Back in the day a friend of mine, Mike, would order stuff from the Relapse magazine resound. I believe they'd mail it out with an order form in the back and you'd fill it in and mail it back with a money order or something or the like. In 1999 he received a copy of resound with a huge write up about The Dillinger Escape Plan and their soon to be released Calculating Infinity album. The same edition had a big write up about Coalesce's Revolution in Just Listening too. The write up made it sound like the future of music. Instead of ordering a copy through Relapse, Mike ordered one through the local music store, mostly due to the extremely shit Australian dollar which would have made the Relapse order for the album something around AU$40, which was, well, more than the $30 the shop charged. We were expecting it to take a few weeks. Mike would go back to the store weekly and ask the metal loving dude that worked there if it was in yet. It must have taken 6 months for it to arrive. I can still remember the first time we listened to it. The anticipation was huge. We put it on and for the next 30 minutes I had no idea what the fuck was going on. I must have listened to it daily for 6 months before I full knew what was happening.
I've met a few kids at shows who first got into The Dillinger Escape Plan through Ire Works. I think they heard the hits, bought the album and were blown away by the less commercial songs. Most of these kids rate Ire Works as their favourite and I can understand it, it was their first exposure to the band and it probably changed the way they thought about music, much like myself and Calculating Infinity. I'm not saying these kids are wrong but this album is light years ahead of anything else they've done.
This is one of those albums, like Converge - Petitioning The Empty Sky that really shaped my musical tastes, although I can't say I really listen to anything else like it as the imitators have always been pretty poor. This is one of my all time favourites.
I have this on phlegm(?), gold and black and while I don't usually collect all the variations would be keen to pick up the root beer. The insert is also printed up-side-down. Not sure if they were all like that.
On phlegm / 335
Very similar to the experience I had listening to it with my friend in Canada when it was released. Great post, I picked up the root beer vinyl edition at a warped tour in Barrie Ontario sometime after Miss Machine came out. That Phlegm version is fucking amazing.
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