Friday 8 February 2019

Cave In - Live At Roadburn 2018 bonus 7"

I can clearly remember seeing Cave In three times (it may have been more, that's why I said "clearly"); supporting Hundred Reasons at the Astoria while touring on Jupiter, playing the main stage at Reading Festival where they played one of their old Metalcore songs and at the Garage with Pelican when they were touring on Perfect Pitch Black, at that show Stephen apologised for singing off key because he'd been drinking all day before the show (remember that they started off in the mid-90's as a Straight Edge band?), Pelican fucking suck live by the way.

Bass player/co-vocalist Caleb Scofield died in a car crash on 28th March 2018, a month later this show took place at Het Patronaat, which is an extension of St. Jozef's church in Tilburg, Netherlands which contains a bar/restaurant and a music venue which is regularly used as a side stage for Roadburn Festival.  Stephen's new Stoner Math Rock band, Mutoid Man were already booked, so was the Converge side band, Wear Your Wounds which Adam plays in, so Walter offered them both the chance to do an acoustic set in tribute to Caleb.  A live record was released by Burning World Records, most of the set is on the CD but it's missing the two covers they played, Harvest Moon by Neil Young and Nuthin' by Townes Van Zandt  for copyright reasons, but are available with the vinyl version as an unlabelled 7" (like not so hidden tracks if you will), if you want to hear the set in order, there's high quality video footage of the whole thing.  One other thing, I'm somewhere in the crowd shot on the front cover, in fact you might actually be able to hear me be one of the few people be excited when Stephen announced that they were going to play a Townes Van Zandt cover.

Friday 1 February 2019

The HIRS Collective/Thou - "I Have Become Your Pupil" Nirvana covers split LP

The HIRS Collective are a queer Mathcore band from Philadelphia.  They originally started off as a two person Cybergrind act called +HIRS+ because MySpace was still a thing when they formed.  I've heard people try to sell them as "Queer Powerviolence" in the "if-you-say-a-thing-is-Powerviolence-then-it-is" school of thinking but they're really not, they sound like a band you'd stumble into because someone had them for their profile song, so imagine [random early 00's scene band name generator] Heavy Heavy Low Low but if they actually had a purpose to exist.

If EyeHateGod are your dad's Sludge band then Baton Rouge's Thou are the band your hipster cousin wouldn't tell you about because he doesn't think you're cool enough to known.  They fucking LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE Nirvana, if you collected all the covers they've done previously they could put out a whole LP themselves.

I sourced this from the Feast Of Tentacles UK pressing, I got the pre-order which promised a "mystery gift."  The last time I got a pre-order bundle from the label the mystery gift was another record (and that's how I came to own the Horders LP), a bulky package comes in the mail and with the records I ordered comes this
I tried selling it on eBay as Nirvana/Hole fanart, then as just a picture frame (with the same picture in it, of course) and no one wanted this stupid thing.  I gave it to my mum, who at the time of writing has not replaced the picture in the frame, I see it every weekend I go back home to visit.

During the downtime since my last post someone from a Canadian label reached out to spot light Zegema Beach Records.  Since I've been doing this blog I've had bands ask me to promote a demo because they're very new or someone I'm friends with has asked to make a digital rip of their new release but this is a first.  I'm not doing a whole post as there is too much to go through, but they've put out some stuff by Screamo bands I already fuck with like Shizune, Coma Regalia, Улыбайся Ветру, Locktender, Old Soul, Lentic Waters, Republic Of Dreams, Øjne & Amber.  A lot of the stuff on their Bandcamp is pay what you want so check out the link above.