Numero Group, 2533 S. Troy Street, Chicago, IL (2025)

12/14/2025

Don't let your loved ones listen to their same old garbage Christmas records this year. Make them listen to our garbage Christmas records. Embrace the solitude. Christmas Dreamers is up next.

12/13/2025

Ngl heavy feels this time of year but the shop is open today for possibly the last Saturday ever if you want to come by and cheer us up / commiserate.

12/12/2025

Y2K25 is officially over but not before this last drop of atmospheric post-rock from turn of the century Chicago. 90 Day Men's debut for Southern Records surfs no wave's spiky shorelines over eight hypnotizing tracks. This new expanded 25th anniversary edition includes a full unreleased, never heard album tracked at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio, with notes from engineer Greg Norman and a fresh Heba Kadry master.

Let's meet at Jinx for the full review. Was great recapping all these lost 2000 classics. Might be some specials happening in the carts this weekend if you need to catch up.

12/11/2025

The Last Word Is Rejoice: Mineral is Now on Numero.

True emo pioneers from the Lone Star State. Both in the studio and on the road, the Austin quartet blazed a trail alongside bands like Christie Front Drive and The Promise Ring that brought the still-nascent genre of emotional hardcore into its next era. Soaring vocals and unabashedly earnest lyrics underscored memorable, polished hooks of post-rock and indie stylings, and as the band fervently toured and recorded between 1995 and 1997, the hearts of vast new audiences would be irreversibly stirred. Jumping from compatriot labels The Audio Record and Caulfield, Mineral settled down in 1996 at Jeff Matlow’s Crank! Records (Boys Life, Vitreous Humor, The Vehicle Birth) to record their one-two punch of The Power Of Failing and EndSerenading, laying out the future of emotionally charged post-hardcore before major labels could spell E-M-O. After a tentative partnership with Interscope, the group disbanded before their third album was released, with members finding new pursuits in Imbroco, The Gloria Record and Pop Unknown, though not after firmingly lodging a flawless run of records in the 90s mega-canon. Have you ever heard the sound of a guitar crying?

12/10/2025

“We were just smartass kids, but I was trying to express this broad concept that it felt like we were living in the end of the world. We were always knocking around these sort of tongue-in-cheek, but also semi-serious ideas about subcultures and countercultures,” Joy said. “The name was almost going to be the idea of a cult… Revolutionary Order of Armageddon, which sounds more like a terrorist organization, really.”

In the aftermath of his prolific but dysfunctional Moss Icon, psychedelic emo sextet Breathing Walker, and the brief-but-brilliant Lava, guitarist Tonie Joy had more than just another punk band in mind. Joy’s hometown scene had birthed the aforementioned bands, plus The Hated, The S**t, and Vermin Scum Records, but according to Joy, it was a “city that was conservative, small, and pretty sh*tty.” He’d taken over Vermin Scum managerial duties from Hated drummer Kenny Hill and, in that, saw an opportunity to put Annapolis on the map. “I always saw it as a community effort or a secret society,” Joy posited.

The band began hitting every suburban basement or Unitarian Church hall in a 500-mile radius, their highly visceral—if truncated—sets quickly announcing their intentions, even if they had nary a record to hawk at the merch table. Joy turned the living room of his 169 Old River Road house in nearby Arnold, Maryland, into a reliable venue on the post-hardcore circuit, hosting Antioch Arrow, He**in, Unwound, Rorschach, Native Nod, Sinker, John Henry West, and dozens more over the course of a couple summers.

By the time their four-song City EP arrived on Vermin Scum and their supporting fall ’93 cross-country tour kicked off, two more 7"s were already in the hopper: a split with Born Against for Gravity and the three-song Symptom for Wilmington, Delaware’s Jade Tree. Arriving October 15, 1993, Symptom featured Universal Order of Armageddon’s signature song: the one-minute, 26-second breakbeat anthem “Visible Distance,” which also led off their Kill Rock Stars–issued The Switch Is Down 12”.

12/09/2025

Introducing Magnolia: The Numero Group CD Club.
You've screamed from the rafters about wanting Numero return to the CD format, and we heard you. Behold: Magnolia, a line of 12 Numero indie classics, housed in throwback jewel cases and a chipboard o-band to tie the series together on your shelf. Our own little CD Club with a stack of 3 discs delivered quarterly.

Currently we are selling them as a subscription of 12 for $144 and in the spirit of the holiday, this week only, we're offering to new subscribers for $115 - less than $10/disc plus shipping.

These will be shipped in parcels of 3, every quarter, starting in January, with additional shipments coming in April, June and September. First edition, 1000 copies. We will announce additional bundles and individual CDs as stock allows throughout the year.

The first three are done, taking requests for the back 9 now...

12/08/2025

Totally phreaked Irish psychedelia for the summer of love hangover. Led by Belfast-born wunderkind David Lewis, Andwellas Dream's 1969 debut Love and Poetry shreds the line between Denmark Street and Cyprus Avenue. A 13-song pastoral fever dream lost in the CBS warehouse, now remastered and restored to its original glory.

Composed entirely by Numero favorite Dave Lewis, this album captures the origin sound of Irish psych rock. Heavy tunes with exceptional guitar work is mixed with current affair themes dosed with cutting edge studio effects, exotic percussion, layers of jazz flute and acoustic guitar. Still relatively unknown outside the collector circles, this album has gained cult grail status after 40 years and is very well demand. The album art alone is often featured in periodicals and books on the scene as peak representation of the era.

Love and Poetry captures the perfect moment in sound and time - just before the abandon of psychedelia mutated into the bore predictability of what would become "prog rock". Pack up the water pipe, flip the lav lamp on and transport yourself back the late '60's properly drenched in mind-expanded utopian themes and innocent musical experimentation. Hold onto your mind!

12/06/2025

Dare you to name a better music video. Cohesive storyline, brilliant camera work, no CGI, insane dance moves, incredible song. On repeat til the Universal Togetherness Band show tonight at Empty Bottle. Chicago: we are blessed.

12/05/2025

Ok here it is. Before Hoover, Kerosene 454, or Samuel there was Wind of Change. A hybrid of DC's Revolution Summer and CBGB's aggressive hardcore scene, the teenage Arizona skate edge quintet lasted a couple summers and EPs then blowing away in the desert dust devils. For our 8th Hand Screened edition, Numero has compiled the band's complete discography, including the Rain and ...A Promise Kept EPs, the Kids Who Care demo, and a previously unreleased 1989 WFMU radio session. The LP is housed in a sturdy chipboard jacket with a human-pulled silk screen and includes a 24-page booklet with in-depth liner notes by Tony Rettman, rare photos, and flyers from shows you were too young to attend.

If you got the subscription, this is probably at your house already.
If copping today, we will try to get them out by new years.

12/04/2025

Good news and bad news. The Factory Outlet is going to have rare Saturday hours this week and next. If you are in Chicago, this is the only spot to do all your holiday shopping.

12/04/2025

One of my personal favorite bands from the set, both musically and the because they have the sickest photos. Sequoia Spotlight: Wind Of Change. While the sun-cooked 1980s hardcore scene of Arizona was being overrun by hooligan skate punks Jodie Foster’s Army, a younger and less pharmaceutically inspired crew searched for meaning beyond “Beach Blanket B**g Out.” Outside the boozy confines of a Phoenix pro-wrestling cage–turned–punk venue called Madison Square Garden, 15-year-old Step Forward Records majordomo Eric Astor was building his own little D.I.Y. empire out in the suburban East Valley, screening “Drug Free Youth” T-shirts in his garage and releasing tapes and 7"s by straight-edgers Youth Under Control, Last Option, and Unit Pride.

Wind Of Change was forged in the ashes of Youth Under Control in early 1987, when Peterson and Dunham joined Jim and John Wall and a rotating cast of drummers in a quest to bring the D.C. sound to Maricopa County. Days after the band opened for Fugazi at Tucson’s Park Place BBQ in May 1988, Step Forward issued their four-song …A Promise Kept EP, which Tim Yohannan called “melodic progressive hardcore tuneage.” An older, wiser Wind Of Change arrived at Mike Coleman’s Orangewood Studio on October 2 of that same year to track their seminal Rain 7".

The title track’s chugging opening riff invites the pit to open immediately, but there’s not a youth crew sermon to be found across either of the disc’s two-minute blasts of introspective, mid-tempo hardcore—there’s even an acoustic guitar in the mix, nodding to the genre’s jangly Minneapolis roots. The follow up EP Rain was self-released on the Zimbabwe label the following summer in anticipation of a Rain On The Nation tour, with Eric Astor manning the drum stool. But with their membership split between edges straight and otherwise, Wind Of Change felt the puritanical sting of disinterested kids unfamiliar with the District’s new craze.

12/03/2025

Chicago. Good News. We are opening the shop up for weekend hours this and next Saturday (6th and 13th) from noon to 6. We will have special holiday related deals on site plus loads of merch, discounted dingers and various rares kicking around. Come by and say hi. Frank will be there. Bring treats. This Kathy Hammer "December Dreaming" track slays btw.

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