Not want you want to receive in the mail.

Is there anything more frustrating than getting badly packed vinyl in the mail?(I-landsproblem as you would call it in Sweden....)

You would think that a huge company like Nuclear Blast in Germany who sell lots and lots of vinyls would take good care of their vinyl when they ship, but apparently not...

This is what the vinyl looked like when I received it

A crack in the vinyl! Now, that's not often that you see. Splits in the inner sleeves and things like that are quite usual but cracks in the vinyl!? You don't want to see that.

It doesn't help that this is a rerelease of At The Gates first EP "Gardens Of Grief" pressed on brown vinyl in only 100 copies, it's sold out now already...

Tao Of The Dead

One of the best rock n roll albums of the year so far is ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's latest release "Tao Of The Dead". I have never really listened to this band and never paid it much attention as I, for some reason, was of the impression that this band played some boring and lame indie pop of some sort. It turns out that they really don't. They play progressive rock of the best kind so now I have to explore their earlier releases as well.

So if you're not going to watch the Eurovision song contest final tonight I recommend that you give this album a couple of listens! Here it is on Spotify.

The Haunted - Unseen.

One thing that I really like about a lot of vinyl releases today is that you get a CD of the the album you buy in addition to the vinyl. The car is really a great place to listen to music but it's not very easy to listen to vinyl while driving:)

One of the more recent releases that had a CD as an extra feature was the new album buy the Swedish thrash metallers The Haunted. It has been playing non-stop in the car since i got it.

The Haunted has been one of my favourite metalbands and they have gradually moved away from a pure thrashmetal sound and on this record there are a few songs I wouldn't even call metal, it's great music though! This is a band that 15 years on in their career they still keeps developing in a positive manor. The record is on Spotify and especially the song "Disappear" has really caught my ear.

The Haunted is the band every In Flames fan SHOULD listen to;)

Opeth record store day release.

The 16th of April marked the fourth year of the "Record Store Day", celebrating independent record stores such as The Garden for example.

On this day there are several releases that are supposed to be available only on this day. I've got my self two of these releases. The first one I've already written about (the Foo Fighters "Medium Rare" vinyl). The second one I got I had to order of of Discogs as I wasn't able to get it in the store.

The release is the second 7" vinyl release from Opeth. The song featured is "The Throat Of Winter" which was featured in the video game God Of War and on the soundtrack of said game. It has only been available as an mp3 download earlier so it's about time it saw a "real" release.

The song is quite different from anything that Opeth has ever done before and the singer and main songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt said that this is what he was aiming for so I guess he succeeded.

Dungen

One of my favourite bands recently has been the Swedish "ny-progg" band Dungen. A few years ago I started to collect everything about the band and I have a nearly complete collection. Last week I received one record that I've been looking for for a long time.

"Samtidigt" is a 12" EP that was only on sale during a tour the band did after before the release of "4". The EP contains of only one song. The nearly 15 minute freaked out live version of the song "Samtidigt". On "4" the song is split up in two different songs ("Samtidigt 1" and "Samtidigt 2"), I guess it would have been "too much" to have a 15 minute jam on a record:)

This release was limited to 500 copies and is hand numbered and it has sold at nearly $100 recently on eBay and I was lucky to get it at $40. A real bargain, eh?

Now the only vinyl that I really miss from the collection is the first one. To get this I will have to pay at least $150 so I guess I'll have to wait a little longer to have a complete Dungen collection...

Indie favourites.

Two of my most anticipated indie rock albums were recently released and they have found the way to my vinyl collection.

 First of there's the new Explosions In The Sky album "Take Care, Take Care, Take Care". This brilliant instrumental post-rock band has already provided us with three good albums so far in their career and I wonder if this, the latest one, doesn't top all of them? On this one they really nailed the dynamics of their music switching from the beautiful mellow parts to insane outbursts. A real contender to Mogwai as being the best instrumental album of the year.

 The vinyl release is a really cool one. It comes in a slip case and inside it a box set that folds out like the picture shows.It comes as a double vinyl and includes a postcard and a huge poster. Cool stuff!

The other album is the new from Fleet Foxes. I've been playing their debut record quite frequent ever since it's release and it stills keeps getting better and better. After a few listens to the new one I really feel that it has potential to grow to be just as good as the first one. Now, if only new music stops to be released, I might actually have the time to give this album the listenings it requires and deserves...