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Speaking of Roadrunner – the label has finally acted on its gold mine of a back catalogue. It’s a welcome change from its usual reissues of albums a scant year after their original release, or endless re-reissues of classics (I was astonished once to find four different CD versions of Mercyful Fate’s Melissa available at the same time in a record store). We’ve seen choice reissues already (Atrophy, Toxik), but this year, they’ve opened the floodgates and licensed a ton of material to Metal Mind Productions, who excel at this sort of thing.
A fairly complete list follows below, with European release dates (add a month or two for American release dates). Except where noted, each reissue is a remastered single disc digipak. I’m especially excited for the reissue of Pestilence’s Spheres with Dan Seagrave’s original artwork (read about it in my interview with him here), which is much better than the official version (see above).
30.07.07
Znowhite – All Hail To Thee/Kick’em When They’re Down/Live Suicide
Shelter – Mantra (bonus tracks)
Shelter – Beyond Planet Earth (bonus tracks)
Defiance – Insomnia (bonus tracks)
Blessed Death – Kill or Be Killed
Blessed Death – Destined For Extinction
Amen – Amen (bonus tracks)
Front Line Assembly – Millenium (bonus tracks) 2CD
Front Line Assembly – Monument
Front Line Assembly – Reclamation
Optimum Wound Profile – Lowest Common Dominator
Optimum Wound Profile – Silver or Lead
Trojan – Chasing the Storm
Quick Change – Circus of Death (bonus tracks)
06.08.07
Artillery – Through the Years (bonus tracks) 4 CD BOX
Kinetic Dissent – I Will Fight No More Forever
Paradox – Heresy (bonus tracks)
Paradox – Product of Imagination (bonus tracks)
Treponem Pal – Furytales (4CD + 1DVD) (bonus tracks) 5 CD BOX
20.08.07
Bulldozer – The Day of Wrath (bonus tracks)
Bulldozer – The Final Separation (bonus tracks)
Bulldozer – IX: Circle of Hell (bonus tracks)
Bulldozer – Neurodeliri (bonus tracks)
Pestilence – Spheres (bonus tracks)
The Great Kat – Worship Me or Die!
The Great Kat – Beethoven on Speed
27.08.07
Cyclone – Brutal Destruction
Floodgate – Penalty
Ratos De Porao – Brasil (bonus tracks)
Ratos De Porao – Anarkophobia bonus tracks)
Ratos De Porao – Just Another Crime in Massacreland (bonus tracks)
Ratos De Porao – Feijoada Acidente? Internacional (bonus tracks)
03.09.07
Gang Green – You Got It
Gang Green – Older…Budweiser (bonus tracks)
Gang Green – I Can’t Live Without It (bonus tracks)
10.09.07
Cerebral Fix – Product of Disgust (bonus tracks) 5 CD BOX
Floodgate – Penalty (bonus tracks)
Dude, pick up the Kinetic Dissent disk when it comes out. It’s one of the most honest, positive and courageous metal disks I’ve had the pleasure of listening to.
Can’t go wrong with Znowhite, Paradox, Artillery, Cyclone and Blessed fuckin’ Death, otherwise.
I’m interested to see if these ‘remasters’ will actually sound any better on a few of those, like Kinetic Dissent and most of the Artillery disks have pretty fine production jobs… If anything, I’d be more interested to get a remix job on more records, not just remastering. Most of the time remaster means slap a multiband compressor and make everything burn and call it ‘modern sounding’.
I’m always PSYCHED about these reissues, though honestly I haven’t bought that many yet because they cost WAY too fucking much and the gold discs don’t play in my car for some reason (ANNOYING). Plus I own a bunch of the originals already. It’s cool that they’re digging into more of the obscure shit now, though. I can’t fathom how the hell Metal Mind can afford to do this stuff…
Helm,
Yeah, some of the reissues Roadrunner have done on their own sound like absolute shit (Obituary, Sepultura), so I’m curious how Metal Mind will go about these. I’ll have to check out that Kinetic Dissent.
Andrew,
Metal Mind doesn’t have A&R; and R&D; costs with these reissues, and I can’t imagine that the licensing fees from RR would be that high since this stuff is pretty obscure…I bet Metal Mind rakes in good dough from all their live DVD’s, and maybe this type of cross-licensing in general is good for their coffers. Also, maybe costs are lower in Poland (how could Lifeline Records have such lavish packaging?), and maybe the limited pressings help keep costs down, too. Or maybe they’re just rich.