From the depths of New Jersey comes Embalmer Records – a record label focused on unearthing and preserving classics from across the metal genre. Embalmer Records is headed up by Greg Kennelty, whose lifelong love of physical media (and obscure metal gems) drives the label.
“One of my biggest fears for the music world is losing pieces of history,” said Kennelty. “Tapes degrade over time. Physical media gets lost over the course of decades. YouTube uploads get taken down or entire channels deleted. And once that last tape breaks, or the last upload goes away, we’ve lost something forever. I don’t want that to happen. The focus of Embalmer Records is to bring demos and releases that are hardly found anywhere to a wider audience. This means having them on streaming services, Bandcamp, and of course re-pressed on tape and CD. I want these great bands to be enjoyed by a new audience and preserved for fans to easily discover. There’s a lot of great metal out there – and there’s a lot more great metal that you’ve probably never heard.”
Embalmer Records is proud to announce its first release – the 1993 demo Buried Alive by Know Death. Buried Alive is out on May 31 and you can stream the first single “Judgment Day” here on Bandcamp and all streaming services. Digital pre-orders for Buried Alive are available here.
The reissue consists of all four songs from the original demo plus an unreleased show named Pick Your Knows from 1992. The concept for Pick Your Knows was simple enough – Know Death played all their songs, and the crowd in turn would vote on the songs they wanted to see get recorded for the demo. Hence the name of the show, Pick Your Knows.
“I would like to say that we are very excited that our music will be out to a larger and more accessible audience,” said Burgan. “It’s satisfying to know that it can hopefully achieve what we strived for back then, and can still be enjoyed by others in today’s world.”
Added Prewitt: “Though I am still making new metal music, Know Death was a very special time for me. Great friends and great players! I just wish Doug was there to see this. I hope people will like what we did.”
The original Buried Alive demo was recorded, mixed, and produced at Sabella Recording Studios in Roslyn Heights, NY by Know Death, Jim Sabella, and Ken Gioia. The demo was also engineered by Know Death, Sabella, and Gioia. This reissue features newly-remastered audio by Esben Willems of Studio Berserk in Gothenburg, Sweden, and a new layout by Joseph Spiller.