THE BEST OF METAL BLADE, Volume 2 (Metal Blade, 1987)

Just received my copy of The Best of Metal Blade, Volume 2, the vinyl edition from 1987. Which I ordered from Amazon last Wednesday and which I was expecting to arrive in much better shape. As the seller had listed it: Used - Very Good I was expecting barely noticeable wear but was shocked when I noticed how fucked up the jacket was. 

On the comments, the seller had noted that 'binding is frayed' which I do not recall reading when I made the purchase and which I must add, is an understatement. The binding is completely fucked up, sliced open and barely holds both sides together. The lettering in the spine is totally gone. Clearly, this is not the result of weathering but of an attack en masse of moths, termites or some other cardboard-loving parasite. When I opened the gatefold a sheet of dust covered it all. It was like one of those movies when the starring character discovers an ancient tome and blows on it just so that he can see what the title is. I am pretty sure this record has not been played in well over a decade.

The seller also added 'some slight wear on cover' which yeah, is quite accurate. What he failed to comment on was the state of the record sleeves. Both were ripped and yellow and in both instances the records were portruding at the bottom. The records play fine but both have light to heavy wear which the seller also failed to comment on. Oh well. These records and I go back in time and I guess I can't ask for gold when all I am paying is $17.

A couple of decades ago, my older brother was the proud owner of Volume 1, which included Celtic Frost, Bitch, Nasty Savage, Hirax, Pandemonium, Slayer, Omen, Fates Warning, Tyrant and several others and which was an absolute rarity in South America. As I kid I worshiped this compilation. Since my brother was much older and made good use of his dickish character  every chance he got I was not allowed to go anywhere near his vinyl collection. But I couldn't have given less of a fuck. Every time he'd go off to school or work I'd dive straight in, usually spinning Volume 1, or a few other personal favorites from his collection like Celtic Frost's Into the Pandemonium (which I now own after having stolen it from him sometime in the late 90's), Manilla Road's Open the Gates or Grim Reaper's Fear No Evil.

It was either in 1989 or in 1990 that a local record company issued a series of metal releases on cassette format. One of their releases was The Best of Metal Blade Volume 2. But in typical local fashion they managed to screw it up in every possible way. I bought the tape as soon as it hit the market. To say that it looked cheap would be to praise it. Instead of releasing two cassettes like the American version, only the first record was issued. If they had to pick one out of two for budgetary reasons it made sense, as the first record is where the most quality acts were; Slayer, Sodom, Slayer, Detente, Hirax, Hallow's Eve, as opposed to Sound Barrier, Krank, Cities, Exxplorer and Juggernaut.

But that wasn't it. The cassette had no info on it. There was only one panel with one side printed; the cover, which listed just a few of the bands and on the reverse we could find song titles but no band names. My favorite songs of this half compilation were Sodom's incredible "Deathlike Silence" and "Holy War", which I had no idea who played it. For the longest time I thought it was Tyrranicide but a few years ago I came to find out it was Detente. 

I am listening to the second record right now and with a few exceptions it ranks right above decent. The fourth half starts off with a horrendous live rendition of "Live and Let Die" by Lizzy Borden and that is a guilty pleasure I could have never envisioned had I not purchased this record. Even if it is in such a horrid state, it was $17 well-spent.

Record Shopping - Last Time Ever at VINYL FEVER

So anyway, as I said before, the day my friend informed me the record store was going closing down, I got mixed feelings, because on one hand I enjoyed shopping at that place and on the other I could take advantage of their clearance (40% off everything) with the $50 gift certificate I got for Christmas. 

That day, I sped off to the store after work.  As far as I was concerned, I was in a race against time.  The store was full. I had never seen it so packed, so I knew there was going to be competition. I skipped the CD's bin and went straight to the vinyl section. I had to start on the Z because the first letters were crammed with people perusing  the racks shoulder to shoulder. 

It did not take long for my first find, World Burns to Death's first full-length The Sucking of the Missile Cock, which features a pretty cute cover with George Bush in all sorts of sexy positions. I guess that's the reason why 500  copies of it were seized by Brazilian customs.  Since this was a used vinyl, the price was unbeatable, about $4.99.

I kept on searching. Going backwards from Z to A ain't that difficult. I have done it before. What complicated  my search was the competition. When I was around the letter T I saw a guy sprint from the door to the vinyl section. He was wearing a Brutal Truth T shirt, so I knew he was after the same type of stuff. Making matters worse, he had his girlfriend in tow and they took on separate positions. She went straight to the A.  I concentrated, hurried and soon, I scored. 

I had seen the Live album by Saint Vitus before, but due to its excessive price of $24.99 I did not buy it. I knew this album because I clearly remember reading a review of it in the Spanish version of Metal Hammer back in 1990. The cover has stayed with me ever since. Now, with the 40% discount I could get a hold of this double vinyl Southern Lord reissue for $14.99. I was happy. I was really fucking happy. But it would be a while until I found something else worth  my money.

As I kept on moving backwards, the dude with the Brutal Truth t shirt was trailing behind me. I was confident that his girlfriend would have no clue to what was good or not. But the later it got the more people came in the store. So much so, that I had to skip the L and the M and went straight to the K. A few minutes later, when I was near the end of the vinyl section I found the Contaminators record I almost bought at the store referenced here. 'It must be shitty', I thought because the original price was $2.99, now with the discount I would only have to pay $1.79.

My last vinyl find was by a band called Atavistic. I still haven't listened to that one and bought it because it was released by Profane Existence and that at least guarantees me certain degree of heaviness. With still a few bucks left on my gift card I hopped over the CD section and picked Relapse's compilation of Nirvana 2002's Recordings 89-91 and Thou's excellent Summit. Both were shrink wrapped.

When I went up to the counter to pay, the owner reminded me that all items were 40% off and asked me again if there was anything else I wanted. He did this because the total of my albums were about $0.05 short of the $50 gift card and I guess he did not want to give me any change. There was certain sadness in his eyes. Either that, or his eyes are naturally sad, like those of a St. Bernard. I felt sorry for him. And now that I think about it, I felt sorry for me too.

After I left the store I sat for a few minutes inside my car contemplating all my new records. I was happy. Then, I saw the guy with the Brutal Truth T shirt and his girlfriend leaving the store empty-handed. That made me happier. I had done a great job. 

Au Revoir VINYL FEVER

I have been visiting Vinyl Fever ever since I move down to Tampa in 2004 so I was saddened by the news that the store will be closing in February. To say that I was surprised, it is a very different thing.  Like every regular at the store must have noticed over the past couple of years, the line at the counter was often of one to zero. Quite frankly, I was surprised they stuck around for this long. And I was even more surprised that they kept on stocking some of the finest music.

Vinyl Fever was the first music store I visited in Tampa. My girlfriend first took me there when I flew in from New York in February of 2004. A couple of weeks later, after I made the move down south, I became a regular.  

For a long time, while I was pretty broke, the $.99 bin provided enough fodder to fuel the Tales From the Cutout Bin features I used to ran in Deaf Sparrow.   I could tell that some of the music critics from Creative Loafing and other local papers used to sell their promo CD’s there, because I was often able to find new releases marked as promos in the used bin, where prices varied from $3.99 to $4.99. I must have bought at least sixty records from that section in the span of eight months. About three years ago, while their hard music expert moved out of Tampa, the clerks were pretty clueless about these styles, so oftentimes I encountered brand new metal releases from cool independent labels in this section.

But best of all was their new CD and vinyl racks. What you found there you could not find anywhere else in the Bay Area. I frequent all the record stores in Tampa Bay and as a hard music fan the closing of this store is going to be a big blow. Bananas in St. Petersburg may be huge, but I spent an hour there a few months back and I could not find one good metal record. I don’t even know if they sell new releases. Everyone in the store looked over 70 so they probably aren’t aware that bands and labels still put out vinyl. Daddy Kool? Not so cool if you like metal or hardcore, or anything hard. And Mojo? They have a ton of vinyl but their new release section is tiny and the dude that works there acts like a little bitch. Ditto for Sound Exchange. They have three locations and you can sometimes find some good deals but new releases? Not really.

That’s where Vinyl Fever came in; gorgeous reissues of Goatsnake? Check. Belus by Burzum? Check. Available in CD and vinyl, by the way. Master’s Hammer? Say What? Yes, they had it. They fucking had it.  Midnight? Sure thing.

Where else in the Bay Area could you go and find brand new releases by labels like Feral Ward, Profane Existence, Southern Lord and Nuclear War Now?   Nowhere. That’s where. Sure, the store did not specialize in hard underground music, but sifting through their vinyl and cd racks you were always prone to find great stuff.

Last Monday, when my friend informed that the store was closing down and that all their stock was 30% off I got mixed feelings. On one hand I was happy because I had a gift card for $50 that somebody gave me for christmas and on the other, I was sad because the store would no longer be the momentary refuge that it has been for the past years.

In September of this year Rolling Stone Magazine elected Vinyl Fever among the Top 25 record stores in the country. Too bad that did not translate into sales. Everyone knows what the issue is. Technology. Economy. Mix the two and you have an atomic bomb targeting this business model. With their location lease expiration date approaching, the owner of the store argues that it makes no sense to renew it. Who can blame him? Not me.  

Record Shopping Online - Does It Have to Be So Hard?

I was just doing a few searches the other day, seeing if I could find a few bargains online in some of the most well-known websites when I mistyped 'Hell's HeadBangers' (I was missing the e in Bangers) and got this Nuclear War Now result. Who knew one letter could yield the competition, but Google served me a link to the Nuclear War Now forum so I clicked it. I don't really waste much time in forums. Maybe it is my age. Maybe I find most of the info exchange to be a waste of time. Maybe both.

From the forum I jumped to NWN's webstore. I have been there a number of times and I have bought a few records from that label in the past. Usually on sale vinyl and CD's all of which are priced at  an affordable $5, but mostly, I have spent a lot of time packing my shopping cart with obscure records and then dropping out after seeing the high costs of shipping. Twice I have been on the verge of spending close to $100 but have been forced to drop out after NWN's system rejects my gift cards. On this particular day, once again I could not bring myself to pay for the exaggerated shipping costs for a couple of CD's so I decided to do accurate typing and flip over to Hell's Headbangers, who by the way, a few weeks ago sent me two copies of their fanzine/catalog. Nice. As a token of my appreciation and as originally planned, I decided to spend some of my hard-earned cash there instead.

The cool thing about Hell's Headbangers is that as soon as you get into their website you are welcomed by what looks like a few unbeatable offers; 5 LP's for $60, Buy $66 Get a Free CD, 10 CD's for $50 and More Specials Inside. The uncool thing about Hell's Headbangers is that once you get into their store the only visible sale I could see was Buy 3 CD's Get 1 Free. In fine print it reads, On Select Titles. On Select Titles by the way, means Hell's Headbangers releases only. Here, most CD's are priced between $8.00 and $9.00. Quite expensive after spending time on Nuclear War Now's store. To get to the offers you have to actually click on the box on the right that is titled FREE / OFFERS. On this particular day I did not see that box.

Disappointed, I decided to go to the web store on Relapse.com. Once there I clicked on the tiny link on the right that says SALE ITEMS. At one point in time the Relapse website was considered cutting edge. Especially among metal websites, which tended and still tend to look like shit. Nowadays, Relapse's webstore looks dated as fuck, with tiny icons doing little justice to artwork and an annoying tendency to freeze, time out and / or go to dead pages But have patience. It might pay off. While going through the 104 pages of sale items on this particular day I finally encountered two records for very good prices.

The first record I bought was the vinyl version of Children's Hard Times Hanging At the End of the World, which is a totally competent thrash metal record. Flawless musicianship. Atypical long songs for the genre. Heavy early Metallica influence. I am afraid this band may be getting the cold shoulder from the metal community for being signed to Kemado which is seen as a label of hipsters or some shit. This 12 inch cost me $6. I could not believe it. For a while I though it was a mistake. Especially considering that this record is quite new, released in 2009.

The second record I bought was He Visto la Cruz Al Reves by Spain's Moho. I was very familiar with this band because I reviewed their Chotacabra album in Deaf Sparrow back in 2008. This one dates from 2006 and was edited in gatefold version by Spain's Throne Records. Price? $6. Not bad. Not bad at all. I recommend it to anyone who likes thick sludge and angry doom.

All in all, I must have spent two hours searching for something to buy. I had nothing specific in mind but knew that I did not want to go broke. It was frustrating at times.  Not being able to find good records. Overpriced items. Websites that do not work well. Rejected gift card numbers. Offers that are impossible to find. The possibility of errors is endless.

The Lost Art of Record Shopping - NETWORK OF FRIENDS VOL.2

My buddy wasn’t up for food this noon so instead of heading over to the Chinese buffet I frequent when in lonely lunches I decided to hit the record store. It’s a little ways away but today is Friday and us 9-2-5’ers know that lunch breaks on that day can be twice as long without fear of any repercussions.

Waiting for me at the counter was the man with no soul. This time, as he saw me walking in he said really fast, ‘hey, how is it going?’. He seemed to be hiding behind three piles of CD’s and was scribbling in a notebook.  NOFX was playing in the speakers. I went directly to the book section which is huge but found nothing worth my money so I headed to the vinyl section.

My budget was $12 and while I was driving to the store I still had the Skid Row vinyl in mind. A few months ago I had seen an old Anvil record there so I started alphabetically but the Anvil record was nowhere to be seen.    Whoever manages this store has to stop buying crap because its shelves are so packed with vinyl your fingers can barely shuffle thru them. This makes buying difficult and missing hidden gems easy. As I got to the letter C a black and white cover struck me. The girl on the cover reminded me of Jean Seberg. It was by a band called Contaminators, the label was called Going Underground and its price was affordable. $5.99. I asked the man with no soul if he knew what it was. He said he didn’t and asked me if I wanted him to play it. ‘How nice!’. I thought to myself and handed the record to him.

The music started playing but he never bothered to push Stop on the NOFX CD, which was playing on a small boombox. Still, the volume of Contaminators overcame. It was punk rock. Decent punk rock. No pop pretensions. No budget either. Just kind of how I like it. So I kept on searching for records but my stream of consciousness processing was then interrupted by the annoying shifting between 33 and 45 RPM’s.  Back and forth. Back and forth. What the fuck was he doing?. Maybe he didn’t know how the music was supposed to sound like but he did this for about a minute and then lifted the needle.

‘Do you want hear more of this?’, he asked. He looked annoyed by the noise. 

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not if you are going to be such a dick,‘ I thought.

Maybe it was not intentional. Maybe he truly did not know how to tell whether this record had to be played at 33 or 45 RPM’s so he just played it at both. For like a minute.

I really wanted to get out of the store by then. I was the only one there and wanted to leave the man with no soul alone. Maybe he needed to think. He needed to clear his mind. As I got to the letter E, I found a double vinyl titled Network of Friends Vol 2. The price was $8.99. It looked good. It looked obscure. Bands such as Raw Power, Kafka Prosess, Neuroot, Negazione and about twenty-seven more were included. I couldn’t go wrong, right? The record shopaholic in me wanted more though so I headed to the S section where after a couple of minutes of shuffling I found the Skid Row record. Shrinkwrapped. Virginal. Tight. Price? $9.99. I really did not want to spend more than $12 but I was tempted. Then, I looked at the counter. The man with no soul was looking down. Maybe drawing dicks on his notebook or something. The thought of spending more money there made me put the Skid Row record back on the shelf.

As I was paying I pulled out my punch card and handed it to him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Spend ten dollars and I punch one hole. Get ten holes you get ten dollars of discount on any item in the store.’  

The total price including taxes was about $9.80.  

‘Fucking prick,’ I thought. ‘Can’t you cut me some slack and just punch the fucking thing? I only have five more holes to go’, I thought.   

‘You don’t want the Contaminators record?’, he asked.

‘No,’ I said. Now I was annoyed.

‘Need a receipt?’, he asked.

‘No, thanks.’ I responded. 

Then, I walked out. Quietly.

((Download This Bitch))

The Lost Art of Record Shopping - MALICE / POST MORTEM / DECEASED

Got off work an hour early on Thursday and headed off the opposite direction of home and to the record store where the man with no smile works. It has been about a month since I saw that shrinkwrapped copy of the Skid Row vinyl but I was quite sure that with the ignorance of all, it would still be there. I was greeted by a sickly blond kid with a Gospel t-shirt. He looked like a Belle and Sebastian fan (so am I but I do not) and he was rocking the skinny jeans to the point of bursting. As I entered I nodded my head. He blinked. I am not sure if that was a salute. I went up straight to the S section and there it was, Skid Row, price? $9.99. Took it in my arms and kept on inspecting.  

I have seen more than a few semi quality hardcore vinyls in this place. A bunch of stuff from Feral Ward. A bunch of stuff I have not heard of and that look-wise does not look half as good as most metal releases. There were a few Profane Existence releases there too. But I did not care. I crave metal. No matter how cheesy, I crave it. If it is old and in spinnable condition, chances are I like it. More chances are that I want it. I like hardcore too, but if I have to pick between the two, there is no contest.

My first find was Malice’s In The Beginning…. (Atlantic, 1985) Me and this band go way back. I was about 12 when I grabbed a hold of this shitty Mexican hard rock magazine that for some accidental reason had landed in South American soil. There was a lot of coverage of Mexican bands I have never heard of. Cristal y Acero. Ramses. Those are the two I remember. I have not heard either but about six months ago I went into YouTube looking for old heavy metal videos and I stumbled upon a Ramses video. It sucked. The music and the video. Both equally.  So I left a comment saying something along the lines of, ‘hahahahahahah, that’s one shitty song.’ A day later, I got a blast of Spanish e-mails mentioning my mother in terms that I did not appreciate.  

I can’t recall the name of the magazine. It was printed in black and white, newspaper quality, and small size. I remember seeing the cover of In The Beginning… in one of those pages. The author spoke highly of this Cali band and even went as far as to compare them to Judas Priest. There is little artwork in the cover so I forgot about them as soon as I turned the page. But I do not forget names, nor logos. Let alone heavy metal names. And when I saw this record last week I knew I had to buy it. Mint condition. Price? $12.99. Ouch! Fuck it.

((In the Beginning...there was shit))

I kept on searching and I didn’t have to look far for my next find.  By the time I got to the letter P I found my next purchase. The Missing Link (New Renaissance, 1987) by Post Mortem. Price? $14.99. Mega ouch! Especially considering that it was a tad beat and that this is a four-song EP. But I did not know that until I got home. Plus, how could I resist a record with a cover like this? I think the boys in Post Mortem used to hate Charlie Benante, that’s why they placed him in the cover, in between a T-Rex and cavemen, as if his ilk, his breed, his kind, the metalhead, was just that, the missing link between zero-neuron beings and the modern times. That has got to be Benante. Big belly. Wiry puffy hair. Slayer t-shirt. Hands in pocket. Looks like a dumbass.

((The Missing Link is Charlie Benante))

By then, it was about time to get home and I knew I wasn’t going to have enough time to go through every single letter in the alphabet. I took a look around me, a quick peek to all the vinyl racks and to the records positioned up front and there it was, a Deceased record. As the Weird Travel On (Thrash Corner, 2005) to be more precise. How could anyone miss it? The covers that  embellish this band’s releases are a work of art. Tasty delicatessen stuff for metalheads. Price? $15.99. Who said that shopping vinyl was a cheap pleasure? No one that’s right. And at four, that was three more than what I was planning on buying so I had no option but to return the Skid Row record to the rack. I can always come back next month. I am pretty sure it will still be there. 

It may be a policy of this store to be a dick or to be as articulate as a mannequin, but the sickly Gospel-loving blond kid did not utter a word when I bought these records. He didn’t say 'hi', or 'bye', or ‘the total is $45’. I had to look at the register to know the final price and handed my card. Then, I walked out quietly...