Out of print for close to three years, Harvey Milk's Anthem DVD blew out of here almost immediately when we first had it in stock back in 2006, and I sure wasn't expecting to ever see this available again. It's been reissued by Henry Owings over at Chunklet, though, which I bet is going to make a bunch of you very, very happy, as we had to refund a ton of orders for the original release of Anthem after it initially sold out on us way back when.

However, this is not a straight reissue of the original Anthem. There are some major differences between the two releases, the main one being that this new version of Anthem does not include the 3" CD that accompanied the original DVD, which included four unreleased live tracks including a cover of R.E.M.'s "South Central Rain". Instead of that 3" CD, this new release of Anthem comes with a second DVD that has previously unreleased live concert footage and interview footage with the band, and includes live performances of pretty much everything off of their Special Wishes album. The difference between editions might piss off anyone that considers themself a Harvey Milk completist, but for anyone that primarily wanted to get their hands on the Anthem disc and its three hours of awesome Harvey Milk footage and missed out the first time around, this is a godsend. It's also very limited, released in a run of 500 copies, so I don't know how long we'll manage to keep this one in stock.

Anthem is a beautifully assembled live document from Harvey Milk, packaged together with a 3" CD of additional unreleased music. Harvey Milk are greatly loved here at Crucial Blast, their sometimes monstrous, sometimes fragile indie-sludge has entranced us ever since we were turned on to them with the Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men album. Their sound seems to draw from a weird combination of heartrendingly beautiful Codeine-esque slow-core melodies, ultra heavy, crushing sludge metal, ripping stoner rock raveups, and quirky post-punk/math rock type stuff, but the end product sounds pretty much unlike anything else out there. Harvey Milk totally predated the newish wave of crushing heavy melodic sludge, the sort played by bands like Floor and Jesu, and fans of those bands that haven't heard Harvey Milk yet are really missing out.

The Anthem set features a DVD containing three and a half hours of live footage from the band that spans their existence from their first shows in 1993 to the recent run of reunion shows, and the quality is excellent, with almost all of the footage shot on broadcast-quality cameras. The hightlight of this DVD however is the Atlanta show from 1994 where Creston alternately pounds an anvil with a sledgehammer and bellows into the mic, the anvil hits ringing in time with the rest of the band. Awesome.

The second bonus disc that comes with this new edition has more than an hour of exclusive footage of Harvey Milk that is more recent. The choice part of this disc is the professionally filmed show (complete with multiple camera angles) of the band playing in front of a packed house in 2006 at the 40 Watt in Athens while opening for the Melvins; this set is fucking CRUSHING, and one of the best live Harvey Milk vids I've seen. Along with that, you also get a show from the Caledonia Lounge in 2005 that's interspersed with footage of the band being interviewed.

Where the original version of this set was packaged in an olive-colored foldover sleeve, this one is printed on dark brown stock, and the artwork has been slightly modified (I think) by Stephen O'Malley, who also handled the art and design for the first one. It still has that rad diecut on the cover though, and more or less looks just like the original, with the two DVDs attached by plastic hubs to the interior folder that slides inside of the outer sleeve. The embossed lettering is gold foil instead of silver, and the interior of the sleeve includes the original liner notes by Henry Owings along with some additional updated text. Again, the DVDs are region free, and like I said the first time around, this is absolutely essential for fans of the glorious heaviosity that is Harvey Milk!