BITTER END’S SWEET RELEASE

The teaser trailer advertising Bitter End’s forthcoming CD Guilty As Charged got my adrenaline pumping with its promise of metallic NYHC-styled aggression. Unfortunately, I was a little glum that I’d have to wait until August 3 until the disc released on Deathwish–or so I thought. Apparently, the label has decided to try a clever, though certainly not unprecedented strategy to entice people to pick this one up. If you pre-order the CD or vinyl editions now, you get the digital files for the entire album right now. Not one mere track, not a bonus track–the full LP as MP3s. Deathwish have also gone and done this for a couple other artists simultaneously, namely poppy post-hardcore act End Of A Year (bleh) and mysterious powerviolence supergroup United Nations (yay).

I’m actually quite surprised to see Deathwish do this, considering that undoubtedly these songs will inevitably end up on illegal filesharing sites and servers, and probably are there right now. Still, it’s doing the fans a solid, rewarding them for pre-ordering the physical versions. That’s the kind of goodwill that independent labels need to foster in order to sustain themselves. So how about showing them you care by pre-ordering Guilty As Charged. It’s a tough-as-fuck record from a great hardcore band.

-GS