Cathedral CD + DVD release?

Question: Is there any chance you guys might reissue Cathedral\'s \"Forest of Equilibrium\"? The remastered tracks from \"The Serpent\'s Gold\" were stunning. Maybe a Dual CD/DVD? A doomster can only hope....

Answer: yeah its quite possible we will release this.We are doing a whole slew of Re-issues of our "classic" back catalog titles with FREE DVD- so far its been Napalm Death, Haunted, Entombed- and soon At the gates with never-before seen live gig from 1995, and also Deicide with never before seen gig on DVD.Carcass are having their entire 5-album career issued as CD=DVD editions aswell. So- Cathedral fit the bill-Doomsters should watch out for it!

Deicide & Vital Remains

Question: another question about deicide members, being as ive read before on this blog how earache signs musicans not bands. Id like to know how glen and steve get away with playing in and composing for vital remains because surely thats your investment composing for another label being as steve is the main song writer for deicide. although could this be argued the other way when tony and steve helped out with deicide? thanks


Answer: Nearly every musician we have ever signed always seem to have another band or project on the go, besides their 'main' band.Deicide is no different.Steve has a rock band in the works, Jack is in Adrift, Ralph is in Obituary, but also has a project featuring many famous guitarists underway, Glen helps out on Vital Remains CD when they are recording, even tho VR are signed to Century Media.Dave Suzuki from Vital helped out on a Deicide DVD aswell.Its all done in a friendly way.
Glen also appeared on the Roadrunner United 'All stars" album a couple of years back.None of these things concern us because its really typical of most musicians these days- collaborations and friendships seem to spring up all over the place and members join/help out other acts, on other labels -all the time, especially in the old-school Florida Death Metal scene.We are pretty accomodating about it.Usually the projects provide a little extra quick income to the musician and it doesnt bother Earache so long as the main band is still the major focus.
In all my years, I've yet to see a project band 'take off' and sell more than the main band..tho Vital remains sells well, but its not a project of Deicide, its a functioning touring band in its own right, with glen on guest vokills.
The labels that have exclusive deals with musicians (as Earache does) could prevent such ad-hoc projects, but since we actually encourage people to be creative, we go with the flow.
Actually thinking about it, i think perhaps the ONLY musician we have ever signed who DID NOT have a project band was Trey Azagthoth (Morbid Angel).That shows how singleminded Trey is towards his main band.

Earache's bands going onto Major labels?

Question: Hi, i am doing a dissertion at College on music business management. I would like to know, how many of your bands are on Major Record Companies?

Answer: Right now we only have one band who Earache discovered and released,who are currently on a major record company. That is Linea 77 who are on UNIVERSAL records.
EARACHE has had a pretty remarkable record of our signings going onto Major companies.At the last count, its 13 bands.Out of a total of approx 100 bands signed, thats a better than 1 in 8 chance of progress to a major after a time on Earache.

In the 90's:
MORBID ANGEL- Giant/warners
CATHEDRAL- Columbia Records
NAPALM DEATH- Columbia
CLUTCH- Atlantic Records
SLEEP- London Records
ENTOMBED- East west Records
CARCASS- Columbia Records
FUDGE TUNNEL_ Columbia Records
GODFLESH- Columbia
JANUS STARK- Trauma/MCA
SKINDRED (DUB WAR)- Beiler Brothers/Warners
PITCH SHIFTER - Geffen

Currently on a Major Co:
LINEA 77- Universal

Ralph in Deicide? Nah...not this week.

Question: is ralph santolla a member of deicide or not?

answer: No he's not in Deicide, he's in Obituary, well as far as i know, this week he is...Glen Benton publically fired Ralph from Deicide in early 2007- we dont know the reason but something happened in South America tour - but by late 2007 Ralph had seemingly agreed to appear again, strictly as a guest musician- so consequently he added his riffs and solos to the upcoming Deicide album TILL DEATH DO US PART strictly as a guest guitarist.Ralph also played on the last Deicide album, and had previously lent his undoubted guitar virtuoso skills to DEATH and ICED EARTH, in the 90's.
To be honest Deicide is truly just the duo of Glen Benton and Steve Asheim, as the originators of the group they decide what goes.Every musician 'joins the band' on a project by project basis, with the discussions, financial matters, and the hiring and firing led by Glen Benton as he sees fit.
Ralph got his knickers ina twist when our PR department mistakenly wrote a press release that Ralph has "rejoined Deicide" for this new album. I guess he got annoyed cos it made him look bad to his current outfit Obituary.The truth is.. we have no clue who is in Deicide at any time, their 3 albums and 2 DVD's for us have so far featured no less than 5 different guitarists.

Good idea to form a 100% digital label?

Question: Im looking into forming an anti label called core breach recordings and i wonder if you think its fesible, basically not releasing cds( maybe some in limited runs) but selling 100% through downloads, the band sign to the label for promotion and to pay for the costs of recording, ive been told it could work because i wouldnt have to pay for pressing or shipping, however would people be into a label thats working 100% through downloads.


Answer:I think you will have a REALLY hard time doing it right now. Right now our digital sales are just under 10%, and some major labels have digital sales of 14%,mainly through itunes and amazon Mp3 store- Ok those figures are low, compared to the 90% which STILL comes from Cd's.. but any fool can see, digital is certainly growing, and growing very fast.Industry folks estimate its possibly 5 years until all labels are 100% digital labels, so i agree its only a matter of time, not if.

I think the main question for you in 2008, is wether the fans and especially the bands would be into having no physical release at all?You might well acheive a lot of online praise and support from the Anti-RIAA bloggers - the ones who get all their music free from mega-nazi-upload or media-nazi-fire file hosting sites - BUT I think you will unexpectedly find its the bands themselves who will have the biggest problem with a digital-only label.Most acts expect a label to produce something physical- a CD or Vinyl or maybe some USB-stick artefact- in return for their creative efforts.Even Radiohead, who caused such a media storm with the digital-only release of their 'In rainbows' album, well, within 4 months they also have a regular Cd instores and a special collectors box set aswell, so what does that tell you?

Don't forget also, that Bands themselves can upload their own music onto itunes and many other download sites, without a label being involved.Actually, most bands we deal with these days think uploading 3 songs to myspace is more or less 'a release' of their music.I know what they mean, because fans can hear it instantly, the fans can interact with the band about the songs on the comments section, and the band can tour and play those songs live, and even sell T-shirts aswell.Myspace's popularity with fans is immense, and the huge amount of music being streamed for free from a bands own page,means that where a label actually comes into the picture is becoming increasingly blurry.

Stick with our old band - or go for a new one?

Question: What would you suggest to a band that has actually released three albums, with problems with the three labels they have released them, poor distro, promo, and if they are about to change almost all the lineup for the NEXT big step (total dedication)... Should we really continue with that band (with all the work done and recognition that means) or shall we start with something new and fresh? Do you pay more attention to a NEW boom CD of a new band, or is it the same for you being a 4th album (same album i.e.)? Thanks for any advice.


Answer: I would strongly suggest you fold the old band- and get on with the new band right away ,as its your best chance to succeed.Its very rare for a band to be discovered and get big on album number 4, simply because the whole metal industry, from guys who run labels to the journalists who write the magazines are always quick to judge the merits or otherwise of bands from the debut onwards.If after 3 tries, nothing is happening then its time to try something different.If your band has existed already for 3 albums and didnt make any progress, then i would suggest its the band at fault, not the labels.It will be hard to move away from all the energy and creativity you have already placed into the old band...but the clever tactic is to face the fact its simply not happening with fans for some reason, and start anew, with no mention of your previous band.

No love for Narcosis then?

Question: Does earache have a policy of not signing bands of staffers or somthing? as this is the only reason that i can think of why you didnt pick up narcosis when they were around ( didnt chris used to work in your offices a while back), I thought their Discordance Axis on steroids sound would be right up earache\'s street.


Answer:Narcosis? they sound more like DX on bad glue, mate! Ha ha! ;-) Actually, the band were barely even going when Chris used to work at Earache, he worked ( well,i say 'worked") at the office for oh, all of 2 months, and we used to mercilessly take the mickey out of his piss-weak grind band, as well as his lightweight drinking behaviour.
This was before the album "Romance" came out...which when we finally heard it - bloody hell, it certainly raised a few eyebrows round these parts, it was fast as hell and evoked the true spirit of grind- we were eating our words, big style.
Some of the other staffers had seen them live and reported good things, so we began to cast a more watchful gaze over the band.Then out of the blue, they quite unexpectedly split up, so with the demise of the band, that seemed to be the end of the matter. However, I can exclusively reveal to you, dear blog-readers, that Earache will release a Narcosis full discography CD in the very near future, so you were right- it was up our street, only we were too stupid to realise it till it was over.
For a taste of prime quality grind fans can expect check this out: ho ho.

Death Metal-The return. Big for 2008?

Question: Being as ask earache is good at prediction trends ( the new wave of thrash etc), do you see 08 as being the return of death metal to popularity, i mean new albums from desecration, gorerotted and cattle decapitation on the way and the return of carcass has to help the profile of the genre a bit right?



Answer: Yeah you might be right actually-but from where we are sitting,quality Death Metal never really went away- have you heard the SEVERE TORTURE and BLOOD RED THRONE albums from 2007- both are as killer as any of the classic DM albums from the 90's.But i agree the scene is nowhere near the size it was when Earache was releasing the first wave during the early 90's.To be honest the new breed of younger DM bands that promote themselves 24/7 by interacting with their fans on myspace, and touring incessantly - think JFAC and Suicide Silence - they are the ones making the scene healthy now- not Desecration or Goreotted (readers of this blog must know by now, we just dont rate those Brit DM bands- they are distinctly second rate-even tho you lot ask about them all the time!).

With Carcass reforming there is a hell of a lot of vibe about them, considering they last performed in 1995, but we think they will not hang around - so grab your chance to see them in 2008.We have the complete catalog to be re-issued with bonus documentary DVDs on every album, containing indepth interviews with the members who explain the whole story of the band from the humble beginnings in 1987 to the split, including a totally rivetting and moving segment where ken recounts how he felt when he was trapped in a coma for 6 months in 1999.Its must-see stuff.

Red Terrorizer T-Shirt?

Question: Hey I have a shirt that was printed by you guys that I wanted to know when it came out. It is a red terrorizer longsleeve and here are direct links to pictures of it. Thank you for the time.


Answer: yeah this shirt is rare, dating from 1989, around the release of the Terrorizer album "World downfall".I think about 100 were made as Red, just to be different from the regular black shirts which were the norm at the time- its never been reprinted by us.The red Terrorizer shirt was famously worn onstage by Jesse Pintado in the NAPALM DEATH live at Salisbury DVD video from 1990.

Carcass- How to tell rare 1st press LP?

Question: Hello, I want to ask you about first press CARCASS vinyls. How many were released not only on black vinyls. I founded out that there are one Reek of Putrefaction clear vinyl and two, one in normal sleve other in gatefold, red Symphonies of Sickness vinyls. How many more were released in the same time with the original black colour vinyls?

Please note that im talking not about re-releases in 2002, but about originals!


Answer: first press of carcass reek came in black vinyl only- about 3000 copies from memory in 1988.You can tell the difference between the 2002 re-issued LP because the original has NO BARCODE on the back.Also for a joke the record label says MUSH 6 rather than the actual MOSH 6 catalog number.The absolute first copies of the Reek album came with white square-ish sticker proclaiming it to the heaviest and sickest band in the world or some nonsense i dreamt up back then to sell it, that version is rare to find.
For symphonies of sickness the rare original 1989 is single black LP but in gatefld sleeve, and also 1000 copies in red vinyl.You can see the versions pictured on our catalog page.

Dub War Vs Earache- huh???

Question: So whats the deal between earache and the newport south wales scene? its just being in a metal band myself ive been told \" you dont want to send a demo to earache, they fucked dub war\". Did Earache and Dub War part company on bad terms then and has this had a knock on effect on the entire scene, also out of interest does this happen often in the music scene

Answer:Wow thats pretty disappointing to hear...hey, instead of listening to know-it-alls in newport, why dont you ask Benji, Jeff or Ginge yourselves? they still live in Newport.Go Ask them! They had 5 top 50 hit singles during their time on Earache and a release on Columbia in America.So it wasnt too bad. Its funny to hear this because Jeff now and again personally sends me demos of bands who record in his studio- he sent me the Jeff Killed John demo(later to become it mighty Bullet For My Valentine) and Nochaa.Benji visits our office when he plays Rock City as Skindred.
It could be because of the scandalous review in Kerrang of our dub war re-issue, which stated quite wrongly that Dub War were mistreated while on the label.the mistreatment consisted of being dropped due to poor sales and unstable line up, but the band took it quite badly and as a knee jerk back-lash reaction slagged us off in the press including kerrang at the time- 1999 or so.Nowadays they know it was our business decision and have a different- more mature- opinion of their time on Earache.

Napalm Death- could have been like the SEX PISTOLS?

Question: Ok your probably sick of answering thease but heres another napalm question.

I was reading a justin broadrick interview and in it he said that napalm was meant to have been like the sex pistols in that they release one album have an impact and then split, He also said that he belives that scum is too long in that the album was only meant to have been side A and earache pushed for side B. Are thease statements true? or are they just theories of his many years after the events that happened.

Answer: Yeah i know what he means- I agree it would have been more apt and perhaps poetic if the band HAD split after scum...the band was so revolutionary, incendiary and confrontational i think the original members could never have imagined the band still being around in some form, 20 years later. That was quite unthinkable back then...i guess both Nik and Justin thought that having quit Napalm death, the band would naturally dissolve..but they didnt reckon on the resourcefullness of Mick harris who quickly recruited new members and carried on.Mick had a quite pragmatic reason to do this, cos the band was making money and he sensed a career in music was in the offing, he had no other options like joining other bands or a career in academia.Ironically, Mick had also quit within a few years also, leaving a whole new line up to fly the Napalm death flag to this day.
Justin is correct in that the demo that became the A_side was only about 20 minutes, and i deemed it not enough material to release it like that.So a B-side was insisted on- it took many months for the band to regroup and record the b-side material. then the finished album was released as 'Scum".

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.