Scum Guilt's Enslaved Up for Mass Consumption

Scum Guilt have regurgitated ten more minutes of metal for your pleasure, four of which are ready to sample. These guys are not messing around. Get on board early at facebook.com/scumguilt and scumguilt.bandcamp.com.

Destroyer {Resurrected} - KISS - 2012

I love to hate KISS. As someone who enjoyed a childhood in the '70s - and whose parents denied them access to all things KISS early on - I have been infatuated with the band as long as I can remember, have truly enjoyed much of their music and the overall spectacle and never fail to be revolted at - or sucked in by - the music-second cash-grabs they seem to concoct at every turn. Destroyer {Resurrected} is a worthless exercise designed to appeal to fans of classic KISS, long hungry for a return to the band's heyday and, admittedly, one now on my shelf in both CD and vinyl formats. I owned a secondhand copy of Destroyer on vinyl years ago and, frankly, KISS vinyl never sounded that good. When Mercury remastered the catalogue in 1997, I went CD-only with the band and have been satisfied with those releases since. I could not resist the experience, however, of buying a "new" KISS album on wax at an actual record store and dropped a twenty-dollar bill on Destroyer {Resurrected}. It's heavy 180g vinyl and, aside from that, has little else to recommend it. It sounds pretty good, not great so, of course, I dropped another ten bucks to compare CD to CD.

Transparent Vinyl: Gogmagogical Records Announces Partnership with FISTER

For the announcement proper I'll redirect you to the official Gogmagogical Records site. Needless to say, I'm fucking thrilled.

Black Sunday: Mantas - Death by Metal (2012)

In keeping with its subject, this Black Sunday is decidedly brief and lo-fi. There's no flashy packaging, no gloss, no color, even, in Relapse Records' proper release of the genesis of death metal, Death by Metal by Chuck Schuldiner's seminal Mantas.

Death by Metal as proper product is presented with a no-frills package designed to emulate photocopied demo materials and is a minimal, charming bare-bones affair. A simple matte jacket, white sleeve and 12x12" two-sided insert, all black-and-white, is all there is. Notes from death metal chronicler Ian Christe dominate one side along with a reproduction of the original Death by Metal cassette demo insert, the Emotional 7" sleeve and a review of the demo from way back when. The other side offers some recollections from guitarist Rick Rozz, a nice group shot and a copy of a hand-drawn advertisement for the demo (just four buck to Chuck's house in Altamonte Springs would have landed it in your hands).

If it all feels a little slight, perhaps it is. Really, though, all we have is a total of seven tracks, duplicated here to a total of fourteen with two versions of the demo making up the first nine numbers and a five-track rehearsal from 1984 rounding out the record. Death by Metal is at once raw and aged. It's still presented as a humble production as if it remains unaware of its influence. This is not material for an audiophile but instead artifact for the metal archeologist. It's an origin that deserves appreciation and, thanks to Relapse Records, it's one that has now moved beyond museum piece, out of the display case and into the record crate.