I should have bought this album on cd, but I got excited and carried away and bought the vinyl instead. It's worth going back a few steps though: one morning I clicked on a review on Pitchfork of this album, despite having never heard of Graveyard before. I was really craving some metal at the time, saw that magical word "metal" in the summary and decided to read on (Pitchfork rarely covers music I enjoy anymore, but somehow I can't stop opening the site every day). I listened to a song, enjoyed their shameless Led Zeppelin stylings and listened to a bunch more. I was in a Skype chat group with a bunch of colleagues who liked metal (although the intersections of the varieties of metal we liked was minimal at best - the only band that all six or seven people in the group ever collectively agreed upon was Clutch), and shared it around; people liked it, and I enjoyed my moment of being a taste-maker. I hastily ordered the LP.
A few weeks later I found two other Graveyard album on cd in Fopp for a fiver each and couldn't resist that price. I knew I wasn't going to find those album on vinyl easily, and it seemed better to just have the music to listen to than to try to wait until I found the vinyl (I'd still be waiting). With that moment, Graveyard became a "cd band" rather than a "vinyl band", leaving this album sitting alone in my record collection. More frustratingly, the LP didn't come with a download code, so Hisingen Blues and Lights Out have had far more plays than this album; it doesn't help that the first of those has The Siren on it, which is surely their finest moment and worth a listen if you've not heard it.
As I mentioned, Graveyard take a huge amount of inspiration from Led Zeppelin. This is totally fine - many, many bands have done the same, but very few end up in my collection. I think that morning I was just in the exact right mood for a band like this, and had someone put any Led Zeppelin album under my nose I strongly suspect that might have done the trick instead. They commit to the style well and have some great songs - The Apple & the Tree is huge and has stayed in my mind much better than I'd have expected for a song that I've really not played that much; Exit 97 is a great way to follow and From a Hole in the Wall starts the second side well; Far Too Close has another unusually memorable hook. It's a good album, although I'd almost certainly have appreciated it more if I'd bought the cd rather than the vinyl. But then I wouldn't have got to write about it on here.
Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £12 new
Bought: Norman Records website
When: 23/10/15
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
