Seems like there is always an attempt afoot to rescue the back catalog of the Frontline/Intense/Alarma media empire. I remember way back in the day when an add in HM magazine announced they were just straight-out re-pressing some of the classics: “don’t miss them this time around!” it said. Then KMG came along and… well… gave a new meaning to the word cheap.
Now we have a new label called Intense Millennium Records. Their goal is to form a group that is “dedicated to releasing fully licensed material from one of the most prolific group of record labels to exist in the Christian Metal scene, the Intense/Frontline/Alarma Records group.” First up are a pair each from Vengeance Rising and Bloodgood, as well as Sacred Warrior’ first album.
A little focused on only the metal side for now, but I did notice they said Alarma. I also see that you can vote for a few punk-ish albums by Altar Boys and Scaterd Few. Starting in 2011 they will re-issue two CDs a month. They plan to re-master each album and release them with new artwork and booklets.
Sounds like a good idea. Not sure about the new artwork idea. I know retroactive does that occasionally – but it seems to be only in some cases (such as Deliverance). The new artwork for Human Sacrifice looks good, but there was nothing wrong with the original. Not sure I like the new artwork for Once Dead. But we’ll see – could work out just fine. Wonder how long it will be before they get to classics by L.S.U., Daniel Amos, Swirling Eddies, etc… or even the more obscure titles? Hope they do. Now if we could get some people to also take on other labels like R.E.X. and Broken.
I think that is very cool however, if they get to our album, Pain by Veil of Ashes, they will have to give us all the profits as it was in our contract that all publishing rights and the master tapes were to be handed over to us after so many years……..how do Sean and I get a hold of these people?
I wish this stuff would just go straight to itunes and emusic. And have a few select titles pressed on limited vinyl (not sure how much of a market there is for that in CCM, though…). How many people still buy CD’s??? I hate using them and I have enough of them taking up too much space as it is. I just rip’em and toss’em. Having them on my computer, a USB stick, and/or MP3 player is 1000x more convenient…
I would love to see vinyl, too… but many of these Christian metal re-issues on CD sell out pretty quick – so someone is buying CDs. I wish the FLAC format would take off more. CDs sound much better than even the highest quality mp3s. And once you buy it from iTunes or eMusic, you can’t upgrade the quality once a better format comes along. At least with the CD, you control the portable format forever. But, I can agree that CDs do just take up space. If only iTunes and iPhods and Smartphones would just play FLAC.
Glad to hear that these classics will come back and that they were able to obtain the rights to re-released them.