The others are in Berkeley and San Francisco. Then, there's Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz (there's a few in the Bay Area, as well), which has a great black metal selection. So good, in fact, that the metal bins are marked with inverted crosses...
In El Cajon, near San Diego, there's a weird store called Blue Meannie. Their metal selection is good, but it's entirely mixed in with every other genre, so you really have to dig. They have a rather strange motto: "From The King To The King" with Elvis Presley and King Diamond juxtaposed...
Close to home, there's Dark Realm Records in Downey (unofficial home of Sadistic Intent), complete with in-store appearances, their own label, etc. Good store with a good selection, not to mention ambience, if you will. One step away from "Helvete"?
Lastly, the next town over from me, Redondo Beach, had a great little store called Off Beat Records, which is now, sadly, out of business. This was a great little shop that had a small, but varied, metal selection. I even picked this one up there...
Here's a recent rip from Defloration. Very catchy, Suffocation style DM with great vocals...
Sorry, song removed after a week or so...
Apparently, this is a town in Austria...
5 comments:
I'm so sentimental about music stores; I need to see the Cali shops. I understand in Japan there's giant sectors of nothing but mega-sized music stores. Drool! In Philly I hit three stores on the street near The Theater of the Living Arts and wanted to cry at the beauty of it. I'm so into the damned music store concept I went to our local emporium yesterday just to fuck around, even though I got 5 discs. Shameful.
I didn't like when my local store started interfiling metal with everything else. I know I have bought less since they started doing that.
My favs (in no order):
Princeton Record Exchange - NJ
Vintage Vinyl - NJ
Positively Records - PA
Jacks Music Shoppe - NJ
Hospital Records - NY
and when it was around, Sound on Sound.
man, this entry practically brought a tear to my eye. that dark realm looks awesome. not as many metal spots here in sf (aquarius, amoeba), but if you ever come up here, we'll have to hit up the shops!
Great stores are increasingly hard to find and I, for one, do not exactly shed a tear at the demise of major chain stores.
IO, check out Streetlight in Santa Cruz (worth the drive from SF but, I haven't been there in about two years, though).
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