Release from Agony

Release from Agony was the third album and the first full-length record by the four-piece formed on the Mad Butcher EP: Schmier on bass and vocals, Mike Sifringer and Harry Wilkens on guitars and Oliver Kaiser on drums. Kaiser names "Reject Emotions" from the EP as the template for the new songs. Sifringer was listening to Watchtower, Fates Warning, Rush and Yes at the time and brought their odd harmonies and unusual beats into the band, something he admits Schmier was not pleased about. As with the EP, the album was recorded at Karo Studio in Münster, with Kalle Trapp producing, recording and mixing. Kreator's Mille Petrozza and Ventor sing backing vocals on the title track, and V.O. Pulver and André Grieder of Poltergeist on "Dissatisfied Existence", "Our Oppression" and "Survive to Die". The sound became a sore point. Kaiser says test pressing after test pressing bore no resemblance to the rough mix made in the studio, yet Steamhammer went ahead with the release, and a few weeks later Trapp called to say he had mixed it with the wrong settings; the original tapes have since been lost. Schmier names the compressed, thin production as the one thing he dislikes about the record. Steamhammer released the album in 1987, and Profile issued it in the United States in 1988. The cover painting was Joachim Luetke's own idea; Schmier recalls that the American label received threats from angry parents and that a big German metal magazine's poll named it both the best and the worst cover. Fans were divided, which Kaiser says nudged the band towards more accessible songs on Cracked Brain, while the album widened its following across the Americas, and Schmier has heard from death metal bands, in Florida above all, that they loved it. It turned out to be the last album before Schmier's departure, and he has since reflected that the band's rapid musical change was what eventually split it apart. A Japanese SHM-CD in a card sleeve was released on 21 January 2026.