Baroness - Yellow & Green

I'm really looking forward to get my hands on this new Baroness album. It's called "Yellow & Green" following the "Blue Record" and "Red Record". Below is a taste of what's coming from the record. It's not as sludgy as before, which I kind of miss, it's a bit more "pop" if you can call it that. Hopefully this follows the build up to Mastodon's last album "The Hunter" where the first two songs were "Curl Of The Burl" and "Black Tongue", where both were a bit more "popish" than their earlier material but it fitted perfectly on the record.

Tenacious D - The Rize Of The Fenix

Today I picked up the latest Tenacious D record, "The Rize Of Fenix".

These guys are just hilarious with their troubadour rock with twin acoustic guitars and fun lyrics. This record sound a lot like their earlier stuff, maybe not as theatric as some of the other stuff, although there is some of that on "The Fenix" as well. As on a lot of their earlier stuff Dave Grohl handles the drums on the record.

This vinyl version also comes with a 12x24" poster which I guess works as eye candy for some people?:-)

The Mars Volta!

Hm, for some reason this blog got bumped up when I was updating some stuff... Ah well...

Today I got a new "normal" CD for the first time in a very long time! Last year I got the special edition "Siamese Dreams" on CD. I have a hard time remembering which was the last CD I bought before that.

The CD I got today is the new record from The Mars Volta. The vinyl edition of this record isn't released until late May, but I can't wait that long to hear the album! It's supposed to be released on Monday (once again working in a record shop pays out...) and I'm having my first listen right now. I had only heard one song from the album before hand, "The Malkin Jewel", which I really fell for.

I've been listening almost non-stop to TMV, and At The Drive-In (the hardcore band that Omar and Cedric played in before they formed TMV) this entire year. TMV is just such a great band and you can always go back to earlier releases and still here something "new" there's just so much brilliance going on at once...
So, how does the new record rank with the other releases? I've only had one listen so far so I can't really rank it yet, TMV have always been a super progressive band and the records always grows on you. While the latest record Octahedron (which could be one of the last CDs I bought... for similar reasons as to why I've bought the new record) was TMV's most accessible record and the sophomore record "Frances The Mute" probably is the least, "Noctourniquet" probably lands right in the middle of these two, "accessible-wise".

I'll have to get back on my final thoughts of the album. Perhaps in May when I get the vinyl!?

Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way To Blue

I was browsing through my records and found what I wanted to listen to quite fast. Alice In Chain's comeback album "Black Gives Way To Blue" from 2009.

Alice In Chains is probably my favourite band from the whole Seattle scene in the beginning of the 90s. The one album I listen to the most from this era is the "Dirt" album.

A band that hasn't played together for ten years and where the singer, who was really influential, Layne Staley  has passed away during the hiatus, shouldn't really be able to make a new record with a new singer of this quality!

When I first heard the rumours of Alice In Chains being reformed with a new singer I was really sceptic but after watching their show at the Hultsfred festival in 2006 all my scepticism was swept away.

When I heard the news about a new record I still wasn't convinced that it was the right thing for AIC to do. But that was never necessary. I only had to hear the opening riff of the first single "A Looking In View" to just really look forward to the album. It really holds up to the old AIC material and although Layne Staley can never be replaced William DuVall really fits the music of AIC.

Such Hawks Such Hounds

Having a night to myself (and my son sleeping, let's hope that continues...), the pizza is in the oven, the beer is poured and now I'm getting ready to watch this:

This is a documentary about the american heavy metal scene, and by heavy I really mean HEAVY! It's about the stoner/doom scene. I'm really looking forward to this!

See the website for more information.

Bing! The pizza's ready!

Thåström - An expensive record

Every now and then I just go on Ebay or Tradera, or similar sites, and make some random searches for records that I either want or that I have. I like the feature on Tradera where you can search on finished auctions. I did that a few days ago when I searched for Thåström records.

I was browsing through, seeing what I already know that most of his records are sold between 500 and 900 SEK. I couldn't see any copies of the "Kärlek Är För Dom" vinyl on the first page so I continued to browse through the pages when I eventually found one copy that sold about a month ago.

The copy sold was the first pressing on black vinyl. This edition was printed in 500 copies and is also hand numbered.

I thought that the "Mannen Som Blev En Gris" and "Det Är Ni Som E Dom Konstiga..." records were the most valuables, almost always selling for over 1 000 SEK and then "Skebokvarnsv..." right behind them with sells on abou 800-900 SEK. Turns out I was wrong...

The first press of the "Kärlek Är För Dom" record that i found, apparently sold for over 2 000 SEK! That's always satisfying to find when you own the record yourself!

I only got the first edition that is numbered and on black vinyl. It was also released in 500 copies on clear transparent vinyl which I didn't get.

The latest record though, "Beväpna Dig Med Vingar" I've got two editions of (first press on black vinyl and second press on clear on this one as well) and I'll probably get the third one as well on yellow vinyl. Who knows, maybe in four years they have also increased that much in value!? (they already sell for almost 500SEK).

This make my "Kärlek Är För Dom" vinyl one of my most valuable records!

The Ascendant - The Spiritual Death EP

Today I got something nice in the mail:-)

This is the first release from the band The Ascendant. The 7" EP is called "The Spiritual Death EP" and contains two brilliant songs.

This new band consists of members from bands such as Excessum, Marduk and Ad Hominem. I remember hearing some of the first takes of the first song "The Becoming" back in 2007 or 2008 and it was a really interesting piece of music. For me it felt like a really fresh breathe of air in a tired black metal world. It still feels as fresh at the time of its release. Let's hope they can find the inspiration and time to record some more material!

You can hear the EP here on Spotify.

Sigur Ros - Ekki Mukk

Another release worth mentioning that I got on RSD is the 10" single "Ekki Mukk", by Sigur Ros.

The song is taken from the forthcoming album "Valtari", due to be released later this month. It sounds a lot like the "old" records and it's a really promising first single! Really looking forward to the record!

One funny thing about this single is that it plays from the inside out, that I haven't seen before...

Record Store Day releases.

As  I said in my previous post, I am gonna post about some of the releases I got for myself on RSD.

As mentioned there were a lot of records released for this day and the two biggest releases for me were these two:

These are two split singles by Mastodon. The pink one is with The Flaming Lips, where both bands perform their own versions of the same Flaming Lips song "A Spoonfull Weighs A Ton". The other one is a split with Feist. On this one Feist performs a Mastodon song in her own version and Mastodon performs one of hers. Since the style of music is so different between these two it's very fun and interesting to hear the different takes on these songs. Both songs taken from two of the best albums last year.

Record store day.

I was on such a good roll with my posts but then I stopped for some time. And during this time we have had the biggest day of the year for independent record stores, such as The Garden.

It was celebrated on the 21st of April and it was a busy and vdry funny day in the store lots of people to talk to and sell some vinyl to.

This day there are also lots of special releases and we had about 100 of these in stock for that day. I got a few of them myself, I'll make a separate post about those.

So all in all, a great day a couple of weeks ago.