Sunday 17 February 2013

Gehenna / Apartment 213 split 7"

This split had been sitting on my wanted list for quite a while now. I actually got it ages ago and just kinda forgot to write a post about it, but here it is now.
As it seems to usually go, I was really only interested in the one side of the split. If you've seen some of my previous posts you should be able to figure out which one this is. It's not because I disliked Apartment 213, it's really just out of shear ignorance for this band. I feel stupid not finding apartment 213 earlier, they play three great powerviolence tracks on this split. Gehenna play two songs, which feature on "The War of the Sons of Light and the Suns of Darkness". It is quite interesting to hear how the band has developed over the last ~20 years, their sound has become considerably different since these early days.
There are heaps of different versions of this record, I think with different artworks and different ink colours on the inserts. From what I've seen there are two artwork variants out there; the one I have and one with seven-headed serpents. In my opinion this one looks far superior, the scythes look incredibly sinister while the serpents look a bit amateur.
From what I gather it is this insert that signifies the variation in the versions. My copy has red ink on the Apartment 213 side and blue ink on the Gehenna side. It'd be nice to know what sort of pressing information is associated with this, but information on the internet seems to be a bit spotty at best.
The inserts themselves are rather interesting. The gehenna side has a picture of the writing just beneath it; a high priest holding a beating heart as part of sacrifice. At first I thought this would be Mayan, but it is mentioned the sacrifice is to Kali, which must be Hindu related instead. On the red we also have a quote from Henry Lee Lucas. That's definitely more intriguing than purely a lyrics sheet.

4 comments:

  1. Apartment 23 has also a release on Dwid's label Dark Empire Record as well on black and on colored vinyl. besides this split there are 3 other splits also all these splits have colored versions too. Will look it up in my archives.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are so many variations, I gave up trying to get them all. They all had the same cover (The guys with scythes) except for all the hand-drawn ones by Mickey Featherstone, which I assume are all special editions, much like how there are so many variations of "The Birth Of Vengeance" 7". These are the ones I've seen/had:

    Xerox copy - b/w lyrics sheet
    Xerox cover - blue ink Gehenna insert
    Xerox cover - black ink Gehenna insert
    Xerox cover - Crimethinc tour press

    Acetate cover - black ink
    Acetate cover - blue ink

    Whore Of Babylon cover /15
    Ascension Of Francois d'Assise cover /150
    Hand-drawn art on the back flap (It's got an alien as well as a bunch of text) / Unknown name or pressing

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow, that's much more than I'd realised. Thanks for sharing that information

      Delete
  3. ...and FWIW, the picture on the Gehenna side is from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

    ReplyDelete