Brainstorm: Memorial Roots Re-Rooted

Apparently one new release this year wasn’t enough for German power metal masters Brainstorm, since they’re following up their very solid new album Scary Creatures with a revisiting of their 2009 release Memorial Roots. According to the band, the fans demanded a remixed version of Memorial Roots. Now I never noticed any particular flaws with the original mix, and I certainly didn’t see much hue and cry over it online, but hey, I’ll roll with the premise.

Memorial Roots Re-Rooted features the original album, newly remixed and remastered by Achim Kohler. Is it significantly different from Sascha Paeth’s original mix? Not by much. You’d have to play songs from each release back-to-back to really notice the differences. We’re not talking about some 25-year old album, after all. They’ve taken an already good album and tweaked it a bit to sound a little better.

Even though the remixing is supposed to be the main attraction here, Memorial Roots Re-Rooted does offer a few worthwhile extras to entice fans who might otherwise not bother with this reissue. It includes the bonus tracks “Seems To Be Perfect” and “Too Late To Deny” from the limited CD version of Memorial Roots, the bonus track “Honesty” from the Japanese version, the bonus track “Nothing” from the LP release, and a single edit of “Forsake What I Believed.” The bonus tracks have all been remixed and remastered as well.

Even if you were fine with the original version of Memorial Roots, the extra tracks ought to be enough to convince serious Brainstorm fans to upgrade to Memorial Roots Re-Rooted. It still doesn’t seem like a totally necessary reissue, but you can’t deny they did a good job with it.

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