Back in December, I placed an order at the Alone Records online distro. They were (and still are) offering a list of CDs, from which you, the loyal customer, could pick 10 for 59.90 Euro. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me, so I hit it up and made my list — who doesn’t love making lists of records they want to buy? — and filled the shopping cart. 10 albums from the list, no problem. Even with the exchange rate and shipping, I made out about right.

End of January, I started to get nervous that perhaps my local post office had either lost or decided “fuck it” and tossed the package, because it still hadn’t come. Of course, I’ve had dealings with Alone before for the site (and before that as well), so the thought that the label was pulling a fast one never entered my mind. Sure enough, it turned out just to be delays. Weather delays, laziness delays, who the hell knows. The box showed up at my house, postmarked from way back when. Knowing that I’d gotten the last copies of a few of the items contained therein, I was glad to see it.

Here’s what I got, presented alphabetically in the spirit of last week’s Buried Treasure:

Abramis Brama, När Tystnaden Lagt Sig…
Duster 69, Ride the Silver Horses
Lucifer Was, Blues from Hellah
Mangrove, Endless Skies
Mississippi Sludge, Biscuits and Slavery
Negative Reaction, Everything You Need for Galactic Battle Adventures
Ridge, A Countrydelic and Fuzzed Experience in a Colombian Supremo
The Soulbreaker Company, The Pink Alchemist
Sunnshine, No More Forever
Warchetype, Goat Goddess Supremacy

Only the Warchetype and the Soulbreaker Company discs are actually on Alone Records proper, and I bought them because I reviewed (here and here) and enjoyed albums from both bands in the past couple months. There were a couple names I remember from a while ago — Mississippi Sludge, Ridge, Duster 69 — that I figured I’d get just for the hell of it. The Ridge was cool in a Fu Manchu vein, the Mississippi Sludge didn’t match the awesomeness of its cover at all, and Duster 69 was heaviest perhaps in its accent, so I guess that batch kind of had its ups and downs.

The Negative Reaction I’ve owned for years. I’m pretty sure the version I have I bought from the band the first time I saw them at the New Jersey Metalfest in 2003, but it’s in a slimline, and I hadn’t heard it in a while, so I thought a full copy would be a good way to revisit. And man, I had forgotten, but that album is killer. The riffs, Ken-E Bones‘ screaming, the samples, the timing of it, everything just works. Definitely under-mentioned when it comes to the high points of abrasive sludge. They still play a lot of these songs live, and for good reason.

Mangrove‘s album was more generic than I remembered from reviewing it back in 2009. I think I had it mixed up in my mind with either Tekhton or The Deep Blue on The Church Within, but either way, Endless Skies wasn’t helped at all by the fact that I listened to it right after the Abramis Brama, which was essentially a better version of the same kind of post-Soundgarden classic rock ideas. But then, Abramis Brama are one of the best bands in Sweden at that kind of thing, so I probably shouldn’t hold it against their countrymen in Mangrove for not measuring up. Just about nobody does.

So there’s a couple I’ll probably put away and a few I’ll revisit again — Lucifer Was‘ prog strangeness, the Negative Reaction, Warchetype, Abramis Brama, etc. — but on the whole it’s a bunch of music that I hadn’t heard before that I’ve heard now, so no matter what, I came out of it on the plus side. And seriously, if you haven’t dug into Warchetype, you should look them up in the immediate. Goat Goddess Supremacy more than lives up to its name.