STRAIGHT TO HELL

Obituary- s/t LP (Relapse)
First Pressing, 2017
Black Vinyl /3700

This marks only the second piece of Obituary vinyl to hit my collection, though there's quite a few more releases of theirs that I wish I had. In fact I would argue that despite what seems like more common opinion amongst the Metal elite, there's not single LP of theirs that isn't a banger. Their last album and Relapse debate "Inked In Blood" wasn't received very well but I loved it, and had I been able to secure a copy at a reasonable price (couldn't find one in any stores for under $60, ridiculous), I would have snapped it up. Thankfully I recently stumbled across this copy of their latest work in my local record store for a totally acceptable price tag. From what I can see online and in Death Metal circles, it seems that it has hit all the right marks with the wider community, garnering many positive reviews, and I'd say that there isn't a single snoozer on here. As with everything that they've done, the whole album is punctuated with that signature mutant groove and Tardy's hellish vocals, possibly the most identifiable in Death Metal? Nine new tracks here and a re-release of the title track from the "Ten Thousand Ways To Die" live record that they put out last year. The artwork is a bit lacking if you ask me, certainly a departure from the usual work anyway, but the jacket is pressed in a foil stamp and the cover is embossed and raised a little, so that's cool I guess. Regardless, the music is worth the purchase price.

SPREADING THE DISEASE

Kommand- Demo Tape
First Edition, 2017

Easily the best demo that I've heard since the second Obscure Burial demo from a couple years ago, and a possible contender for my favourite outright release of this year. I haven't listened to any record or tape by any other new band this year more than this debut demo tape from LA's Kommand. Three simple, punchy, relatively short bursts of Death Metal that take cues from stuff like Mexican overlords Cenotaph (earlier) and some of the early 90's Finnish masters. An excellent, raw recording punctuates heavy riffs, tremolo picking, plenty of double kicking and blast beats. Themed 100% lyrically from the point of view of, and visually around Islamic extremism and the caliphate, it's a unique approach for any extreme band, but the thought does cross my mind about how they will be able to continue with the theme if they manage to move beyond this demo stage and release an extended collection of songs. Many of these great demo bands never do get beyond this stage, but I really hope that they do.

RAMEN BLOG

In the interest of total self promotion, please follow this link to my new Ramen blog. I'll always be a record collector, but it's getting harder and harder these days to maintain this blog as regularly as I used to. The new thing is just another way to keep my mind active at a more affordable rate.

RATHER BE DEAD

Necrot- "Blood Offerings" LP (Tank Crimes)
First Pressing, 2017
Gold Vinyl /1000

ON THE BRIGHTSIDE I recently picked up the debut album from Oakland's Necrot. Following three well received demo tapes and an LP to compile them last year, they've gone and unleashed this catchy as hell American Death Metal opus. Obvious cues would be the less technical stuff- Death, Autopsy etc. I've read many comparisons to Bolt Thrower too. Groovy, thick metal with a pretty slick recording.

FUCK PHOTOBUCKET

So for more than five years now I have been paying to host most of the photos on this blog on the photobucket website. That was until earlier this year when they decided to increase their yearly fees by more than 1000%. Now they want more than $500au PER YEAR for me to host my photos for third party viewing on this blog. This wasn't of initial concern to me as they were still allowing existing hosted photos to display on third party sites like this blog, I just couldn't upload any new photos. I just stopped paying and started using Flckr instead. In the last few days though, photobucket updated their terms to state that they would no longer allow any 'third party hosting' to any users not paying this $500 fee. So now just about every photo on this blog before this year is rendered absolutely useless. They are essentially holding nine years of this blogs content hostage.
It seems that I'm not the only annoyed user, with a quick google search it is apparent that the distaste is quite widespread with even the BBC reporting on it. So fuck these extortionists, fuck photobucket. I won't be paying the fee and I doubt I will have time to re upload photos for nine years of posts to a competing hosting site, so I do apologise for the lack or viewable content on this blog moving forward. With just shy of nine years posting content on here, and a clear and obvious slow-down in activity over the last couple of years on my behalf (life, mortgage etc) maybe this latest development will be the nail in the coffin for this blog. I always imagined making it to ten years and then pulling the pin anyway. Maybe we will see.