Oct 282 min read

Threshold - 'Wounded Land / Psychedelicatessen' Re-release.

These re-releases are, without doubt, first-rate. West and Groom have done an exemplary job, so do yourself a favour - buy them; you will be forever grateful you did!

These are the crème de la crème of reconstruction! There has been no cranking up the volume and falsely exclaiming: “Remixed and remastered!” Both these albums have had their songs stripped to their core and lovingly, one imagines, with tears of frustration, painstakingly rebuilt, layer by layer, with intricate attention paid to each instrument and vocals until before you are beasts that breathe renewed life into what was already highly regarded classics from Threshold’s sublime back catalogue: should they have done it? Some fans may consider it sacrilege to have touched them. However, keyboardist Richard West and guitarist Karl Groom have produced masterpieces again. They say you can’t improve on perfection - having listened to the results, I beg to differ!

To explain how they did it would eat too many words. Sufficed to say, it worked; the sound quality for both these albums is crystal clear. Backing vocals and instrumental parts that were muffled or soft in the originals now explode with absolute clarity. ‘Wounded Land’, in my opinion, benefits slightly more from this than ‘Psychedelicatessen’, with Damien Wilson’s vocals nothing short of epic, especially when mixed with Jon Jeary’s backing vocals, which I always considered faded in places on the original release. Songs such as the opener, ‘Consume To Live’ and the two bemouths, ‘Sanity’s End’ and ‘Surface To Air’ sound breathtaking, allowing West’s keys to soar and intertwine beautifully with both Groom’s and Nick Midson’s marauding guitars and the crisp beats from Tony Grinham’s drums. Singling these songs out is probably unfair as the rest of the album is just as superb – and the three bonus tracks, ‘Intervention’, ‘Conceal The Face’ and ‘Shifting Sands’, are delicious, rounding proceedings off perfectly.

When ‘Psychedelicatessen’ saw daylight in 1994, Wilson had gone, replaced by Glynn Morgan, and the band’s move to a more mainstream Progressive Metal sound was evident, heard even more so with this remastered version, Morgan’s delivery is more prevalent, adding a menacing undertone to several songs such as ‘Sunseeker’, ‘Into The Light’ and ‘Babylon Rising’, but also a more fluid style when needed such as on ‘A Tension Of Souls’ and the fantastic ‘He Is I Am’; which, again in my opinion, was slightly diminished on the original release, but delivers real impact this time! As before, the instrumentation sounds amazingly clean. If you didn’t know that these were remixed and remastered, you could easily believe they were modern albums recorded using today’s technology. Like ‘Wounded Land’, ‘Psychedelicatessen’ also contains bonus tracks, and we are treated to four this time in ‘Lost’, ‘Intervention’, ‘Fist Of Tongues’ and ‘Half Way Home’, and, of course, they are magnificent: come on – did you really expect anything less? To complement these releases, you also get stellar, in-depth liner notes from our knowledgeable Deputy Editor, Dave Cockett.

These re-releases are, without doubt, first-rate. West and Groom have done an exemplary job, so do yourself a favour - buy them; you will be forever grateful you did!

Reviewer: Pete Arnett

Label: Nuclear Blast

Genre: Progressive Metal

Issue Reviewed In: 108

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