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confusing release - 65%
As a diehard Agressor fan, it’s hard not to be excited about any sort of new release from the band. However, this one had me quite confused. A collection of demos? Didn’t they already do this with The Merciless Onslaught CD back in 2004? Who is La Cripta Metal Shop? Is this even an official release?
I went ahead and purchased this CD and felt compelled to write about it. Hopefully I can give some insight as a long-time Agressor fan.
First of all, I am going to run with the assumption that this is in fact an official release. All I am basing this on is that the Agressor webpage includes it in its discography. La Cripta Metal Shop hails from Chile, and I’m not sure how they arranged this (French band having a CD manufactured in Chile and being sold in the US?), but I will admit that La Cripta did a fantastic job with the overall presentation. The artwork is nice, the booklet layout contains lyrics to all of the songs, a few old photos of the band, and demo artwork.
Most of the material (three out of the four demos: the Merciless Onslaught, Satan’s Sodomy, and Orbital Distortion demos) was in fact already released on The Merciless Onslaught CD back in 2004. So if you are a diehard fan like me, and you already own The Merciless Onslaught CD, you will likely be disappointed with these demos being issued again. What is the purpose? ESPECIALLY because of the somewhat poorer sound quality they have on this CD versus their initial re-release in 2004. It appears that maybe La Cripta attempted to clean-up the sound and boost the dynamics somehow? Unfortunately, the sound ends up being a little distorted, and I question the source of the material. It would have been easy to rip the songs from The Merciless Onslaught CD. However at times during the listen I wonder if they were from low bitrate MP3 files?
The only redeeming quality, musically, on this release is the inclusion of the 4-song Mixed Rehearsal demo. This particular recording was NOT included on The Merciless Onslaught CD and I have been personally searching for it for many years. I have never seen it for sale, never seen it on ebay, and I’ve attempted numerous searches online that have always yielded nothing. The closest I’ve ever come was downloading it from a file-sharing network. Turns out that the idiot who was sharing the files simply took the four songs from the Neverending Destiny album and somehow making them sound a little shittier. So, again, being a diehard Agressor fan, I was thrilled that someone finally made the Mixed Rehearsal demo available. And honestly, if it was not for this, I would NOT have bought this CD. But again I have to question the source of the material. The booklet reproduces the tape inlay artwork yet for this Mixed Rehearsal demo it was obviously taken from a shitty image found online. I have nothing to compare the sound to, of course. So while I am thrilled to have the recording, I will still keep my eyes out for an original cassette of this demo.
So…again, the presentation of this release was done in a very pleasing way. Aside from the crap image of the Mixed Rehearsal tape, the package and layout was done very professionally. It makes up for what was missing on The Merciless Onslaught CD release. But the musical content is rather poor, making it mostly unlistenable if you already own The Merciless Onslaught CD. If you’re like me, you’ll rip the four Mixed Rehearsal tracks from this CD into your itunes and shelve the CD.
