ND Scum & FETO on Vinyl LP?

Question: I have been looking for copies of the first two Napalm Death albums on vinyl, and I noticed that on your site for the European store, you had a picture disc vinyl of Scum available, however this was absent from your U.S. store. What is the deal, and is there any chance of you sending some copies to the U.S. store sometime soon? Also, do you have any plans for a From Enslavement to Obliteration vinyl re-release in the near future? Answers to these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Answer: Both the first 2 Napalm death albums were released on Vinyl LP inthe UK in the 80's, the first pressing of FETO was gatefold actually with a free 7inch disc. A few years later a pic disc of FETO was issued, again in UK, about 2000 copies, but Scum had wait till over a decade later for its pic disc.AS you say, its available to buy from our UK store as it was made in UK, and most of the time we do swap products between the UK and USA stores- but this must have been missed.We currently have no plans to issue FETO on vinyl again.Our interest in vinyl is sporadic and depends on demand, Napalm death's first 2 albums are classics of grindcore genre so probably will be issued again at some point. My advice is- grab them when you see them!

MISERY LOVES Co. DVD?

Question: I have the CD MOSH200, NEXTGEN Tour, which was an excellent tour. I have two versions MOSH200 and MOSH200A, the Pulkas tracks are the only ones that differ, is there a reason for this? Also since your re-issueing classic albums how about re-issueing Misery Loves Co debut album with their NEXTGEN perormance as a bonus DVD?


Answer: Wow, you are going back to 1998 with this one...it was a good year, and as you say that NEXT GEN tour was pretty exciting..sadly none of the bands on that tour went onto major long term careers tho,in fact most split up soon afterwards- which is disappointing, looking back.Anyways, the 2 versions of the comp are because Pulkas started to play legal antics with us, in an effort to get off the label- some demo tracks were removed, as the ownership was in question.This was answered elsewhere a while back on this blog. As for classic albums- yeah i agree with you! MLC debut was and still is a classic (i liken it to Fear factory's demanufacture, but more experimental)- like a lot of Earache titles, its now considered classic but at the time was not really picked up on by fans in mass numbers- only those that truly know about music tend to delve into the underground where earache resides.yeah we have the footage from that 1998 show and might consider it for a DVD release. Singer patrik from MLC is now a respected music journalist in sweden.

A&R opinion of bands on Myspace

Question: Surely you guys receive more demo submissions than you probably know what to do with... When Earache looks at a MySpace link from the demo section, are things that coincide with the music such as view count/image/presentation as important to you as other mainstream labels? Or does Earache rule so much they just like what they hear?

Answer: Nearly every band we look at on myspace now has 10,000 friends and 100,000 playcount and a neat CSS background and cool graphics and merch.Bands tend to blend into one another ans almost look and sound identical BUT we pretty much judge bands on the quality of music- the style, originality, level of professionalism.When we started to sign the new school Thrash bands the only place they existed was on myspace, but none had a great many plays or slick web pages- what attracted us was the music- it was good old fashioned A&R skill and sleuthing that alerted us to the potential of these bands.
To be honest most labels nowadays are doing A&R solely by myspace play count...or a basic search of myspace "unsigned" by descending playcount order- any monkey could do that, and many labels have hooked up with many bands in that fashion.

Earache PS2 Game in USA?

Question: I have been waiting almost 3 years for the PS/2 version of \"Extreme Metal Racing\" to be released in the USA. Is it finally going to be released next week or not?


Answer: Sadly the publisher of our game in the UK-METRO 3D is mostly a publisher of kids and budget range games (we knew this when we signed on with them for the earache extreme metal racing game) so has no major distribution outside UK.However, recently it announced a series of Wii games for the USA, but strangely did not include the Earache game in the bunch to be released. So we have no date for the USA release, sorry.

Earache influenced by Factory Records?

Question: on the scum dvd mick talks about how early napalm was influenced by joy division. Did that influence extend to earache at all in respect of joy division\'s label factory, they did sort of put together a step by step guide as to how not to run a record label long term however they did show how it was possible to be independent, so were they an influence at all? From:

Answer:If you check out old interviews,members of original Napalm Death would frequently cite influences from Joy Division, Swans, Pixies and Slab, aswell as the obvious death metal and grindcore references.Looking back I reckon they rated them for the emotional intensity within their songs, as the rest of the 80's indie rock outfits were too twee (Wedding Present) or fake HM (Zodiac Mindwarp) to bother with.Napalm Death even wrote a select few slow, heavy songs that were pretty much homage to Swans- 'Internal Animosity' from the Pathological Comp springs to mind.

As for Earache- yeah sure,even tho I had no direct contact with Factory, I was certainly influenced from afar.Factory was THE 80's Independent music scene institution in the UK..at the time it was the blueprint for how to cultivate a scene, stay connected to the street, but have mega-selling hits aswell.At it remained based in the North of england, which was brave in itself, as nearly 100% of the business of music takes place in London. What the late Anthony Wilson and the assorted bands achieved was groundbreaking, probably only a handful of labels have repeated the feat since.

Factory must have been a fun place to work..they had a party to celebrate anything it seems- ha ha - plus things like the numbering of the releases tapped into the record-collector psyche-and giving a catalog number to the hacienda club itself, and the office cat was just brilliant! We often toy with that idea -just to thwart the many earache fans who do actually collect the full set of mosh releases.Our PlayStation 2 game has a Mosh number even tho we didnt release it, for that make-the-collectors-work-hard reason.

But unlike Factory, Earache saw a lawyer early and actually signed contracts with most of its bands, so that was a crucial difference.I also never got sidetracked into running clubs or bars either, probably because Earache has never had the massive chart hits that could fund such wacky endeavours.

Severe Torture & Nox connection?

Question: This is about two of your bands who share members, with nox and
severe torture which band came from which did nox form as a side project of
severe torture or vice versa or are they two bands who mutated together?
Also do you know if it is difficult with members in two bands who are that
close to seperate what material is written for what band? From:

Answer:yeah its confusing, the bands are very closely linked but Severe Torture are Hollands most well known Pure Death metal band and have been around for quite a while,while,Nox are more blackened DM and are newer. Seth (drummer of ST) joined Nox on vocals but the main difference is NOX are the brainchild of Rob Oorthuis (ex-Centurian) and to further confuse matters, Severe Torture bassist Patrick plays in both bands aswell.

How did we sign BONDED BY BLOOD?

Question: So how did earache discover bonded by blood then I mean LA is a bit far out from your offices in nottingham and new york. Was it through myspace, touring or word from another band they played some shows with the waste if what ive read on forums is correct. From:

Answer: You might have noticed we are madly into the new school THRASH METAL sounds at the moment. Evile are doing great for us, as are Muni Waste and SSS too.After a cool tip off from MOnte at RoadRunner,we actually were due to sign LA thrashers Fueled By Fire in 2006 but even tho we gotto contract stages, they chose Metal Blade instead.So we missed out on them, but did not give up our search.
We spent early 2007 looking at a few LA thrash bands because it is undeniably the hotbed of New-School Thrash at the moment, there are literally hundreds of bands popping up, all playing blistering old-school thrash like it was 1987 again, but none grabbed us enough for a deal.We had spent most of 2007 doing our research via myspace then Ali Marr at this office came across Bonded By Blood in July as a track on the Thrash Unlimited forum myspace.Just one track- Immortal Life- but it immediately blew our minds here, they became a firm favourite.
We quickly got to work on signing the band up, signing just before their EP was released, as they are far and away the most talented of the new school LA bands, with powerful vocals from Aladdin, and Alex Lee is a guitar legend-in-waiting.At roughly the same time, an unknown Thrash fan in LA had emailed me to make a suggestion-BONDED BY BLOOD so this genuine tip-off spurred us on to get the deal done, the fan quickly became Earache's A&R contact in LA.The debut BONDED BY BLOOD album- titled possibly FEED THE BEAST, will be out march 2008, and includes songs from the EP plus 7 more Thrash classics.

Earache -no love for Ted Maul then?

Question: This is an interesting one, how come earache never picked up ted maul? If you look at its inital line up it had peter theobalds on bass who used to be in akercocke but he left if i recal because aks touring and recording comitments made it impossible to do both bands, who was also in ak at the time and also ritz who had a stint as akercocke\'s keyboard player. Also a large proportion of the band worked as roadies for ak. I thought a band that brutally heavy with that kind of association to one of earache\'s better bands would be on the label quite quickly. I mean as far as i know the band are still unsigned with their last album white label being self released by its members. From:

Answer: Hmmm very interesting one, as you say- on paper Earache SHOULD be working with Ted Maul..the band are obviously pushing the envelope musically, with the Drum N bass meets Death Metal angle, which is gaining great reviews, plus the Akercocke connection and we do seem to have a lot in common- it should make it a no-brainer, right?

The problem is Earache itself was experimenting with the Hardcore techno/DnB mashed up with Metal thing in the 90's and so its kinda pretty old news round these parts, and we also know how closed-minded metallers can be to such hybrid sounds- despite critics applauding it.Unless Enter Shikari have made it OK for metal fans nowadays to enjoy mashed-up genres?

Also we have never had any meaningful type dialogue/contact with Ted Maul,for some reason they keep their distance from us- maybe it was because Akercocke were already on Earache, we also know they have a strong DIY ethic within the band, which we can understand, and are aware they prefer to do their own thing, which is actually how a lot of bands choose to operate these days-myspace allows bands to interact with fans so much easier than in the even recent past.Many dont actually need a label.

To an outsider it probably looks crazy that we arent working with Ted Maul..but for various reasons the band and label never got together.We think they are a cool bunch of dudes, but its just one of those things.

Earache & Taint?

Question: Im just wondering did earache have any interest in welsh sludge/post metal/hardcore punk crew taint. My reason for asking is because everytime they have played nottingham the past few times there seems to be a few earache staffers at their shows were you guys checking them out as a possible future earache band or somthing? From:

Answer: Yeah quite a few of the staffers have always loved TAINT - in fact that whole ACRIMONY/BLACK EYE RIOT Wales Sludge/doom scene goes down well on thee Earache death deck.TAINT have a lot in common with CLUTCH to my mind, but I don't think we ever tried to sign them tho- they have been signed to Lee Dorrian's Rise Above label so we leave them alone.I notice they have a newie out now and are touring including a Nottingham show. We should be in attendance as usual, we are at most decent shows in the town after all.

CARCASS have reformed

Question: Hi there,is it true that Carcass reunion?as far that i know,ken owen are having badly brain tumor disease.Is he recover?If that all true,i will could pay thousand dollar to fly over seas to see Carcass play at ozzfest!-ma\'el-(malaysia) From: maelsick666666sense@yahoo.com

Answer: Well you better get saving up for your flights my friend, because it is true that CARCASS will reform to play some shows next summer at European festivals- we hear currently: TUSKA 2008, WACKEN 2008 & HELLFEST 2008, and maybe more to be announced. The band recently met up in London to be filmed for a series of retrospective DVD's which we are releasing next year.You are right about Ken tho- he suffered an accidental brain hemorrhage in 1999 which left him in a coma, literally fighting for his life- after an amazing fightback,and a lot of rehabilitation he is now fully able- but drumming a full live set would be too taxing- so the drummer on the shows will be Daniel Erlandson (Mike Amott's band mate in Arch Enemy).

Heres CARCASS video for "Keep on Rotting In The Free World"

What happened to Pulkas?

Question: What happened to Pulkas???? From: angharad.jones@orange.net

Answer:They were a fantastic band while they lasted were PULKAS.Earache signed the London band after they played a handful of gigs in 1998, and recorded them with famed producer Colin Richardson for the debut album "Greed".On its release -to rave reviews- it became obvious that the band could easily go onto great things, as their brand of groovy/alternative-leaning metal was breaking big, if you recall, 1998 was the era when Deftones/Tool etc were coming through on the world scene, selling lots of albums.

Sensing their greatness deserved better than the indie label they had just signed to, the band wasted no time in recruiting a manager who proceeded to shop them to major labels, even tho the band were contracted to us for 3 more albums.They broke off all contact with Earache so we were forced to spend 2 years wrangling via lawyers, defending our quite legitimate legal and moral position.At some point in the protracted process, the band split up.Almost 10 years on, the album was so ahead of its time, it still sounds contemporary-like it could have been released last week- but I dont think the ex-members have been in any notable bands since.

Strange things are happening and the band is getting a bit of attention lately in 2009- 11 years after the album- so heres the bands only video clip, LOADED.

The Freezing Fog & Beecher

Question: If a band breaks up under contract to earache, what normally happens in regard to the former musicans new projects does earache have rights to first listen to decide if they want to pick them up or not, for example the band of ex beecher members the freezing fog would earache have had first rights to check the demos out to gauge interest or not? From:

Answer: The usual contract is such that the individual members are signed, not the band-so when a band splits mid-contract, Earache has the option to continue with any members' new outfits, or not.In the case of Beecher, the band split up quite suddenly and unexpectedly, soon after the release of their first album for us, while promotion was still ongoing infact.The band persevered through a couple of gruelling Euro tours making seemingly little or no headway in terms of building a career, which kinda made the guys re-think their priorities.
Earache chose not to pick up the option to continue.Now some 2 years later, ex-Beecher members are back as THE FREEZING FOG and while they have mutated into a more stoner/cathedral rock vibe, its not something Earache would be interested in right now.Beecher were cruelly under-appreciated when they were going, and in many ways spearheaded the UK screamo/death scene which many bands have embraced with much greater success since.

Gallows & Earache?

Question: Is it true that earache turned down Gallows, Aparently on the
night they got signed they were playing a gig at rock city according to them
reps from all three of the nottingham metal labels were there and they said
that iatde were the only ones that offered them a deal, do you regret this
decision now being as they are being scene as \"saviours\" of the uk extreme
metal/punk/hardcore scene. From:


Answer:Earache never really even knew about Gallows until after the IATDE debut.I dont remember there being much of a fuss about them in our office, their 'greatness' was'nt recognised by us at all until quite recently.You could say we were slow off the mark.

I don't regret not getting involved in them, we have enough on our plate with the bands we already signed. We think fair play to mark at iatde records for taking the chance and he has earned the kudos that his decision deserved.Both Gallows and IATDE are both doing great it seems, so more power to them.

The Music Biz- it's what we do..

Question: hi there, my names Mark and I\'m studying music at college and I just wanted to ask a few questions about Earache as a record label.
Has Earache always been a completely independent label or have there ever been any occasions where they have helped bands with more than just promotion or distribution. For instance, have you ever organised tours/gigs or cover art for any bands.
How do you usually find your acts and do bands often send their demos to you?
Do you handle the royalties for music you‚ve released if it gets played on the radio or some other form of media?
Thanks.
From: smets.mark@gmail.com

Answer:Earache has always been an 100% Independent label.Meaning its ownership is out of the hands of the big 4 Major music labels which between them control approx 75% of the worlds music output- labels like Universal, SONY-BMG, Warners and EMI.We are not part of them so do not have to pander to shareholders and such like.In this age of myspace and free Mp3s, promotion and distro is often overlooked-- i mean, Earache's Cds are currently available in over 20 countries of the world.This is no mean feat, we oversee the manufacture and distro of Cds into basically 20 warehouses across the globe from which shops obtain the cd.If you visit stores in Melbourne,Manchester, Madrid, Moscow, or Michigan you find Earache CDs in stores.

What we basically bring to the table is knowledge and experience of career development for bands, and the means and finances to carry it out.For touring we usually hook the band up with an agent ho deals with clubs and bookings on behalf of the act, but if they are too new, we do it instead. For artwork bands have creatiuve freedom, so they supply art - or if not, we usually carry out the bands wishes. we help out all our bands especially in the early stages of a career.

We find bands all over- not usually from demos in the mail tho..we scour myspace for great new bands who are original and talented and who wanna work hard to acheive a career.Some bands are signed after we see them perform live, we are always checking out opening bands, the ones on the bottom of the bill are what we like to see..On a typical week I personally can see 5 new bands, between our A&R staff its gotta be 20, in clubs in Nottingham, New York, London and further afield.

For royalties, we collect the money from sales in all formats, CD, Digital downloads and as the song publisher from radio airplay too.This is paid to the artists twice a year according to contract, if the bands recoup the recording costs.

hope that explains how it works.

The Horror/Voorhees on Earache?

Question: Im wondering since earache has signed SSS, Are you looking into any other members of the thrashgig crew at all eg the horror? Speaking of the horror, I heard that earache offered to sign them back in the day when they were voorhess but the band said no because of their DIY ethics is this true? id be suprised if earache showed no interest as they were one of the main ukhc punk bands back in the 90s. From:

Answer: Earache has a strong Hardcore punk background- after all, its the music that I grew up with, the first 80's wave of US and UKHC bands, but Earache hasnt done too many of those straight up HC bands since HERESY.While I am all in favour of the DIY ethics (hell,I still kinda consider Earache a DIY label)sadly, the purist holier-than-thou attitudes of a lot of current HC bands means they don't want to work with us, and I can accept that, we are just fine with that.

In the 90's Earache spoke to quite a few of the UKHC bands- I honestly dont remember talking to Voorhees, but I recall Knuckledust were one of my faves because they sounded crushingly heavier- but they were always happy enough with their current situation and did'nt fancy working with a bigger label.Fair enough.As a consequence,most of the bands Earache prefers to sign have got to have a much more 'crossover' mindset- meaning a love of all things metal aswell as punk.Iron Monkey for a time were like that, till Steve Watson left, a lot of the 'metalhead' attitude left with him, so they reverted to operating like a traditional HC punk outfit.

SSS fit the crossover bill- thats why we work with them, but even tho I never checked them out properly,I assume The Horror & Voorhees before them are/were steeped 100% in the HC scene and while I applaud their principles and their DIY efforts,its something we dont go for as a label, to be honest, with one exception of
Career Suicide cos they are outstandingly brilliant.

Heres Voorhees in 1995 live at bradford:

Could SLEEP have been massive, like Wolfmother?

Question: do you think if sleep had stayed together they would have been alot more comercially successful than they were? im asking this because they are listed as a main influence of wolfmother on wolfmother\'s who are a band who have made it very big with a similer sound. Im just wondering do you think the orginals could have had the same success? From:


Answer: I know what you mean- on the face of it Sleep were sounding remarkably like Wolfmother, but a decade beforehand.The truth is both bands were influenced by the 70's Hard Rock originators, Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Led Zep etc but Wolfmother came out in 2005 to a more mature rock-friendly record buying climate that Sleep didnt benefit from back in the 90's.Sleep did have the chance for stardom when they signed to a major label-London records- but they blew it by wilfully making a 73 minute one song/one riff of an album that the major shelved because it was totally uncommercial.In short, Sleep didnt pander to the corporate Industry game, and you have to applaud them for that.Wolfmother also have more obvious Robert plant vocals that Sleep lacked.So yeah i think if Sleep had cared about making it big, they would have done it, sure..but they just did not give a shit.

make your own mind up by viewing the video we shot of them in 1993:

The Earache & The Prodigy connection

Question: I read somewhere that earache tried to sign the prodigy back in the day is this true? also is this the reason why during the 90s earache picked up the side project of gizz and also why jim ended up in pitchshifter?
Also does earache have any interest in the power violence scene at all, I remember once reading in a fanzine that dropdead had contacted you but it didnt get very far, to which im quite suprised being as dave witte whos in an earache band is a leading figure of the genre. From:

Answer: Funny you should mention The Prodigy- they are one of my favourite bands of all time (along with Slayer).In the early-mid 90's they were responsible for turning me onto Rave/techno music which was coming out of the underground in the UK.The band had banging beats and a certain punky attitude which i thought was fantastic, they still have it to this day.We never got the chance to sign The Prodigy, but the time would have been a year ago when they finished with long-term label XL to go with their own imprint under Cooking Vinyl umbrella.A bold move again from a very savvy band.
In about 1997 Earache was due to sign the English Dogs, a hardcore punk band led by Gizz Butt, himself a scene stalwart, and as we did the signing, he informed us of some weird news- Liam Howlett had hand picked him to be the new live guitarist for The Prodigy, replacing Jim Davies who had famously played guitar on the "firestarter" track and had appeared on and off at live events with them too, but who it seems Liam decided didnt cut it onstage as well as Gizz.Jim was out and Gizz was in. The irony was that English Dogs (who quickly changed name to Janus Stark) made an album for Earache but never toured properly in support of it, since Gizz was wanted by The Prodigy.Jim soon hooked up with Pitchshifter (who were on Earache previously) and had pioneered rave/drumnbass mashed up with metal at around the same time as prodigy, but with less success. So yeah it was weird that the guitarists Earache was working with were both chosen by Liam.

As for Drop Dead, yeah that first pressing of the debut album was a total fave round here, and i think we made contact to try to work with them, but the band were too DIY in their outlook to consider working with Earache, so it never happened. We certainly tried tho!

Scorn- Vae Solis cover explained.

Question: Scorn\'s \"Vae Solis\" is one of the most masterful pieces of intense industrial music ever placed onto plastic. It\'s unique blend of dub, industrial and metal-driven riffs ala Godflesh (Justin Broadrick did play on the CD of course!) yet it\'s still such a mystery to me.

I tried asking Mick Harris himself online about lyrics for the CD but he didn\'t have any. Also, I always wondered what the album title \"Vae Solis\" means, or what exactly is it? Also, what is that on the album cover?

Great CD, but such a mysterious album. From:

Answer:Yeah Scorn's debut Vae Solis is a terrific album, which stands repeated listens even 15 years later, but i think it is merely a hint of the greatness which was soon to come from the duo of Mick Harris and Nik Bullen on 1994's Evanescence album., which is revolutionary. As for the lyrics, Nik used to carry round a small pocket notebook everywhere with him and was constantly writing new ideas/lyrics etc into it..this formed the basis of many of the themes in his works.The cover of Vae Solis (which i think strictly means 'Woeful Sun' in latin- or Black Sun more likely) is a collage of 2 medical photographs superimposed. One photo is an open throat, probably diseased, the other is a cancerous cell, taken with microscope, if memory serves.

Concrete Sox on Earache -80s HC band.

Question: Why didn\'t Earache or has the label ever thought of signing Concrete Sox to their legion of hardcore bands back in the 80\'s? Indeed they did a split album with Heresy but why didn\'t Earache try grabbing in Concrete Sox for a record deal?

In my humble opinion, Concrete Sox were a gem in the hardcore/crossover movement of the 80\'s and sadly, their legacy isn\'t carried on much today other than through P2P mp3 sharing programs (like Soulseek, etc). It would\'ve been great to see Concrete Sox get their own record/CD released on Earache so at least people can get better access to the band (of course, that is if the label decided to reissue their CD\'s.) From:


Answer: Earache's Mosh 2 release was actually my first proper release and as you say was a split LP between 2 of Nottingham's crossover/HC/metal bands at the time,late 80's, HERESY and CONCRETE SOX. It soon became clear that heresy were the much better received by fans at the time, probably because of the amount of touring they undertook. CS tended to stay at home.Also Earache didnt really want to work with CS anymore after the success of Napalm death's scum LP, the label took on a very different course and I signed much more metalcore acts, CS were more a political punk band who loved a bit of metal.As time went on, CS recorded a few more releases and survive in some form to this day, but have always suffered from line up problems.

Evile 7inch FREE with purchase of album

Question: Hey Earache whats up? I heard about an Evile vinyl EP available. How can I get my hands on this. I live in California.From Stevethrash666@gmail.com

Answer: The Evile FREE 7 inch single is only available from the USA EARACHE webstore in the USA> its mainly going to be in UK indie shops,where you can ask for it if you buy the album on Monday 27th August, as well as with pre-orders from earache uk webstore of the Evile debut Enter The Grave album. See this LIST OF STORES