The Fire That Conspires Against Us

Let me start by saying that blogging morale has been at an all time low.  An anticipated pay cut should spark some serious austerity measures here at FE headquarters, and the first budget casualty is, of course, vinyl purchases.  Then there's mediafire, which rages McCarthy-like in its pursuit to erroneously shut down the very users who bring the site its traffic.  My account was suspended after receiving a couple of demerits (school discipline terms both intentional and inadvertent), the offending straw being a Damnable Excite Zombies/Amen split that was somehow mistaken for a Dragonball Z© file!  I'm not going to fight it. Nor am I going to let this dampen my spirits any further.  I'm returning to 4-Shared, and while it makes you wait for your download, at least there aren't those ridiculous pop-ups giving zippyshare a shot at handling downloads.  The last few posts have been re-upped.  If there is/are any tunes you missed out on, contact me through comments or e-mail, and I'll re-up it/them for you. I'll keep the rest of this post upbeat, as I have good news, and yes, some freebies.

First, a generous lad, Ryan, offered high-quality CD rips of all three Institute releases, and being no fool, I took him up on it.  All three are available for download below, and he even included graphics.  I was also stoked to hear that Ryan has joined the ranks of us bloggers with an outlet specializing in hardcore/punk bands which employ cello and/or violin.  I've already discovered some kick-ass bands, and revisited some old favorites.  Make sure you head over and say hey, and maybe drop some requests.

Blog -- Crust With Strings

Institute CD Rips:

"Two Shadows"

"The Piano Player"

"13 Planets"

On to a request of our own: an anonymous blog buddy was looking for former Distraught rockers, Sangre de los Puercos, and I'm sorry I delayed this long (rough month).  While I like the overall noise SDLP make, and love their lyrics, something about the drums or drum production leaves me cold.  I don't know, maybe you'll like them more.  I do, however, have no objection to yet another related band, Endless Nightmare.  They're much more my speed, in that all out thrash attack of the vague Japanese and/or American variety.  Both Sangre 7"s and the Endless Nightmare 7" are in the link below.

Here

A long time ago, I did a post on the innovative and aggro hardcore band, Lesser of Two.  Well, a while back, they contacted me about how they posted some of their material for download.  Members are also in the amazing progressive metal band, Embers who are doing exciting things, and doing them often.  Check out both bands below.

Lesser of Two

Embers