Rise above represses.

Rise above are one of my favourite labels around but you have to be alert as they often sneak out their vinyl releases and repressings into their store without warning and if you don’t act fast you’ll end up missing out. Such was nearly the case recently when I decided to have a look and discovered that they had re-released the first Blood Ceremony and Astra albums and just an hundred copies of each were on clear vinyl. Predictably a few days later they were gone but I decided to grab them both along with a new green vinyl pressing of Electric wizard’s classic album ‘Come thy fanatics’ (1000 pressed). I already own original pressings of all of these records but that’s what us geeks do right? Buy more variations of the same damn records,
I wasn’t keen on the first Blood Ceremony self titled album when it came out and to be honest it doesn’t do much for me now but I still couldn’t pass this version up. Thankfully the band have redeemed themselves with this year’s awesome ‘Living with the ancients’ album. Astra’s ‘the weirding;’ was another record that I wasn’t too fond of when I first got it. It took a while but I really grew to love this album. ‘Filthy hippy music’ I call it but it’s a really smart LP.
Of course ‘come thy fanatics’ is a different story. This album has always kicked my ass. My other copy comes with a 7” which wasn’t included with this release. Keeps the original still highly collectable I guess. This isn’t as limited as the other two but it will sell out eventually. People can’t get enough of the wizard. All in all a good haul. Just a shame rise above over charge on the postage and that’s just in the UK. I really for people like Mike when they place orders. They probably need to take out a second mortgage.