Sunday, March 4, 2012

nuclear annihilation

The entire Bolt Thrower catalogue is a big hurtle for a newcomer to the band like me. Some of it has deservedly seen reissues, while some of the better stuff in my opinion still only remains in it's original or earlier presses. I'd love to get my hands on their "Realm Of Chaos" LP, but I'm not open to the idea of paying in excess of $50+ for it on eBay. Earache seems so good at reissuing albums when they probably shouldn't, I can't understand why they haven't done so with the vinyl version of that album yet. Maybe time will produce a press of the album that the band isn't happy with. If so, I'll probably grab it.
Anyway, this is a Back On Black reissue of their first album "In Battle There Is No Law" from last year. Grey vinyl. This album originally saw the light of day in 1988 via Vinyl Solution Records. Comparative to a lot of their later material, this LP had a noticeably more 'crust' feel to it translated mostly through the relatively rough, more punk recording. Subsequent material took on a much more death metal approach with the massively downtuned guitar sounds and heavier vocals.

From what I can tell this reissue is somewhat faithful to the original in the artwork department. A gateold sleeve is offered here, though I'm not sure if the first press was offered this way or not. Based off the crusty, rough nature of the band at that point back then, I'm kind of assuming that the first press probably came with a regular sleeve. I could be wrong though.

Someone sell me "Realm Of Chaos" for a reasonable $$ value.

1 comment:

Dicko said...

I've the original Vinyl Solutions press of this and you're correct, no pointless gatefold sleeve. The original came with a double sided insert with lyrics one side and a band photo the other side, of which they look like a bunch of crust punks.
As a side note, I have all the original Bolt Thrower presses, in fact, most of the early Earache releases, all picked up for 2 and 3 quid back in the days when people were dumping their vinyl for CDs!