NEW YORK (Screaming Ferret Wreckords) - Over the past few years, Screaming Ferret Wreckords, LLC has aligned itself with budding new artists, as well as a selection of traditional metal bands in an effort to reintroduce lost classics to the audience of the New Millennium. Having recently joined forces with upstart Swedish entertainment organization Escapi
Music and Navarre Distribution, the label is now proud to present a campaign to introduce Toronto, Ontario legends ANVIL to the new generation of metal fans. The campaign includes the domestic reissue of several catalogue titles (some of which are either out of print or never before available in the US), as well as the brand new studio album Back To Basics.
For over 2 decades, ANVIL has been a band that firmly understood that Metal should not be taken completely seriously. The band's brand of anthemic metal fuses intense, piercing metal with witty social sarcasm to create a unique brand of music rarely seen and never equaled.
Back To Basics, released on August 24th, and produced by renowned Canadian metal mastermind Pierre RÈmillard (who had produced 2 previous Anvil albums, as well as 4 from Cryptopsy, and titles from Gorguts, Quo Vadis, and Kataklysm) is described by frontman/guitarist Steven "Lips" Kudlow as "a great pounding feel, like Accept meets Ozzy's Bark At the Moon."
The initial run of Back To Basics will also feature a bonus live DVD Live At Wacken 1998, featuring such frenzied standards as "Five Knuckle Shuffle", "Smoking Green", "Old School", "Winged Assassins", "Forged In Fire", "March of the Crabs", "Metal On Metal", "666", and "Mothra".
Screaming Ferret & Escapi will soon be releasing a number of classic ANVIL albums; discs that defined and secured the band's status in the true heavy metal elite. Titles include three currently out-of-print releases: 1987's Strength Of Steel (which featured such classics as "Concrete Jungle", "Straight Between The Eyes", and "Mad Dog", the song that yielded a quite humorous video that received recurrent airplay on MTV's original Headbangers Ball program), 1988's Pound For Pound (featuring "Blood On The Ice" and "Toe Jam"), 1989's Past & Present Live (a brilliant live set capturing such seminal ANVIL anthems as "Forged In Fire", "Metal on Metal", "March of the Crabs", and "Mothra").
SFW is also releasing a number of titles that never received a proper United States release, including 1991's Worth The Weight, 1996's Plugged In Permanent, 1997's Absolutely No Alternative, 1998's Speed Of Sound, 2001's Plenty Of Power, 2002's Still Going Strong, and the special 1999 Anthology of Anvil, the perfect introductory piece to the manic, semi-insane world of ANVIL. All titles will be re-mastered and will contain bonus tracks.
Lips is shocked and thrilled with this development in the band's career: "I can't believe after a quarter of a century we will finally be released to the unsuspecting American audience. I've never understood after all these years why Anvil has done so little in the United States in the way of getting our recordings released, as well as touring. It is a true tragedy if not a crime! For those people who have never heard of us, it might be a surprise to find out we've been recording music before the existence of what was once called Heavy Metal, and to be more exact NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal).
Our first album came out in 81, however all the tracks on it were written over a long period of time, some dating back as far as 73 or 74! This new opportunity to release new and back catalog would not have come true if it weren't for the bravery and dedication to true metal by Screaming Ferret and Escapi Music. We have been pleasing European audiences for years and hope with all our might that we can do the same in America."
Anvil joins a proud group of classic metal bands, like Meliah Rage, Candlemass, Dismember, and Trouble, who have experienced rejuvenation and renewed interest through the work and partnership with Screaming Ferret Wreckords, LLC, & Escapi Music, organizations designed to further expose new talent and to introduce groundbreaking classics to a new audience.
Upcoming releases from the united labels include Meliah Rage's first studio album in over a decade (Barely Human - which includes a special bonus disc featuring Godsmack's Sully Erna), Texas-based Tearabyte's new doomfest Gloom Factory, a reissue of Nuclear Assault drummer Glenn Evans' rare CIA release Attitude, Swedish death metal pioneers Dismember's debut live DVD Live Blasphemies, doom-rock legends Trouble's new DVD Live In Stockholm, and many, many more.
