Thrash Anthems

In November 2006 AFM Records announced a Destruction album made of old songs recorded afresh. Schmier's reasoning was practical: many of the early songs were still in the live set, but their original recordings did not sound good, and a best-of built from those tapes had been done before and held no interest for the band. The aim was to give the classics a present-day production while keeping their old-school character. Thirteen of the fifteen songs come from 1984 to 1990, the years before the reunion, two are new, and the whole runs past seventy minutes. "Cracked Brain" had never before been released with Schmier singing it. The recording took place at House of Music Studio in Winterbach, Germany, and at Little Creek Studio in Gelterkinden, Switzerland, with much the same crew as Inventor of Evil: the band's live sound engineers Gerd Krenz and Franky Winkelmann, and V.O. Pulver of Gurd and Poltergeist. Jacob Hansen, the Danish producer who also sings and plays guitar in Invocator, mixed and mastered it at Hansen Studios in Ribe, and the production is credited to the band. Schmier played bass and sang, Mike Sifringer played guitar and Marc Reign the drums. Former guitarist Harry Wilkens came back for the solos on "Release from Agony" and "Cracked Brain", Hansen took those on "Death Trap" and "Invincible Force", and Pulver the one on "Unconscious Ruins". The two new songs, "Profanity" and "Deposition (Your Heads Will Roll)", are credited to Schmier and Sifringer and were written after the band came home from a North American tour earlier in 2006. The cover sets the Mad Butcher among images from the band's earlier sleeves. AFM Records released the album in January 2007, along with a limited edition that added "Eternal Ban"; Candlelight Records issued it in North America, and a Japanese edition followed in March.