when this first came out, i didn't give it much of a listen, because i'd already heard it. it was just kind of like there wasn't a new record.

i actually had that experience with skinny fists, as well. but, i think this record is the opposite of skinny fists, in that sense. see, i'd been listening to bootlegs of skinny fists material for months before the record was released, and the material is far more powerful live, so the record actually lost out to the bootlegs in terms of listening time. the songs lost something in the recording process, unfortunately. they were of course playing these songs near the end of their last touring cycle in the early 00s, so i was familiar with them from the bootlegs i'd heard, too. it just took them ten years or whatever it was to release the actual record, and by then my head was elsewhere - these were old songs. so, i just put it on ignore.

now, though, this record exists and has existed for a while, so it forms a place within my periodic godspeed binges, so i'm hearing it in that sequential context, rather than just ignoring it, because it's not really a new record. with this record, it's starting to sink in that it's kind of the opposite of skinny fists in terms of recording - these tracks sound better in recorded form, this time, as the detail is brought out in the studio, in ways that draw some continuity with yanqui. 

because i have these tracks mentally placed in the early 00s, though, that it was where i mentally place this record when i do these sequential binges - as their last record pre-breakup, not their first post-reformation. 

and, i think that, in the long-run, it may be where the periodic binges end, too.