Pure Blood Doom, the notoriously hard to find second album by elite Finnish death metal band Adramelech, has been scheduled for re-release on cd and limited vinyl courtesy of Nuclear Abominations Records. According to the press-release, hungry customers can expect “new, remastered sound and new, improved layout and cover by artist Turkka Rantanen who already drew the original art”.
This definitely good news for those who didn’t have the opportunity to pick up one of the finest death metal releases of the late-1990s back in the day. However, while there is no reason to doubt the good-will of the label in question, the idea of “enhancing” a piece of art by sound-tweaking, re-packaging and other industry tricks leaves a bad aftertaste. At least there’s no mention of digipaks, or let alone bonus-tracks tucked on to the end to disrupt the overall listening experience. More information about the release is available at Nuclear Abomination’s website or Bandcamp.
Tags: adramelech, death metal, Nuclear abomination, reissue
Awesome news, i’ll definitely be snagging one of these
Now someone just needs to reissue Universe’ self-titled album
Awesome! I remember when I had more disposable income I dropped 70 bucks to grab a used version of this album.on ebay…
..lol
$70? Lol, I bought my copy for $8 new; back in the day, you couldn’t give these away. I’ll always miss those days of prowling Abyss Records’ store and seeing what cool albums I could get on the cheap.
It was well worth it! Lol
Awesome album, and it’s cool it will be available again but couldn’t agree more but all the dubious re-issue garbage. 95% chance this gets brickwalled. It would be nice if labels started putting out CDs to stay as close to the original releases as possible, it seems they try to market to people who already own older issues and buying a cd twice for new album artwork or bonus tracks is retarded. I know the Morbid Angel FRD reissues are held in high regard, does anyone know of any other re-issues that actually do the originals justice?
“new, remastered sound…” please no just get the original source sound. Not bashing the label but I’ve never heard a remaster better than the original other than for some demos
This one will be, I am pretty sure of that.
DONT FUCK IT UP
Why are digipaks frowned upon here?
Can’t speak for others but digipaks suck because their environmentally friendly selling point is a sham and they are not durable like jewel cases. Sure jewels are flimsy but the plastic bits are easily replaced so if they get spilled on or smashed, the cover is still fine
word those fucking digipacks dont even keep hold of the cd itself half the time.
I have no problems with digipacks, I have several.
Turkka claims the reason he re-did the cover is because the original painting got lost. The label wanted a higher quality scan, and Turkka basically said, “well, I don’t know where the hell it is, but I’ll make you a new one I guess”. Unfortunately, most of his newer artwork is digital, so that’s how he re-did this one too. The exact same thing happened with the Depravity reissue. His remake of the Pure Blood Doom artwork is pretty tasteful for digital (unlike the Depravity reissue), however a painting is ALWAYS superior, no matter how much the label insists on saying it’s “improved”.
Ah interesting but unfortunate that the original is lost
The new one looks close enough that he could have just blown up an old scanned image and digitally overlayed it, good enough for me really but you’re right about paintings > digital art anyway
He is one of the best IMHO.
Professional, fanzine style, imaginative, nice colouring, original
Most famous piece probably, the cover for Demilich’s Nesphite (Repulse version).
Yeah, his paintings rule. They are precious few though. In the last ten years, he has done more metal covers than ever before, but it’s almost all digital. I wish he’d pick up a paintbrush more often. That’s where the artist’s personality really shines through.
I figure it’s too much overdose of digital in arts that made me not notice it. Because I did not notice it, to tell you the truth
A pair of recommendations from Turka:
1. “Xtreem Mutilation Vol 4” Beautiful
2. Interview “LAS VISIONES DE LA BESTIA – Round 2 Igor Mugerza VS Turkka ” (Spanish)
Have a nice day!
IMHO good remasters: Dissect, Grave’s “Into the grave”
Bad remasters: Bolt Thrower “Realms of chaos”
Nice. The “Nespithe” remaster for the Demilich box set added a nice sheen to the music. It is noticeably improved in sound quality, not just made to be super loud.
I’ll take a look, thanks.
The good remasters I mentioned make it sound clearer, but I like the originals too. I figure it’s the same case with Demilich. Demilich original sound helps giving the nightmare feel.
Bolt Thrower record remaster was not authorized by the band, IIRC. The overall experience from that remaster is “disordered” IMHO
oh wow a great album gets reissued and the comments aren’t full of people calling it metalcore circus music
this is a positive development
OK guys I think I need to drop in and explain a few reasons for reworking art and sound on the CD.
First of all, I am myself a rather old collector and passionate about Death Metal as it used to look and sound like in the early ’90s, I am 40+, did tapetrading in the end of the ’80’s/early ’90s and so on. So no worries about having glowing embossed logos and multicolored art with animated gifs with flames and skulls all around. I like my releases to be sober and closest possible to the old feel of labels like Drowned, Thrash, Seraphic Decay and so on. In fact, I might even rant about having been one of the first label/zine that pushed that kind of aesthetics and sound, far before more famous ones active today.
First, we had to redo the art first because the artist requested it, but mainly because we had a LP version to release as well! You can’t just stretch a booklet scan to 12″x12″, it would look like shit. I pressed the artist to do the new artwork in order to look the less digital as possible and I think the final result is way more that good. You won’t get Unique Leader or some Indonesian blasting brutal death kind of art, don’t worry.
Also the remastering was mandatory for us as we could not use the same master for CD and LP. Also the DAT was lost and we had to pick up the audio from the original CD. However the studio who did the remastering is specialized in OLD punk and grind music, and we simply added punch and volume to the sound, without making it anywhere cleaner or more polished. In fact, the opposite.
Since this CD was released in 1999 you have also to consider a technical side that used to happen at the time: mastering was undergoing a big turn during those years and the final result was indeed “too polished and too artificial” because there was simply no experience by studios in handling the new digital technologies. So what we did was the exact opposite of what you are afraid of! We actually made the sound warmer and more real than the original.
No risk of ever seeing digipacks on Nuclear Abominations. The final result will be a normal jewelcase CD. I wanted to add an OBI strip but that one you could just throw away if you find it annoying :D
Sir I salute you
>You can’t just stretch a booklet scan to 12″x12″, it would look like shit.
I completely agree
I agree with your comment about the artificial sound of Adramelech original releases. You have made an interesting decision regarding the remastering. I’m willing to hear.
Thank you very much for the insight
> https://i2.wp.com/buio-omega.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/FINAL-COVER.jpg
Oh Italy! Yay I will buy, European here
Good rendition, you’ll have my money, bookmarked!
Have a nice weekend you and all DMU!
Mr Mick, thank you for sharing your insights on the matter. Sounds like this is going to be one of the best releases of 2018!
You won’t be disappointed, I am myself an unbending fanatic of OSDM layouts. Far from me any idea of overtweaking anything.
BTW I am also not done with Finnish Death Metal either.
Just for a small preview have a look at the next releases by Sickness and Necrolepsy, I think they don’t really look “polished”, don’t you think.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pprnvn3fuwdoq6l/Sickness-Final.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3dcay7g1j7av6p/Necrolepsy%20final%20cover.jpg?dl=0