Sunday, December 4, 2011

The clarion calls to battle


What you just read above is not of our doing. In fact, I forgot the actual release date of Battle's Clarion some time ago (2001, that is all), and we've allowed the 10th anniversary to arrive without any proper commemoration, much like we did with Homecoming's March in 2009. The fact that anyone remembered is flattering. Battle's... was not an easy album for us; it was The Carcass' first effort with the band, there was some disarray in terms of the composition, and more than anything we were trying to reintroduce ourselves to the world as a fully-realized unit and fend off the dreaded "sophomore slump" in the process.

The final result was that the album put us on the map officially, and we toured on those songs for almost 4 years before creating Tetragrammatical Astygmata. Since then, Candlelight re-editioned it (without following my simple and specific directions regarding the layout), more people have heard it, but it has always remained a difficult and somewhat misunderstood entry in our catalog.

Recently, I heard Battle's... for the first time in over three years, and it sounded grand and triumphant the way we intended it. Perhaps it was the setting, or maybe even the remastering we did for the re-release, but it rekindled my love for those songs and the era in which we regularly performed them.

Given our current state of inactivity, I am sorry to say that we have nothing prepared to help our dedicated fans commemorate our efforts. The album is widely available in physical and digital form, so if you passed it by in favor of our newer albums, give it a try. A huge part of what makes us AVRS is mapped out upon that war torn recording.