Young Widows\/Sweet Cobra – Live At Three Floyds Brewing

The Young Widows/Sweet Cobra Live At Three Floyds Brewing vinyl captures a specific night, November 12th, 2011, at one of Indiana’s most celebrated craft breweries, and the circumstances behind this document are exactly what make it worth your attention. Two bands, one stage, a multi-track recording setup, and a room that clearly understood what it was getting. This is not a hastily assembled souvenir. It was built with care from the ground up.

Two Bands, One Night: The Young Widows/Sweet Cobra Live At Three Floyds Brewing Vinyl

Young Widows, the Louisville-based trio known for threading post-hardcore noise through slow, heavy grooves, deliver five tracks here: “Future Heart,” “White Golden Rings,” “Lucky and Hardheaded,” “Lean on the Ghost,” and “Old Skin.” Their recorded studio output already rewards close listening, but a live setting strips things further, and what remains tends to hit harder. Chicago’s Sweet Cobra follows with four tracks of their own: “Silvered,” “Matriarch,” “Brux,” and “Spider Scraper.” The two bands share an orbit of heavy, atmospheric rock that sits well outside the mainstream, and pairing them on a single record makes sense in a way that feels considered rather than convenient.

Recording, Production, and Format Details

The audio was multi-track recorded by Aaron McCalister at Earth Analog, then mixed by Kurt Ballou at God City Studio in Salem, Massachusetts. Ballou is one of the most respected engineers working in heavy music, and his involvement here is not a minor footnote. The mix translates the live energy without sacrificing clarity, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds. The cover art was handled by David Cook, who records under the name Bonethrower, an artist with deep roots in heavy underground visual culture. Released on Hawthorne Street Records under catalog number HSR 40, this is colored vinyl, limited to 420 copies total.

Why This Pressing Belongs in Your Collection

Four hundred and twenty copies is a small run by any measure, and this was not a release built for wide distribution. It exists for the people who were paying attention to both bands at the time, and for collectors who understand that live documents pressed in limited numbers with production credits like these do not tend to resurface easily. The combination of Ballou’s mixing, the Bonethrower artwork, and the specific context of a Three Floyds Brewing show gives this record a texture that no studio album from either band can replicate. If you follow either Young Widows or Sweet Cobra, or if you simply collect well-produced heavy live records with serious provenance, this one is difficult to overlook.

Tracklist

1. YOUNG WIDOWS: FUTURE HEART
2. YOUNG WIDOWS: WHITE GOLDEN RINGS
3. YOUNG WIDOWS: LUCKY AND HARDHEADED
4. YOUNG WIDOWS: LEAN ON THE GHOST
5. YOUNG WIDOWS: OLD SKIN
6. SWEET COBRA: SILVERED
7. SWEET COBRA: MATRIARCH
8. SWEET COBRA: BRUX
9. SWEET COBRA: SPIDER SCRAPER