them all now.

This is Insted Live at CBGB put out by Livewire. Clear is out of 300. Another cheap pick up from Celebrated Summer.

This is the last copy of Martyr Immortal I was missing, and also the most rare out of 150.

I made an order from the Half the Battle guys. I picked up the three colors of the LP and four copies of the Youth Crew 10 compilation. The singer apparently lives in Arlington, so I think he drove it to my house or something, there wasn't a postage label on it or anything. I can see why people like what Seb is doing at JAD, the packaging for this LP is quality.

There's More

I've had a lot of down time this weekend so I thought I'd knock some more of this out. The next few are pick ups from my trip to Celebrated Summer while I was in Baltimore for the Mindset/Get the Most/ON show.

This is Iron Boot's Easy Green. I believe this is the first press on black out of 500.

Numbered on the back, Alex over at Grave Mistake does a great job with his releases, everything looks great.
Here is the 7" single from Rage's Guerrilla Radio, something I couldn't pass up on.

This is something that simply just caught my eye and seemed decent. Nice cover/vinyl match. From what I heard this is pretty standard style youth crew. The cover does it justice. Out of 900.

This is something I've been looking to pick up but never got around to. Virgin Witch's s/t. Dom from Pulling Teeth plays guitar and bass on this. It's pretty similar to Pulling Teeth, I'd say its a bit more evil and metal. Good stuff, and I mean just look at this thing.

Here is what I think is the record release version of the Sacred Love 7". I guess the Baltimore show was the record release show for this, not sure. Either way, Ev did a good job on the art as usual.

Numbered out of 50. Not totally in to this band, but I figured it would be cool to pick up. If you're interested in trading for it let me know.

Here we have two copies of the Disengage 7" that I picked up in two places, both at shows. Disengage opened the show in Baltimore and it was pretty impressive, I knew I was interested in the band, but they sold me after that. If you don't already know, this features members of Cold World, Title Fight and Bad Seed. You should check 'em out.

More to come...

About a Week Later

Strap yourself in. There's a lot of stuff in this one.

Here we have my pre order for the Jane Doe reissue from Deathwish. Everything looks very cool and as long as the wait was, I think its safe to say it was worth it. On the left is the big booklet that comes with each copy. The thing is pretty true to the original style of the release, just taken a step further. I was surprised at how simple and straight-forward most of this was. I thought with as much hype as this reissue got naturally, there would be some more baggage per se. Here we have the two most common versions, as it seems I didn't luck out on getting a rarer one. White is out of 2,000 and red out of 1,305. Pretty nuts that they put out 5,000 copies of these, but I guess that makes sense. The reason why I lined up the records the way I did is that the sides of the labels for this double release are J.A.N.E. So as lame as I am I had to lay them out to spell it.

Here we have the fourth press of The Things We Carry. I've wanted to get a copy of this for a little while now, and since I didn't want to pay like $40 for a copy, this worked out for me. I was a little disappointed with how this turned out. Would've been nice to be a gatefold, apparently the third press wasn't either.

Here we have another pre order from Six Feet Under. First is the second press of the Kingston 7", defiantly better colors of vinyl this time around, I'm happy. Also I ordered three copies of The Rival Mob 7", though I got two copies of purple, I'm guessing that the black just sold out that fast. No worries I think I'll be able to trade/sell my extra on purple, as this is already sold out and Dave ordered a second press. 1,500 records gone that fast, impressive. This band is defiantly getting a lot of attention. I'll get to an example of that later.

Here we have another record that I probably didn't really need, but I figured why not. This is a plain version of Down to Nothing's Splitting Headache. By plain I mean, there's no special stamps, like all the other ones I own. This is blank and supposedly out of 225. Not sure, no idea what the full pressing info is on this one.

So I ended up getting an extra copy of ON record that I already had, by accident. So I ended up making a trade with it pretty quick. Here is what I got in return, this is a copy of Go It Alone's Histories with the European tour stamp on it. Pretty nice accidental opportunity. I traded this with clichejon, and the funny thing about this is that it was supposed to go to Seb of Just Another Day Records, from Mark of GIA, but I suppose Seb never got this. He wrote a note on the dust sleeve.

Another funny thing about this trade was that Jon included a copy of De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, which just made my package. I actually just got it out and put it on the turntable, that's how stoked I am about it. Not to mention there was this like stupid dance DJ LP that was all marked all over it to use as a mailer, because well that's all its good for. Apparently it was meant to be an international exchange mailer. As it started with L.O.James and then went to Jon in the UK, and now to me. The reason why this is even funnier is that James lives in the D.C. area, as do I. So really it just came back to pretty much the same place it started. Anyway, I'll send this out with whoever I next send a record out of the country to.

Here we have my Common Cause pre order from React! This has got to be the best looking React release yet.

The cover is just awesome with the glossy gold accent all over it and as usual the fold out insert is stellar.

The mailer is awesome, I actually want a shirt with this design. I NEED a copy of this on gold from the showcase. So if you got one please get at me. Aram just out-does himself all the time.

This is a copy of the 7" of the same record that I just so happened to get at the same time by chance. As you can see this version is also very cool with the silver accent, but the React version is the winner.

Here is two copies of Police & Thieves' Amor y Guerra from Youngblood. The top copy on green is out of 300, the bottom copy is the Youngblood 08 Showcase version stamped and numbered out of 150. Two nice pick ups around my area, one at a show and the other at a record store.

That's all I can fit in the labels for one post, so you'll just have to wait for the rest. There's plenty more to go.