I'd like to get a copy of MR's aborted second album, but I see there are two different versions of the recordings that have been released. The Mark of the Beast from 2002 and the much more recent Dreams of Eschaton. Apparently the audio is from different sources for each, so I'm wondering how they compare audio wise? Has anyone heard both? Or even if you just have one, how does it sound?

Mark of the Beast is the one I heard first and the one I prefer. Better order to the songs, and I really don't hear much difference between the two in terms of sound quality. They both sound quite rough, but not rough like a one-man bedroom black-metal band recorded with a Fisher-Price Sing-Along microphone.

Having heard both, I'd go with Dreams of Eschaton. It's not quite as compressed dynamically and features less distortions and digital noise artifacts than the original 2002 version. They're both rough either way, but I feel DoE is a nicer version of it.

I've got them both on CD and there are slight differences in sound but nothing too dramatic, though I would pick "Dreams..." as the better of the two. Also the good thing about the "Dreams..." version is the bonus disc with the "Underground" demo from '79 on it (way cool!) and "After Midnight Live", which songwriting wise is very similar to "Dreams/Mark", so more bang for ya bucks.

Dreams is superior. It's how the album was supposed to be heard, and the sound of the recordings in general are of higher quality.

i own dreams myself and found it much better than the mp3s i used to have but i can imagine mark sounding better if you got a real copy.