What. The. Fuck. – 10%
UncleMeat, May 30th, 2009
**NOTE** This is a review for the first pressing. I’ll re-write this eventually.
What the fuck. Seriously. People have been waiting for an official reissue of all the demos for years, and THIS is what we get? Visually, it couldn’t be better, but the sound is utterly atrocious. According to the booklet, these demos were “mastered” at Winterdark Studios. But after listening to this monstrosity, I’ve come to the conclusion that the term “master” over at Winterdark Studios apparently means “smear shit on the mixing board”.
The first four songs are from the ‘Denial’ EP. They kept the original sound semi-intact, but with less low-end then the actual EP. The next four however, from the ‘Exordium’ demo, is where this steaming pile of chickenshit really starts to stink. Where as the original tape was full of low-end, crunchy brutality, this version is much thinner sounding and has lots of tape hiss, taking the brutality factor down many, many notches. And if you think that’s bad, then just wait until the next set of songs come, this time from the ‘Wrath from the Unknown’ demo. The version we hear on here sounds like it was taken from a fourth generation tape originally dubbed from a lossy mp3. Keep in mind an actual LABEL released this. Yes, there are non-bootleg labels with standards low enough to consider this even remotely passable. And guess what the next four songs sound like? The vicious beasts that once made up the ‘Netherworlds of the Mind’ demo have now been reduced to puddles of assgravy, ridden with stagnation and lossy sound quality. The very last song, “Mortal Torment”, from the single-song demo of the same name, is just a joke. Seriously, I think they were kidding when they put it on, and that’s all that needs to be said about it.
Disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe how much I was let down by this. Visually, it’s fantastic, but that’s about it. The biography and lyrics are a nice addition, but again, this all means nothing when you don’t have the sound to back it up. If only they could have done as good of a job on here as they did with the Rottrevore and Autopsy compilations, then this for sure would have been a flawless release, and would have definitely made the wait more then worthy.
Get the second pressing – 90%
dalecooper, June 22nd, 2010
Idon’t want to review the music here in much depth – really, Crematory’s reputation should speak for itself, and “Denial” (the original MCD) is one of the most sought-after treasures to occasionally appear on eBay and sell for an eye-popping amount of money. Suffice to say they are an excellent band, with several crushing demos and a killer MCD, and I was wetting myself with anticipation over the many years (literally) between when this comp was announced and when it finally came out.
What I want to do is just address the previous review. It really should be noted that the disappointing (and admittedly pretty awful) sound of this release was only on the first pressing. Through some mix-up, the label sent the wrong masters to the pressing plant (or something along those lines), and the CD that came out was much-loathed as a result. Lots of people were waiting on this release for a long time, and lots of people were horrified with what they ended up hearing. I was in that camp. Fortunately, Necroharmonic and Morbid Wrath acknowledged the error (sort of) and did another pressing that sounded a hell of a lot better. I don’t know that they were ever offering exchanges – probably not, though they should have – but however you can get your hands on the later version, the sound is night-and-day better.
“Denial” itself manages to restore some of the low end that was missing. It’s very close to the original CD version (which I’m lucky enough to own, making it easy to compare). The “Exordium” demo is a marked improvement over the first press: the tape hiss is gone, the low end and heaviness is present once again. The sound is still imperfect (rather muddy and cuts out in one stereo channel during part of the intro section of the title track) but it’s gone from complete crap to listenable. “Wrath From the Unknown” sounds much better as well, with better clarity and heaviness, though it still has a slight stereo balancing issue that was curiously present on the original pressing as well – seems to me that even if the master they were working from was compromised, they could have manually re-balanced it. Ah well. “Netherworlds of the Mind” also benefits from great improvements in sound.
Overall, my take on this pressing is that it’s not close to as good-sounding as Necroharmonic’s efforts for Interment and Mastication/Exhumed/Egypt; but to give them the benefit of the doubt, it may be hard or impossible to find truly clean masters of these demos now. I’ve played my Nihilist comp half to death and the sound quality on it is hardly pristine. In some cases, you just have to accept that only a certain amount of magic can be worked on old and worn-out masters. At least the second pressing fixes many of the worst problems of the first, and I can recommend it without reservation to fans of Crematory or old school Swedish death metal in general. But if you do end up with that first pressing (the telltale sign will be lots and lots of tape hiss on certain demo tracks) – do us all a favor and dispose of it properly.
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