Hummingbird of Death are one of my favorite fastcore bands, and I'm proud to say that I own almost all of their releases. Not counting compilations, I'm only missing their floppy disc single, which I've been putting off getting for obvious reasons. Now, I'm not someone who tries to get every color variant/cover variant of a record to try and make an artist collection bigger, I'm just interested in getting the music. I do care about getting the rarest variant, but I can make do with not having it. All of these records are 1st presses, as far as I know.
From left to right:
split 12" w/ I Accuse (black vinyl)
split 10" w/ Chainsaw To The Face (black vinyl)
"Show Us The Meaning Of Haste" 12" (light blue marble vinyl)
Here is a real gem in the fastcore genre; a wee little 5" record, brought to us by the retardedly good Hummingbird of Death. This is a first pressing on black vinyl, and if I remember correctly it's a 33 RPM record.
20 songs are contained on here, but HOD have actually steered clear of just making tedious noisey blasters and instead opted to *gasp* give a crap about writing songs!! Yes, each of the 19 songs on the A side sound individual and different from the rest, these are carefully constructed and thought out micro-songs, I believe the longest song on the A-side is 9 seconds. The B-side is taken up by the almost 2 minute "From God's Anus To Your Mouth", and then it's done. 20 songs in under 3 minutes. This record takes a gimmicky concept and actually makes it work.
Not much to show in terms of packaging, just a simple folded sleeve made out of printer paper with a one-sided insert. I love little hummingbird guy on the center labels.
Like most of HOD's early records, this is pretty rare. I know that a few people are selling em on Discogs, but for pretty high prices. Ehh, just find a link online and download it. Personally I only need one more thing to complete my HOD discography collection, I'll post a picture once I have that.
I've been on a serious, serious fastcore binge lately. It's been wonderful. I've had a ton of fastcore splits, 7"s and 12"s come in recently, and I've loved every single one of them. The next few posts are gonna be focused on some of these blasting gems, starting with this one; the xBrainiax/Dead Radical split 7", black vinyl, 33 RPM.
Dead Radical are my newest fastcore love, I'm definitely gonna try and get all the releases I can from this band. 19(!) songs on their side, seamless transitions of blasting, tempo changes, technical hardcore futzery. It basically sounds like one long song, and I greatly admire this bands skill. The bass player especially, he pulls out some super interesting bass licks all over this beast. This is definitely the type of release that you have to "study" to fully pick it up. There are tons of things that you'll miss the first time you hear it.
Same goes for the xBrainiax side, definitely one of the reigning titans of fastcore(though there were rumors of them breaking up, but I also heard they just changed some members). They're side is definitely has more distinguishable "songs", but still beyond crazy and intricate. They also pull out the cliche slow song at the end. Still awesome.
Typical Dead Radical aesthetic on this. Smeared ink artwork and messy fonts. They also have a thing for hand stamping the center labels of their records, which is kinda interesting.
This last picture is the xBrainiax side, for some reason I looooooove looking at all the "rings" of the record. Really cool and striking, maybe I'm alone in this. Who cares...
I'm sure most of you will know Chainsaw to The Face through "This Comp Kills Facists Vol. 1". They were one of the more unknown bands on there, but their contribution is one of the parts I remember most about the comp. Super fast grindviolence with gruff vocals and kickass drums, "Hating Life" is probably their best song on the comp. So here's their s/t 7" EP released in 2010 on Cowabunga Records, which is where I picked this up. 33 RPM, clear vinyl with black swirls.
This release is a bit more loose and rough than there songs on TCKFV.1. Truth be told, it's not even a very good recording. It definitely sounds like a demo that was pressed onto wax in terms of quality. Musically, it sounds pretty familiar. Still fast, still violent, but oddly enough I think the cleaner recordings on the comp. made their songs more intense, especially when compared to this. The quiet pressing doesn't help either. 19 songs in what feels like 10 minutes, it's decent.
The vinyl is really pretty though; it's super clear vinyl with a very nice, simple black streak all around the record. I believe this is the only one of the clear vinyl versions that had this black streak in it, so yeah, super rare! Collectors scum everywhere are super jealous of this.
