Kaeck‘s Stormkult, The Best Underground Metal Album of 2015, is coming to vinyl courtesy of Heathen Tribes. The vinyl LP will feature remastered sound with a little less mud and a tad more room overhead. The LP will come in gatefold packaging befitting the lyrical and compositional themes. It will be strictly limited to 200 copies. If you are a black metal analog fanatic and miss out, you will be sorry for sure.
The original CD master of Stormkult was ridiculously filthy. The incredibly fat guitars turned the rest of the mix to mud on most consumer setups or anywhere where additional mud could be added like car stereos meeting engine noise. Listening to the album on standard closed back studio headphones or soft and warm tube amps required listeners to give the music their utmost attention to perceive what was actually being played. Stormkult was unlistenable on heavily bass-boosted ghetto blasters, car stereos, and consumer headphones like the Audeze, Beats, or Shure brands. Even warmer audiophile headphones from respected brands like Sennheiser and AKG such as the HD 650 and K 712 turned Stormkult into a no man’s land of distortion.
Kaeck composed and recorded an album that demanded to be listened to on an professional or high-fidelity setup much like Incantation – Mortal Throne of Nazarene or Immortal – Battles in the North. Otherwise the CD would just degenerate into a furious storm of mud and noise The Oath of Black Blood style. Like Beherit‘s debut, the melodic guitar riff would quickly become inaudible on lower-fidelity rigs, leading listeners to latch onto certain leads, vocal lines, and keyboard embellishments rather than being able to hear the excellent compositions as a melodic whole. The LP will enable those with mediocre digital rigs but properly set up, decent turntables to experience Kaeck’s vision on Stormkult.