GWAR have premiered the HD version of their "School's Out" video, the ALICE COOPER cover that closes "Beyond Hell", ahead of the album's 20th-anniversary edition landing this Friday, September 25.
Twenty years is also long enough for the record to reach vinyl for the first time, which it does through the band's own Pit Records — and which it has already done to the extent that matters, because the GWAR store is completely sold out. Paul Logus (ANTHRAX, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE) handled the remaster, and the edition adds a previously unreleased outro cut during the original sessions and left off the 2006 release.
"Beyond Hell" was produced by Devin Townsend, an arrangement that reads on paper like a collision of two unmanageable forces and in practice worked out fine. He got the job by ambush.
"I had been a GWAR fan since I was a kid. I loved the freedom, the metal, the spectacle, and the passion that went into it all," Townsend recalls. "I met Brockie on a tour we did together and, after cornering him in an elevator basically telling him I'd work for free, I found myself co-producing 'Beyond Hell'. Dave and Corey came to Vancouver to stay with me, and we recorded at Profile Studios. The drums and basic tracks were done at Slave Pit in Richmond, Virginia, and the whole process took about three months."
He has not cooled on them: "GWAR were, and are, an amazing combination of artistic freedom, absurdity, and hard work bundled up with metal and performance. Loved them then, love them now."
The album is a concept record about GWAR descending into Hell to retrieve their lost comrade Flattus Maximus, and it carries "Back In Crack", "Womb With A View", "Tormentor" and "The Ultimate Bohab" among the songs that stayed in the set.
The physical editions are appropriately excessive: 180-gram vinyl in a tri-fold jacket that opens out into an inverted cross, and a CD with a fold-out poster. The standard gold vinyl is capped at 2,000 copies, a "Blood Moon" variant at 300 through GWAR.net, and a "Blood Smear" variant at 200 through Metal Injection.
"Beyond Hell" 20th-anniversary deluxe edition track listing:
- Intro
- War Is All We Know
- Murderer's Muse
- Go To Hell!
- I Love The Pigs
- Tormentor
- Eighth Lock
- Destroyed
- The Ultimate Bohab
- The One That Will Not Be Named
- Back In Crack
- Outro
- School's Out (ALICE COOPER cover)
At the end of October GWAR head out on the "Gor Gor Must Die!" tour with MIDNIGHT in direct support, MAC SABBATH opening every night, and X-COPS and ATOMIC RULE on selected dates.