from Metal Blade. Anybody own these, and can anyone tell me if there are any noticeable audio differences from the original CD releases?

I looked on youtube, but those are "custom" remasters, but it seems to be louder and a little more bass.

I have the remastered CD's. They don't seem overdone, but my system is a bit cheap so i may not be the best judge.

I am longtime Slayer fan, and can't imagine anything being done to any of the old records. Part of the appeal for me is the production. On Show No Mercy there are some very obvious, but minor guitar playing mistakes. This is the kind of stuff that makes them great.

remastering wouldn't change guitar mistakes or anything, it just adjusts the overall eq of a track, and maybe adds compression to make certain frequencies stand out

I prefer the remasters, personally. But you may one to take that with a grain of salt because I generally enjoy remasters over the originals.

I'm pretty sure I know which one your talking about... A friend of mine owns it and got it around the time it was released. Compared to what should be a vinyl rip I downloaded, the only difference I can tell is that it's much louder(which is actually quite nice for the bass parts on Metal Storm).

Yea, you are thinking of re-recording. I wouldn't have been opposed to that if it was done maybe when Lombardo came back, but now they'd just fuckin ruin it.

I have Hell Awaits but no point of comparison for it. From memory it chucked a couple of extra songs into the middle of the tracklisting for some reason.

That's true I was, but let me elaborate even more. The appeal on the old Slayer albums like Show No Mercy is the rawness of it. I bought that album when it came out. That's how I've always listened to it, and I don't think I'd like it any other way. There is a lot of appeal for me in how that album sounds as is. I wasn't that impressed with remasters of Ozzy and Iron Maiden albums, where nothing was done except "improve" the sound quality.

The whole point of remasters is to improve the sound quality.

Semi related, my two different copies [1987/2004] of Live Undead don't sound that different to me, apart from the missing song!
I think the remastered one has slightly less crowd noise, it's hard to tell, the newer one is definitely louder.

Could not agree more

Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to modify Show No Mercy should be subjected to a frozen water burial.

The bass sounds like it's been boosted.

I completely agree with you. I find it humorous someone would think the sound quality needs to be improved. How Hell Awaits, Haunting The Chapel, and Show No Mercy sound is part of the appeal. Those albums sound great, and no improvement is needed. That sound creates an atmosphere when you listen to it.

I actually found an old copy of Show No Mercy on cassette for $1.00, dusty as hell, a little warble to it and it reeks of cigarettes. I LOVE listening to it this way versus my CD. TO REIGN IN HELL!!

Don't know those 2004 remasters, but I have a 'Show no Mercy' remaster from around 1998 that unsurprisingly sounds like a late 90s release instead of the 1983 piece of history it is. I also have a much older CD version with "Agressive Perfector" squeezed between the two vinyl sides, as track 6, and "Chemical Warfare" as track 12. It makes no sense track-listing wise, but the sound is very, very close to the original vinyl. I compared the two CDs track by track and the drums and guitar solos volume and level of guitar compression are strikingly different (in the sense that the remaster has everything cranked up to 11 and then some). That's the case for most classic albums I know. If there's a CD version worth getting, it's almost always going to be the one from the 80s, back when they treaded carefully because they didn't really know what they were doing with that new technology, and the "REMASTERED! TOTALLY ALTERED AND SOUNDS NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING! YAY!" phenomenon was not yet a thing.

Eh. I personally think if Hell Awaits was recorded with Reign In Blood's guitar sound, no one would be talking about Reign In Blood today.



Expound on that.

Live Undead and Haunting The Chapel were both remastered in 1993 by Eddy Shreyer, they wouldn't have re-remastered them again in 2004 [or 2002] would they?

Love the original vinyls. Haven't heard the remasters, but am now curious to check them out.

I got two different versions of Haunting The Chapel today
One copy is combined with Live Undead and the other is a 2004 reissue [both Australian versions]

Well, what do you want know? I don't have either CD handy at the moment. The crappy remaster I have might be either this one or a re-issue of it. The good CD version I have, I don't see listed at Discogs. Edit: Scratch that, I just found it. The good version is that one.

Record labels are terrified of represses that don't "add something" to justify people buying it.

The fact is that with most records, messing with it at all is stupid.

These "louder" remasters generally sacrifice dynamic range. Let us have the original experience.

I guess I've just never heard "sounds like a late 90s release" in the vernacular of production before.

Yeah? Well, just think Loudness War, blackalbumization and MTV-friendly groove metal. Those three concepts combined should give you a fair idea of what I imply by "sounds like a late 90s release", at least in the derogatory sense. There were of course still plenty of fairly good and even great production jobs being done at that time, but that's not what I was referring to. Perhaps more importantly, I was pointing out the typical anachronic feel of this type of revisionist remastering jobs, where the result sounds closer to releases of the time period the remaster was made in than it does releases that are actually contemporary with the original material.

After playing Live Undead a few times recently I can definitely hear lower crowd noise and louder drums on the remaster, so I'd say in this instance the remaster is much better sounding than the original CD [I've not heard the vinyl]
The crowd noise is terrible on the older ones!