Did you order like straight away when they went up? The vinyl went up at like $25 or $30 (can't remember which) and then an hour later was changed to $18, so probably got put on the store with an incorrect price.

I just looked on the site and the price is the same that I paid and I only bought 3 hours after the page went up.

Yeah, don't confuse my light defense of this as an endorsement. I wish it was a lot better.

I just don't necessarily think it's all that's happening. The return of Silkworms and them doing no pre-announcement drops of singles shows they are at least capable of doing digital releases out of the blue.

The delay seems like it's because they're taking orders first before putting the order into the printing and pressing plants. Should they work that way? Probably not but it seems like what they've chosen to do - their previous mistake with the AFD box making them overcorrect their approach.

If we end up in January with complete silence after the end of this tour then my hope for more anytime soon disappears. I still think they could surprise us in 6-8 weeks time.

And the Metallica boxset is great. Getting it soon as a present, looking forward to listening to the Moscow show on final.

https://gnrmerch.com/collections/mens-a … ie-dye-tee

isn't this it?

The singles already in fans hands. There's a digital release and they're playing it live. This is the actual release, the physical release of a single these days is a nice bonus for hardcores who still want to buy CDs, 7" and tapes.

It is normal for any other band or artist to be putting physical releases in their fans hands months after release - especially when it comes to things like physical copies of singles that won't be sold at retailers. That's how things work nowadays.

At least with releases sold at retailers (like albums) they probably would have had their order in by now as they'd be predicting demand based on what retail thinks they can sell - with this release they're taking orders then going to print.

Casuals aren't buying this, it's a niche bit of merch for hardcore fans.

People are freaking out about this shipment and production delay way too much. It's not unheard of today for physical releases to be months later. If it were an album I'd be more concerned.

I don't think it really implies anything. Just, the band doesn't communicate a whole lot so as a fanbase we read into every little thing they put out there.

We anticipated Hard Skool since it was on setlists in 2019 and soundchecked in 2020, so we carried that anticipation into this tour.

Then after the first show of this tour we see a setlist about Absurd and start speculating what that is, most guessing it's Silkworms. Surprisingly, things moved really quickly and it was performed at the next show and then released at midnight a few days after that. So then the hype for Hard Skool builds even more because they're actually releasing music and still soundchecking it.

Fast forward a few weeks and we are where we are now. The two songs they intended to release have been released and those were the ones as alts on this leg of the tour. They now have a long gap and in theory could release more during that gap - the reason we'd have no hints about other songs is, if it wasn't going to be played on that last tour leg, there'd be no reason to rehearse it and have it as an alt on the setlist so we'd have zero knowledge of it beforehand.

We'll see what happens. Their strategy doesn't make a whole of sense as things stand - singles don't make a lot of money, the exist to promote things. There's only a handful of dates left and a big gap until the Europe shows next Summer. So either something else (more releases of songs/other content or tour dates) is coming OR... this band isn't always the most competent and are genuinely pushing a new single with three tour dates left.

All sensible signs would point to more stuff being in the works but it's GN'R so who knows.