Metal Mind/RoadRunner reissues - possible defect?

I'm curious if anyone out there has purchased any of the limited edition reissues from the RoadRunner Records catalog, released by Metal Mind Productions in Poland, because I've noticed something weird about a couple of them.

I received a package today containing several of these reissues -- Atrophy's SOCIALIZED HATE and VIOLENT BY NATURE, and Sadus' CHEMICAL EXPOSURE, SWALLOWED IN BLACK and A VISION OF MISERY -- to review for Detritus e-zine. Anyway, tonight I had to go for a drive so I grabbed the two Atrophy discs to listen to in the car. I popped in SOCIALIZED HATE, the disc began to play Track 1 (which was supposed to be "Chemical Dependency"), and I heard... nothing. After listening to about a minute and a half of silence I finally went "what the heck?" and skipped to track 2...which turned out to be "Chemical Dependency!" So track 1 is totally dead air on this CD for whatever reason. I thought that was odd, but I could deal with it (after a quick scan thru the rest of the tracks, the album WAS complete; it went all the way to track #14, meaning it has all of the 13 tracks listed on the back cover plus the "dead air" first track.)

Anyway, after listening to a bit of SOCIALIZED HATE I popped that one out and threw in VIOLENT BY NATURE... and AGAIN, track #1 is totally blank! The album doesn't actually begin till track #2! So now I'm going "WTF?" The only one of the three Sadus discs I've played thus far has been SWALLOWED IN BLACK, which plays fine, so I'm wondering if this "empty first track" phenomenon is some kind of weird defect unique to the Atrophy CDs or if it affects any others in the series. Has anyone else collected any of these reissues, and if so, have you encountered this problem?
I don't really mind one way or the other, since as I said, the Atrophy albums are still complete, I just have to remember from now on to skip directly to track #2 when I play these discs. Besides, I got'em for nothing and obviously you can't beat that price.

Just a thought: maybe the label realized they'd pressed a bunch of these CDs with errors and simply put them aside to pass off on freeloading amateur writers like myself?

I only own one, Heathen - Victims of Deception. There is no defect.

I have the two Solitude Aeturnus reissues and they're fine. Is there any sort of multimedia on those reissues? They may have put it on the discs as track one. Sometimes multimedia bonuses are set as audio tracks and not data.

If I remember Monday at work, I'll try to ask Rick (Skowron) if he knows anything about that.

ack

AchrisK wrote:

If I remember Monday at work, I'll try to ask Rick (Skowron) if he knows anything about that.

ack

You work with one of the Atrophy guys? That's cool. Tell him I'm digging both albums (despite the screwups on the CDs, haha)

Get a load of THIS one folks...I have an UPDATE on these Metal Mind/Roadrunner reissues, which are turning into QUITE the clusterf**k...

After figuring out the "dead air" problem on the first track of each Atrophy disc, I have finally gotten used to skipping directly to track #2 when listening to those CDs. After listening to them for a couple of days I decided it was time to start getting into some Sadus. After a few spins of the A VISION OF MISERY disc I noticed that it had 13 tracks on it, according to my CD player, even though the CD booklet and the disc itself only list 11 tracks. I wondered if maybe there were a few extra bonus songs that weren't listed on the cover, or something like that, but once I tried listening to it with the lyric sheet in my hand I realized that the lyrics I was hearing sounded absolutely nothing like what I was reading in the booklet.
So on a whim, I popped in the SWALLOWED IN BLACK disc, which lists 13 tracks on the back cover and the disc, and my CD player sez there's only 11 tracks on it. (Starting to see where I'm going with this?) Still holding the lyric booklet to A VISION OF MISERY in my hand, I pressed "play" on SWALLOWED IN BLACK... and yup, believe it or not, the discs are mis-labeled. The CD marked A VISION OF MISERY has the SWALLOWED IN BLACK album on it, and vice versa. You gotta be KIDDING me!! Who the hell pressed these things?? Confusing? You bet! I'm almost afraid to pop in the CHEMICAL EXPOSURE disc at this point because for all I know it could turn out to be an entirely different band/album on the CD!!

I wonder if the label even realizes they made a boo-boo? I also wonder if I list these on eBay as "MEGA RARE ERROR PRESSINGS" if I could send my kid to college on the earnings?

At first I thought these reissues were a GREAT idea but now I'm not so sure!!!

Wow!!! That last goof-up really sucks!!!

ultmetal wrote:

Wow!!! That last goof-up really sucks!!!

Well, again, I got these as promos, so it doesn't really suck for me since I got'em for nothing... I just put the so-called "Swallowed In Black" CD into the "A Vision of Misery" cover, and vice versa, so whenever I get around to reviewing these discs, at least I'll be writing about the right album!!
However, I figured I should get the word out in case anyone out there was thinking of dropping their cash on these things!

Just coming back to add a quick note: the Sadus CHEMICAL EXPOSURE CD does, indeed, have the CHEMICAL EXPOSURE album on it. Whew, that's a relief!!

Wow. That's retarded. I wonder if they just screwed up the promos and not the retail versions. That would seriously suck if a short run of one- or two-thousand were all jacked up like this.

Eyesore wrote:

Wow. That's retarded. I wonder if they just screwed up the promos and not the retail versions. That would seriously suck if a short run of one- or two-thousand were all jacked up like this.

I wondered the same thing (i.e. that maybe a small batch were pressed with errors and they were passing off the rejects on freeloader wanna-be journalists like me, haha) but these aren't "promo" copies, these are the real retail deal... they're in very nice looking digi-paks, each individually numbered. (my SWALLOWED IN BLACK disc is #033 out of 2000, and A VISION OF MISERY is #613 if anyone's keeping score...) My editor told me that they were shrink-wrapped when he received them from the label. Looks to me like maybe they were paying a little too much attention to the nice packaging, while whoever was pressing the actual CDs was asleep at the wheel...

Anybody think that maybe I should contact the Sadus guys and let them know about this F-up, and if so, where I could get hold of them? I Googled the band's name and found their official site, but it doesn't look like it's been updated since 2004.