Hello Bastards Zine: Record and donut shopping in Essen (and a Judge show)

Me and my friend Maarten started a new tradition two years ago. Each year we go to a show abroad and do some city tripping while we are there. It started with going to see American Nightmare and Youth Of Today in Essen (Germany) 2 years ago. Last year we went to see Burn and Chain Reaction in Arnhem (The Netherlands). About a month ago we went back to Essen to go see Judge and World Be Free.
World Be Free cancelled their European tour a couple of days before the show so we were pretty bummed but planned to make the best of it.

The cool thing about traveling and going to shows with Maarten is that we're on the same page about pretty much everything involved in traveling. I enjoy long drives with him and we always have something to talk/laugh about. We don't feel the need to go the after- or other parties after shows. This year we had donuts in our hotel room after the show and talked some more. The Judge show was pretty good. We watched them from the stairs leading up to some balcony so we got a pretty good view of the drum wonder and machine that is Sammy Siegler. Such a good drummer!

Another (maybe next to the company the biggest) highlight of the weekend was finding New Lifeshark Records. Before the show on friday we googled 'recordstores in Essen' and made a list of those we wanted to visit on saturday. On friday we had already visited a store that was really cool on our previous trip but was disappointing this year. I did buy Kanye West's 'Late Registration' on vinyl at the local Saturn megastore.

New Lifeshark Records was something else though. Such an amazing store! It's located a bit outside of the city centre so we headed direction to the store on saturday morning. Stopping for donuts an coffee at Dunkin' Donuts on our way over there. The store is packed with records and has a very big punk, hardcore and indie section. We spent almost 2 hours there and I got some pretty good finds. The owner is a very friendly lady who is a personal friend of Don Fury and knows surprisingly a lot about Belgian music. The second hand and new records are mixed in the bins which I find a nice system. I couldn't spend too much money but here's what I got:

Chinchilla: 101 Italian Hits LP + seven inch on Crisis Records
I remembered this band from a track on the In Flight compilation on Revelation Records. They were on Crisis Records, a subsidiary label of Revelation that (if I'm correct) was founded by Walter Schreifels. They also released the first Farside 7inch. Chinchilla is a great mid nineties indie band fronted by a female singer. Their sound is hard to describe. Sometimes it's catchy indie, sometimes it gets a little more experimental and sometimes they sound like Sleater Kinney and other riot grrrl bands. I fell in love with the intro and first song 'In hiding' the moment I put the needle on this record when I got home. Totally recommended!

Uniform Choice: Staring into the sun LP on Giant Records
The notorious 'hard rock' album of Uniform Choice. Everyone knows and loves 'Screaming for change'. I had that one on a (Lost and Found bootleg) cd for years and bought the LP re-issue on Southern Lord a couple of years ago. 'Staring into the sun' is Uniform Choice moving towards a more hard rock sound. It's cheesy, not a lot of people like it and I can imagine it was quite the shock when it got released back then. But I'm actually a sucker for this sound. Just like I love SSD's 'How we rock', DYS's self titled album and even Day Nasty's 'Field day'.
This is not a hard to find record but I got it for a really great price and am happy to own it and play it a lot.

Iceburn: Burn/Fall clear vinyl 7inch on Victory Records
Another gem that isn't hard to find but that was still missing in my collection. Iceburn released their first couple of records on Victory Records but later moved on to Revelation Records and changed their name into The Iceburn Collective. Great band that got really experimental later on but sound more accessible on this first 7inch. These two songs are great. I also got to know them years ago through the 'In Flight Program' compilation