Metalmorphosis

Metalmorphosis is a Japan-only album on which Praying Mantis re-recorded their early material for their thirtieth anniversary. King Records' Metal Frontier imprint released it on 21 December 2011 as KICP-1598. It grew out of the five-track Metalmorphosis: 30th Anniversary EP, issued in Germany that March, with six more songs added to fill a full record. The eleven are drawn from Time Tells No Lies (1981) — "Running for Tomorrow", "Children of the Earth", "Beads of Ebony", "Lovers to the Grave", "Panic in the Streets", "Flirting with Suicide" — from Predator in Disguise (1991) — "Time Slipping Away", "Can't See the Angels", "Borderline" — and from two songs that never made a studio album at all: "Captured City", a live fixture since the 1979 demo, and "Praying Mantis", the band's own 1980 single. Those last two are what make this more than a re-recording exercise; until now there had been no proper studio version of either. Tino Troy, Chris Troy, Andy Burgess and Mike Freeland made the record, with Benjy Reid and Gary MacKenzie splitting the drumming between them song by song. Wes Maebe mixed and mastered it at Pinewood and Snap Studios in London. It was never issued outside Japan and has no streaming release.