Tag: vinyl review

  • Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard Of Ozz LP (revisited)

    Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard Of Ozz LP (revisited)

    “Is the reissued release of an album ALWAYS superior to the original?” Such a question is valid – particularly when one takes the recent proliferation of reissues from both major and indie labels into account. In nearly every case, a “new” re-examination of an old title comes with many sound and production renovations courtesy of the…

  • Anti-Flag – American Spring LP

    Anti-Flag – American Spring LP

    It might sound a little silly to say, but the first great thing about the vinyl pressing of Anti-Flag‘s ninth studio album, American Spring, is the scale of the presentation. Before a note is heard, those who buy the vinyl will get an eyeful of the bright and beautiful album cover which looks like an…

  • Reducers SF – Essentials (4 Colored LP set)

    Reducers SF – Essentials (4 Colored LP set)

    Looking back, it’s pretty incredible how fertile punk’s creative soil was in the Nineties. Sure – everyone knows the mid-Nineties as being the period which broke punk into the mainstream (pop punk) and made bands like Lagwagon, Propagandhi, Green Day, NOFX, Offspring (I’ve written this list out several times before) and innumerable others household names…

  • Round Eye – s/t LP

    Round Eye – s/t LP

    While the debate over which recorded music format is superior (vinyl, CD and digital download, at least for right now, are the top contenders), no one who has heard it will argue against the fact that Round Eye‘s debut album was designed specifically to be experienced on vinyl. The hints are actually on the CD…

  • Rancid – …And Out Come The Wolves (5 x 7” vinyl set)

    Rancid – …And Out Come The Wolves (5 x 7” vinyl set)

    It sounds a little sensationalist to make this declaration but, of the albums which really sparked the punk revival of the 1990s (including – but certainly not limited to – Punk In Drublic by NOFX, Stranger Than Fiction by Bad Religion, Dookie by Green Day and Smash by the Offspring), it was Rancid who ran…

  • Louise Distras – Dreams From The Factory Floor LP

    Louise Distras – Dreams From The Factory Floor LP

    The problem with a lot of what is earnestly being marketed as punk rock in the twenty-first century is that much of it is fundamentally flawed: it’s made the way it is because that’s what’s expected. The expectation is that punk songs will come equipped with a confrontational attitude stacked on top of a progression…

  • Citizen Dick – Touch Me I’m Dick 7”

    Citizen Dick – Touch Me I’m Dick 7”

    Freelance journalist and novelist Joshua Foer once opined that “Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. … If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound ro blend unmemorably into the next – and disappear.” It might seem unlikely, but Foer’s logic is also applicable to the music industry;…

  • Hawkeyes – Poison Slows You Down

    Hawkeyes – Poison Slows You Down

    Originally released digitally and on (sold out) cassette back in 2013, Poison Slows You Down by Kitchener sextet Hawkeyes is now seeing a vinyl release, the ideal format for these four tracks of dangerously psychedelic sludge/doom. With six people contributing to the noise you know the sonic landscapes they create are vast and multihued. Mind-bending…

  • King Buzzo – This Machine Kills Artists (vinyl)

    King Buzzo – This Machine Kills Artists (vinyl)

    On the most superficial level, making an album like This Machine Kills Artists should be the definition of simplicity. How could it not be? The arrangements for the songs have already been written and the design has been set so, simply, stripping away the trappings installed by a record producer as well as the other…