During the heyday of death metal, Swedish band Altar and Finnish band Cartilage banded together to release a split album entitled Ex Oblivione / The Fragile Concept Of Affection . Long sought-after by collectors, it is being re-issued by Xtreem Music as a 2-CD set with other early recordings. The label made the following statement:
It was in 1992 when two promising bands from the swedish & finnish Death Metal scenes, released a split album, that now, 23 years later, it’s one of the most cult splits ever released in the early 90’s. Unfortunately, CARTILAGE never recorded anything after that and although ALTAR did a few demos later on, they disbanded shortly after.
But the legacy still lives here and this split album originally released through former Xtreem Music label Drowned Productions, gets a re-issue in form of a double CD with 7 bonus tracks by each band taken from their early demos, a total of 14 songs (60 min.) from each one.
All songs have been remastered (not remixed!) for an optimal sound, preserving the essence from the originals and this release comes with a new cover artwork, a remake of the original one made by cult finnish artist Turkka Rantanen. Of course, original cover art is included on the release and booklet comes with extra photos, flyers & demo covers to complete this cult re-issue. However, we know that purists won’t be satisfied with this release, so they can always go and pay a fortune on eBay to get the original (if they can). No hard feelings! For the rest, here you have a new chance to get this gem in an improved and extended way at a reasonable price. A vinyl version with the original split album tracks, will follow in the future.
Release date for the ALTAR/CARTILAGE “Split Album” 2-CD is set for August 20th and in the meantime, you can listen to one track by each band on the following links:
ALTAR
CARTILAGE
Tags: altar (SE), cartilage, death metal, xtreem music
Hopefully Dave Rotten won’t fuck with the sound using dynamic range compression. Xtreem reissues tend to have much worse mastering than the Dark Descent, NWN, The Crypt/Dark Symphonies, and Svart ones. Not offensively bad, just a little bit higher volume than the original which makes them sound worse in the long run, often fucks with the instrument spacing and panning in the mixm, and adds more frequency masking. The very slight use of DNC on the Realm of Chaos and Demilich reissues to bring the guitars forward helped a lot but a lot of these guys just slam everything. He’s not Relapse, use dynamic range compression to lower the peaks of the other instruments to the guitars, turn everything to plastic, SLAM IT TO IT CLIPS, with hilarious mastering errors (Relapse is good at providing hilarious mastering errors) bad but still it would be better to be more hands off.
I am looking forward to being able to finally afford a copy of this!!! Thanks.
Looking forward to this, especially the Cartilage tracks. Altar has grown on me over the years as well.
in b4 some idiot derps in calling Cartilage generic
this album is so generic!
cartilage are like so generic u can’t even get more generic.
never heard of this classic split…After listened few time now music of Alter and Cartilage swirling music totally wrapped me up in a vortex of morbidity. It’s pure death metal masterpiece. Thank you brett. Absolute pleasure to listen.
Cartilage is great! Unfortunately that name probably cost them a “career”. Also their new bands are terrible.
That cover art reminded me of Demilich “Nespithe”. Sure enough, ya boy Turkka Rantanen! http://www.metal-archives.com/artists/Turkka_G._Rantanen/134139
He also did some shit for Demigod ‘n Adramalech.
Is Adramalech good?