Rhino - Elektra

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On March 26, 1996, Busta Rhymes released The Coming, a bombshell debut solo album that immediately established him as one of the heavyweights of New York rap. This Super Deluxe re-release of the classic album has expanded from its original 13 tracks to a mammoth 36 tracks. The remastered tracks offer an updated sound without detracting from the rage of the originals, but what’s really interesting about this new edition is the collection of remixes and instrumental versions. Take for example, the three different interpretations of the hit Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check. One version, featuring the late Ol'Dirty Bastard, was already known to fans, but now released on streaming for the first time ever. The other two are remixed by J Dilla, or Jaydee as he was known at the time. The superb remixes of Do My Thing and Abandon Ship by DJ Scratch round out this Super Deluxe tribute to the classic original. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

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After spending the first part of their career playing hair metal and hard rock, Pantera hardened their sound in 1990 in order to appeal to heavy and thrash metal fans with their excellent Cowboys from Hell. The album was followed by a decade completely dedicated to making the heaviest metal possible, starting with the riotous Vulgar Display of Power (1992), Far Beyond Driven (1994). The brutal The Great Southern Trendkill (1996) made a name for groove metal and ultimately led to this Reinventing the Steel (2000) which was released in the midst of the nu-metal period. With this record, the group aspired to reintroduce their fans to the true sound of metal as it should played. An ambitious task.We didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but the group disbanded after the release of this album. With hindsight, their separation appears more of an inevitability: In addition to the group’s internal issues and, unless they desired to forever continue doing the same thing, the band weren’t really going anywhere. While Reinventing the Steel contained its fair share of classics (Yesterday Don’t Mean Shit, Revolution Is My Name, Death Rattle, and the fantastic final double-track It Makes Them Disappear/I’ll Cast a Shadow), some weaker tracks showed that the band was finding it hard to renew themselves and inspiration was on its last legs. Ultra-loyal fans nevertheless praised the album. For its 20th anniversary, Rhino/Elektra have released this triple-disc edition whose primary attraction is the Terry Date mix, the producer of Pantera’s masterpieces but not this album when it was made twenty years ago. His version has reinvented the album (sorry) to say the least. Bright, strong and dynamic, it far surpasses the original version.The distinction between the two is clear when listening to the second CD, the original mix (by Sterling Winfield and the Abott brothers) where not even a serious remastering is a match for Date’s mastery. Several “radio edit” versions are also included. The third, much more enjoyable disc, offers an instrumental rough mix of the album (which sounds great and would be incredible for karaoke nights) as well as five previously unavailable tracks that hardcore fans will no doubt already possess: Avoid the Light and Immortally Insane which feature in the original soundtracks to (Dracula 2000, Heavy Metal 2000 and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) while Cat Scratch Fever (Ted Nugent), Hole in the Sky and Electric Funeral (Black Sabbath) have for a long time been available on various tribute albums. And there we have it: Terry Date’s remixing of Reinventing the Steel is the primary reason we return to this testament Pantera record along with heartfelt thoughts for Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul who left us in 2004 and 2018 to join the celestial jam up above. © Charlélie Arnaud/Qobuz

The rock’n’roll history books have often considered The Soft Parade to be The Doors’ worst album. Fifty years after its release on the 18th of July 1969, a re-evaluation of the Californians’ fourth opus establishes itself. Exactly a year after Waiting for the Sun, The Doors changed their modus operandi with an album which was viscerally less rock’n’roll. Unmanageable, completely obsessed with his poetry, more and more dependant on alcohol and always seemingly on the brink of leaving the band (held back in extremis by the keyboard player Ray Manzarek), Jim Morrison only wrote half of the tracks on this album. The guitarist Robbie Krieger stepped up to the mark and took the helm writing-wise, as well as developing the band’s instrumentation. Headed by Paul Harris, brass and strings make an unexpected appearance in the band’s sound. Notes of jazz dilute the pure rock sound and bring a more bluesy texture, as well as some pop and even some lounge-style sequences. An eclectic mix which is slightly confusing to begin with, but it stops The Doors’ unique singularity from dwindling. The melodies on The Soft Parade are peraps not of the same calibre as those on the three previous albums, but at an era when the competition was also experimenting with some stranger sounds, Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore prove that they too can steer rock music into uncharted territories. This 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition offers a new remastered version from producer Bruce Botnick, as well as bonus tracks like Who Scared You, as well as some unedited tracks, like demo versions of Doors Only, versions without brass or strings of Tell All the People, Touch Me, Wishful Sinful and Runnin’ Blue. Finally, among all these exciting new features of this 2019 edition, some interesting new guitar sections added by Krieger to Touch Me, Wishful Sinful and Runnin’ Blue. All in all, enough unedited material to please fans and better understand this musical mystery. © Max Dembo/Qobuz

Instrumental and vocal firepower, the considerable ears of engineer Greg Ladanyi, and some magical mixing at the Sound Factory in Hollywood, combined to create the best known album of Jackson Browne's long career, reissued here in gloriously detailed and dynamically thrilling high resolution sound. Russ Kunkel's drum break at the climatic shift of the title track. David Lindley's mournful fiddle in "The Road." Rosemary Butler's soaring vocal solo in "Stay." A song list heavy with covers. Jackson Browne on piano. An extraordinary example of utterly masterful sequencing. Sometimes a band is in such a groove that it demands to be captured live. But making a live album that reflects being on the road, recorded literally on the road? Cutting tracks in a Holiday Inn room in Edwardsville, IL, or on a moving tour bus, complete with grinding gears? Even today with all the digital advances in home recording gear, it still seems like a disaster in the making. In addition, none of the material had ever appeared on a Browne studio record. A shambling cover of Rev. Gary Davis's "Cocaine" and a rendition of Maurice Williams' (The Zodiacs) "Stay"—with David Lindley memorably singing the falsetto part—are both knockouts. "You Love the Thunder," recorded live in Holmdel, NJ, is a classic Jackson Browne love song, one of the last before he turned to political themes. And then there’s the album's heart: the epic Lowell George/Browne/Valerie Carter collaboration, "Love Needs a Heart." It's the one tune worth having the entire record for: "Love needs a heart/And I need to find/If love needs a heart like mine." As this fresh remastering proves again, Browne and his merry band of SoCal pros better known as The Section drew a masterpiece out of the hat with Running on Empty. © Robert Baird / Qobuz