Dying Victims Production is constantly crawling the scene for great newcomers, as it is part of its underground mentality to give chances to new promising bands.
At the same time, there are countless old albums that go unnoticed by many fans and deserve a re-release.
For this reason, DVP proudly presents its new sublabel: RELICS FROM THE CRYPT!
Limitation: 500
DVP-R 007 Mad Butcher -Metal Meat (2022)
While it would seem that MAD BUTCHER were inspired by Germany’s legendary Destruction, the truth is rather the other way around: MAD BUTCHER predated Destruction by a number of years, and began even earlier than Teutonic metal mainstays Accept, Steeler, Grave Digger, and Living Death. As such, they were one of the first real metal bands in Germany to pick up sonic influence from the burgeoning NWOBHM movement and the early US metal scene. And what they delivered with their ragged ‘n’ righteous debut album, 1985’s Lightning Metal Attack, stands immortal to this day even though it’s largely remained a cult curio among diehard metal collectors. RELICS FROM THE CRYPT reissued it on vinyl in late 2020, and now grants MAD BUTCHER’s equally electric second album, Metal Meat, the same treatment.
Originally released on the long-dormant Metal Enterprises in 1987, Metal Meat is both an intensification of that rough-around-the-edges but addictingly spirited debut and a smoother, more-finessed version of it. It’s imperative to understand that that Lightning Metal Attack was rather “behind the times” when it was originally released in 1985, given that MAD BUTCHER’s subgenre-defiant sound spanned ALL heavy metal of the day, from NWOBHM to the early ‘80s US sound, before speed metal and then thrash splintered forth from that wider stylistic pool. That they then kinda cobbled it together into an adrenaline rush strikingly similar to speed metal is no mean feat.
By comparison – and, crucially, retaining the same lineup as the debut – Metal Meat’s speed metal songs cruised with confidence and ease, in no small part to the improved production, which was still considered “raw” by mainstream standards. However, it’s those hooky, vaguely “mainstream” strutters here that make Metal Meat such a wild and enduring spin. There’s never gonna be a moment where one would ever mistake MAD BUTCHER for a hair-metal band, but a great deal of this album sidles most sinisterly next to that oft-maligned idiom, the band’s more pronounced hard-rock swagger suggesting the Sunset Strip rather than the industrial wasteland of their native Ruhr. Put another way, Metal Meat is far closer to the dark & heavy sleaze of early W.A.S.P. or even Exciter’s way-ugly Unveiling the Wicked than, say, Poison or Ratt. And of course, MAD BUTCHER’s innate German-ness rings loud and clear here, with vocalist/bassist Harry Elbracht delivering an effortlessly creepy performance.
And while MAD BUTCHER would disband in 1990, after two officially released albums and a third posthumously released in 2020, their legendry among the true-metal faithful was forever etched with Lightning Metal Attack – and further etched into the annals of CULT with its inadvertently strange follow-up. Now, for posterity, RELICS FROM THE CRYPT will deliver this Metal Meat right to your table, on the format it so deserves: vinyl!
Regular edition on black vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker and download code.
Special edition on white vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker, download code and patch.
Release Date: 4 January 2022
Limitation: 500
DVP-R 006 Sacrifice – Total Steel (2022)
From their humble beginnings in 1985 on to their super-cult debut album, 1987’s Crest of Black, Japan’s SACRIFICE have stood for uncompromising, world-eating, thrashy METAL. Let’s reiterate: thrashy heavy metal rather than pure thrash metal. Thick and viscous is their thrust, with straightforward songwriting and exceptionally mean delivery. However, it was with 1990’s Total Steel where they’d perfect that signature style.
Much like Japanese punk takes bog-standard tropes and upends them in unique ways, so, too, did SACRIFICE do such with crossover on Total Steel. Aptly titled in its dedication to rivetheaded ignorance-is-bliss, Total Steel is a nine-song/46-monster which mainlines then-contemporaneous Cro-Mags, Venom, Razor, Carnivore, the UK’s Sacrilege, Nasty Savage, The Exploited, and even early Celtic Frost into something that sounds like all those simultaneously and nothing like ‘em at all. Credit is due to the band’s bullheaded approach to riffing: hammer/hammer/hammer, hypnotically so, stripping everything down to its barbaric basics and then build ‘em up to towering heights.
Literally, you DROWN in their crush here, as nearly every vocal-led track tops five minutes, allowing for maximal immersion. Likewise, SACRIFICE’s execution is creepy and sleazy in equal measure, spitting forth attitude even when the linguistic translations go astray. But, the closing couplet of “Don’t Wanna Be Back in Black Days” and “Cold Storm” perhaps perfectly underline their particular headspace.
Amazingly, Total Steel sounds as refreshing today as time-locked as it sounded in 1990. Fans of Power Trip and Iron Age on to maniacs for metalpunk and those who hunt for Combat Core, bow before SACRIFICE!
Regular edition on black vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker and download code.
Special edition on orange vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker, download code and patch.
Release Date: 4 January 2022
Limitation: 750/1000
DVP-R 005 Breathless – Breathless (2021)
Hailing from Genk, Belgium’s BREATHLESS was founded in 1983 by Antonio and Dirk. Antonio already had experience as a drummer in the punk rock bands The Visions and Transylvania, and Dirk had previously played in Hammerhead. Antonio knew Stanis, brother of the guitarist and singer of The Visions, and asked him to join the band as bass player. Because many metal bands had two guitar players at the time, it was decided to look for an additional guitarist. Dirk was friends with Laky, but Laky had never held a guitar before… Friendship being one of the key values of the band, Dirk suggested to teach Laky how to play the guitar, and so he joined the band. Finally, Pascal (who was only 14 years old at that time) was brought in as singer.
The driving force of BREATHELESS was to impress, push the boundaries, deliver high-level tempo changes, and dark and angry vocals – both high and low, which was quite remarkable in the Belgian metal scene of that time. Supporting gigs of international acts followed: BREATHLESS joined Warlock, Helloween, Tyson Dog, and Axe Victims onstage.
BREATHLESS’ debut album was recorded in 10 days. Local record store Gigaswing wanted to release the album, and so the long-player Breathless was born. The LP was well received everywhere, good reviews appeared in the metal magazines, gigs followed, the fanbase expanded…and then came the decline, when the lineup quickly crumbled away…
However, what was captured on BREATHLESS’ sadly only album was pure metal magic: unhinged, unselfconscious, and unlike most of their Belgian contemporaries. Neither strictly traditional metal nor speed metal nor hard rock nor latent NWOBHM, Breathless was a blender of all the tastes of the time, and its indeed-breathless rush was sublime in its sheer energy and electricity. Take the needle of your turntable and drop it anywhere across the album and you’ll be met with raw finesse and total abandon and even exceptionally placed moments of epic quietude – simply, all-out freedom in the spirit of the mid ‘80s before metallic boundaries were firmly drawn out and laid down. Put another way, one look at the cover of Breathless and BREATHLESS’ attendant logo and you just KNOW what you’re in for!
Ridiculously rare in its original vinyl guise and never officially released on CD, BREATHLESS’ legendary lone document now arrives bearing the full RELICS FROM THE CRYPT treatment. Don your best striped spandex, raise your beers, and get Breathless!
Regular gatefold edition on black vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker and download code.
Special gatefold edition on green vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker, download code and patch.
CD edition with sticker
Release Date: 30 July 2021
Limitation: 300
DVP-R 004 Xandril – The Vision of Rotting Darkness: The Demos 1983-1988 (2021)
After the more than beautiful CD and Vinyl LP edition on HMH Records, DVP and Xandril decided that also the tape maniacs should be able to dig into the short, yet fruitful history of German speed metal act Xandril. This double cassette rcompilation contains the complete Xandril demo anthology including the classic demos ‘Rotting Paradise’, ‘The Vision’, ‘Perfect Darkness’, ‘Rehearsal ’85’, Demo I 1983 and Demo II 1983 plus additional tracks from the ‘Rehearsal ’85’ session! 26 tracks of Teutonic speed metal!!!
Double MC box with sticker and button.
Release Date: 30 May 2021
Limitation: 500/1000
DVP-R 003 MP – Get it Now (2021)
Originally released in 1987 on the short-lived Steps Records, Get It Now, was the second recorded statement of Germany’s MP. Their debut album from the year before, Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human), retained all the electricity and urgency of youth, and subsequently become a cult record for its raw verve. A year older and presumably wiser, the power-trio unleashed a more finessed follow-up in Get It Now. While the band hardly wavered in their approach between the two albums – still spanning the early hot-rockin’ throes of post-NWOBHM to the nascent rumblings of speed metal and its subsequent thrash offshoot, and of course the more mainstream stylings which lingered across all those idioms – MP here focused their songwriting into a more streamlined push ‘n’ pull that was 100% HEAVY METAL personified.
And yet, its year of release provides some (in-hindsight) context for Get It Now’s unique and underdog nature, which has thankfully made it an enduring album. Not only in Germany but across the world, traditional metal was on the decline as “hair metal” crept up the pop charts and thrash metal exploded all across the international underground – and lest we forget the first album-length rumblings of death metal. In this landscape, where subgenres started taking hold and “heavy metal” as both a term and especially a musical style & subculture became much more defined, MP doggedly defied the norms and stuck to their increasingly gleaming guns. As such, Get It Now retains a rich, metal-for-metal’s-sake balance between slick ‘n’ speeding burners and grimy fist-shakers. And while the debut album conspicuously nodded toward metal culture with “MP (Metal Priests),” here do MP continue to acknowledge that culture through the wider world’s acknowledgement of metal culture with “Rocktober Blood,” about the cult horror film of the same name. Elsewhere, the production was taken up a couple notches without losing that raw verve that so endeared the band’s debut album, arguably making Get It Now the fullest expression of MP’s true metal might.
MP continued on for one more album before changing that moniker to Melting Point, the title of their 1992 album still under the MP handle. Like many overlooked albums within the metal pantheon, Get It Now never truly got its due “back in the day,” but thankfully, it sounds surprisingly fresh today, and RELICS FROM THE CRYPT hopes this dog will have its day with this long-overdue reissue!
Regular edition on black vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker and download code.
Special edition on halloween orange vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker, download code and patch.
CD edition with sticker
Release Date: 30 April 2021
Limitation: 500/1000
DVP-R 002 MP – Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human) (2021)
Originally released in 1986 on the short-lived Steps Records, Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human) was the first recorded statement of Germany’s MP. As such, it retains all the electricity and urgency of youth. It also upholds Germany’s rich heritage of heavy metal, which spanned the early hot-rockin’ throes of post-NWOBHM to the nascent rumblings of speed metal and its subsequent thrash offshoot, and of course the more mainstream stylings which lingered across all those idioms. It was still the 1980s, after all, and “heavy metal” as both a term and especially a musical style & subculture had yet to be too finely locked into boundaries. And with a complete lack of self-consciousness and, in its stead, an abundance of enthusiasm and energy, MP ably crisscrossed all these metals on their debut album, Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human).
Indeed, aptly titled, Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human) is a measured and never-messy explosion of hooks and heaviness, headbanging and hard-driving speed. Rough and raw yet somehow refined, MP at this stage authentically conveyed a sense of literally living & breathing HEAVY METAL, and each of the 10 should-be anthems comprising their debut full-length delivered the goods, each one as different as the last but altogether unified in their all-out metalness no matter the dynamic being explored. From the locomotive thrust of the opening title track to sleazy, midnight-walking panthers like “Startide Rising” and especially “Out for Love,” from the equally sleazy blitz of “On the Loose Again” to the stand-up-and-shout strut of “Fight for Your Life” right after and concluding with the moody push ‘n’ pull of “World of Tiers,” MP covered all ‘80s-stock metal bases and then some. Naturally, the specter of national heroes Accept loomed large across Bursting Out, but the band could just as handily hold their own with the likes of Living Death, Iron Angel, and Warrant domestically and even Exciter, Abattoir, and Nasty Savage overseas. And if their seemingly odd choice of moniker left any doubt, the trio drove the point home with “MP (Metal Priests).”
MP continued on for two more albums before changing that moniker to Melting Point, the title of their 1992 album still under the MP handle. But, of course, the band’s Bursting Out debut is their most beloved album, and one that cemented MP’s status as a cult band. Experience it again – or for the first time – on vinyl again since its original release, or on CD with ten live bonus tracks!
Regular edition on black vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker and download code.
Special edition on grey vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker, download code and patch.
CD edition with sticker
Release Date: 26 March 2021
Limitation: 500
DVP-R 001 Mad Butcher – Metal Lightning Attack (2020)
DYING VICTIMS PRODUCTIONS is proud to present the first release of its newly founded reissue sub-label, RELICS FROM THE CRYPT: a LONG-overdue of MAD BUTCHER’s cult-classic debut album, Lightning Metal Attack, on vinyl LP format.
While it would seem that MAD BUTCHER were inspired by Germany’s legendary Destruction, the truth is rather the other way around: MAD BUTCHER predated Destruction by a number of years, and began even earlier than Teutonic metal mainstays Accept, Steeler, Grave Digger, and Living Death. As such, they were one of the first real metal bands in Germany to pick up sonic influence from the burgeoning NWOBHM movement and the early US metal scene. And what they delivered with their ragged ‘n’ righteous debut album, 1985’s Lightning Metal Attack, stands immortal to this day even though it’s largely remained a cult curio among diehard metal collectors.
Begun in name in 1980, by band accounts, MAD BUTCHER arrived at their unforgettable moniker from a trip vocalist/bassist Harry Elbracht took to New York City and seeing a butcher’s shop sign lit up in big neon. Hailing from Essen, in the working-class Ruhr area, MAD BUTCHER were relentless scene members, travelling to all heavy metal festivals and shows across Europe and England. Curiously, they forewent doing a demo and subsequently became prolific on the live front, playing across Germany with the likes of Warlock, Sodom, Helloween, Sinner, Living Death, and the aforementioned Grave Digger and Steeler; in the United States, they played with Slayer, Exodus, Brocas Helm, and Lääz Rockit. Slayer even wanted MAD BUTCHER to open for them on their European Hell Awaits tour, but the band’s management refused it, thus nixing the band’s big break.
Nevertheless, MAD BUTCHER were well-rehearsed after all that live activity and were always prepared to go into the recording studio, but time and means always became an issue. When they were finally ready to go into the studio, in 1984, they lost their vocalist and Harry had to take the mic reins; they also had to write eight new songs, in a chaotic rush, to complete a full-length album. Exacerbating this stream of bad luck, “the technical side of the recording became a disaster,” says Harry, and the record-pressing plant damaged the master tapes to Lightning Metal Attack, resulting in a subpar sound. Still, there’s no discounting the raw energy and excitement across the record, which DYING VICTIMS PRODUCTIONS is honored to unleash in its ultimate edition.
Originally released in 1985 by the short-lived Earthshaker Records who also released Living Death’s first two albums – MAD BUTCHER’s Lightning Metal Attack is a crystallized snapshot of the times. In one sense, you could say the album was “behind the times” given that the band’s subgenre-defiant sound spanned ALL heavy metal of the day – from the aforementioned NWOBHM and early ‘80s US sound, before speed metal and then thrash splintered forth from that wider stylistic pool – but in another, more accurate sense, MAD BUTCHER here kicked out a largely speed metal-oriented sound that thankfully retained the most important aspect, the METAL, and thus retained a more timeless aspect. Guitars are never overdriven, just existing within that sweet netherworld between class and crunch, between rock ‘n’ roll and a harder place; drums bang along steadily whether the tempo’s fast (often) or slower, less often but deliciously hot-rockin’ when they do; and what Harry may’ve lacked in conventional technical prowess, his vocals more than make up for it in sheer attitude and aplomb. So, across the album’s 10 songs in 38 minutes, MAD BUTCHER indeed offer up a “lightning metal attack” that brings it from all corners, from speedy surge to down-tempo strut, and always keeping it wild ‘n’ loose whatever attack they chose. That balance, unselfconscious as it is – between the old tradition and the new traditions then being formed, of just being HEAVY METAL above all – has endeared Lightning Metal Attack to successive generations to this day, and the record remains an ever-relevant relic of times past and times yet to be forged.
And while MAD BUTCHER would disband in 1990, after two officially released albums and a third posthumously released in 2020, their legendry among the true-metal faithful was forever etched with Lightning Metal Attack. Now, for posterity, DYING VICTIMS will bring this lightning to the nations once again, using a powerful remaster by Patrick Engel at Temple of Disharmony, on the format it so deserves: vinyl!
Regular edition on black vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker and download code.
Special edition on blood red vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker, download code and patch.
Release Date: 13 November 2020