Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Beat The Devil’s Tattoo vinyl is a limited repressing on oak wood (orange marble) vinyl with a die-cut sleeve, printed inner sleeves, and a vinyl-only bonus track, making it the definitive physical version of the 2010 album that found BRMC working at full capacity.
The Band
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club formed in San Francisco in the late 1990s with Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been as the core creative partnership, later with Leah Shapiro on drums after Nick Jago’s departure in 2008. Their sound draws from garage rock, psych, blues, and the shoegaze influence that runs through their guitar textures, producing records that are more sonically complex than the rough energy suggests on first listen. COBRASIDE and Abstract Dragon handled this release in the United States, which fits their catalog’s range across the indie and underground rock spectrum. The band’s run of records through the 2000s established them as one of the more distinctive acts working in that sonic territory.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Beat The Devil’s Tattoo vinyl: The Album
Beat The Devil’s Tattoo arrived in 2010 after a period when the band had gone through significant lineup stress and released Baby 81, an album that showed the strain. Devil’s Tattoo sounds like a band that had worked through difficulty and emerged with renewed focus. The guitar work is heavier and the production has more space than the denser earlier records. The blues influence that has always run through what Hayes and Been write is more prominent throughout. Annabel Lee, the vinyl-only bonus track not included on the CD version, is the collectors’ exclusive embedded in the package and the reason the vinyl is definitively the version to own.
The Pressing
Oak wood (orange marble) vinyl, die-cut sleeve, printed inner sleeves, and a track that simply does not exist on the CD: this is a pressing assembled for the people who understand that the vinyl edition of a record is a different and more complete object. COBRASIDE’s limited repressing is the correct format for an album that rewards the full physical presentation. If you collect BRMC or follow COBRASIDE releases, this is the version that closes the argument about which pressing to own. The die-cut sleeve and vinyl-only Annabel Lee bonus track make this pressing the argument-ending version. COBRASIDE’s limited repressing for the specific audience that understands what those details mean is exactly right.
More Alternative vinyl:
