Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere

The book is completely awesome and a very special part of this unique packaging. The book is literally part of the media sleeve, so everything is tied together (save one loose OBI). It’s 51 pages of excellence broken down into 9 chapters, with a 4 page forward by Ross Dolan (of Immolation). This book is chock full of images, album related art, the most complete list of gear used I’ve ever seen, lyrics, studio info, music connections, Decoding the Stargate…

I’m not sure where else All Gates Open (disc 2) can be found, other than in this wonderfully complete package.

UPDATE: I was finally able to rip the Atmos mix and downmix it to 2.0 using Audiomuxer.

Scanning the files with the DR meter and opening them in an audio editor, they are indeed significantly more dynamic (DR13 vs. DR5) than the official released stereo version of the album.

I'm still rather annoyed that an expensive deluxe package like this didn't come with an official dynamic stereo version that fans can easily play without having to jump through hoops. Frankly it should have been on a redbook CD in the package or at the very least included as a FLAC code.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A really nice looking package that I am still digesting. So far I've listened to the main album. Musically it is excellent and a worthy follow up to the band's last 2 full length albums.

Sadly with each new release the audio is more compressed in the mastering stage and this appears to be the band's most compressed album yet. You'd think we'd get a full dynamic range version on this rather pricey boxset but no dice. It's the same compressed and limited master made for cheap earbuds and mono smart speakers - no different than a plethora of contemporary metal releases, sorry to say.

There is an Atmos mix on the BluRay version that may or may not be more dynamic, but that's not much use to 2-channel listeners which are far greater in number than those with Atmos multi-channel systems. The 24/48 being sold at Qobuz, Bandcamp, etc. is also compressed just like the redbook CD.

To bands and labels, those of us that shell out for physical media and actually listen to it on decent systems want dynamic range. So far only Earache seems to have got the message with their FDR series. Too bad other metal labels won't follow suit.