In the grand scheme of things, I certainly didn't need to buy this record. However, when Banquet announced they were getting the reissue in, I jumped at the chance. I bought a copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence on cd when I was 16 and it's been an absolute classic ever since. The first 30 cds I owned included a lot of dubious choices (I was young and nu-metal was very much a thing) but there were some wise choices; the Manics and The Verve back-catalogues, White Pony, The Downward Spiral and Superunknown were all up there and records I still hold very close to my heart. Glassjaw were somewhat of an anomaly - a non-mainstream, "cool" record, but one I've loved for nearly 14 years now.
A few months beforehand, Pretty Lush appeared on a free cd that came with Kerrang! magazine (the infamous and excellent Devil's Music, Vol. 1) and was followed up with a lot of excitement (I still have the copy of the magazine that claims "Glassjaw: the band of 2000!" on the cover). A short while later I heard When One Eight Becomes Two Zeros on a Metal Hammer free cd, which I enjoyed even more than Pretty Lush. Then, one afternoon in Bournemouth, I found the cd in a record shop for £13 and bought it. This might not seem like a particularly odd series of events, but £13 was a lot of money back then and spending that much on a new cd was quite something (I'd only spent more on a cd twice before that, and the average up to that point was less than a fiver per cd!). On top of that, it was the only cd or record I bought that day and Bournemouth, at the time, was over-flowing with excellent second-hand record shops (a lot of the aforementioned cheap cds had come from there). I don't remember the day very well now, but I suspect this was because I didn't have a great deal of cash at the time, making £13 even more luxurious. I suspect the surprise of seeing this album I'd heard so much about in a record store finally made me decide it was a good investment.
Nearly 14 years later, it's still an incredible album. There's no point picking out highlights because the whole thing is excellent; there's certainly not a moment I would choose to remove. Mostly it's crushingly heavy (especially compared to the other records I had in my collection at the time) but there are moments of relative calm (Her Middle Name Was Boom, EYEWTKAS and the strange hidden track all provide some respite). I wouldn't say it got me into hardcore (that came via Gorilla Biscuits, although Sammy Siegler connects the two) but it certainly opened my ears to heavier music. Looking back at it, it probably led me more to metal than it did to hardcore, but maybe these things were going to happen anyway.
Like I said at the start, the vinyl doesn't give me much that the cd didn't. I've played this album so many times I barely need to any more; I know it backwards. It's an enjoyable listen but after 14 years of playing the cd, it feels a bit like I'm cheating on it by playing the vinyl. Ordinarily I'd always consider vinyl the superior format, but this wasn't originally pressed on vinyl and I didn't spend years lusting after elusive copies. Strangely, the cd feels more important to me, and that isn't the case for very many albums at all.
Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £19 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 22/03/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
