Jeremy Golden of Heaven and Hell Records

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by Justin Gaines
Staff Writer

We’ve all heard the dire predictions. “The music industry is in freefall!” “The CD format is dead!” “Everyone is downloading now!” And yet, there’s probably never been a better time to be a collector of out of print or previously unreleased melodic rock and metal. This is thanks in part to the efforts of smaller reissue labels with a real passion for the music, and run by people who know what collectors are looking for in a reissue.

One such label is Heaven and Hell Records, which in recent years has reissued out of print titles from Twisted Tower Dire as well as collections of rare material from bands like Overlord and The Ritual. We asked label head Jeremy Golden about the industry and Heaven and Hell’s past and future efforts.

HRH: First, tell me a little bit about your label. When did you get started, what’s your specialty, are reissues your primary focus, etc.?

Jeremy: The label began in 2008. I never really planned on starting a label it just kind of happened really. I had a small mail order and knew a few people. The mail order was basically used to support my own CD habit (laughs) I also knew a couple of bands like THE RETICENT who had no idea what to do with their soon to be released albums so we began to work together. The bands gave me the product and I put it out there using the few connections I had at the time and thus it began. My connections started to expand and little by little attention was gained. When the addition of HELLRAZOR was added to the label, Europe started to respond a lot more. Before that it was reaching for whatever and whoever we could reach.

I never really thought of specializing in any certain genre and don’t believe I would ever want to. My personal taste in music is very diverse and often extends beyond the realms of heavy metal. If something appeals to me then I will work with it. Although typically it is metal that I work with our first release THE RETICENT was not metal by any stretch of the imagination, but it appealed to me, and that is all that mattered. My approach has always been with a do it yourself attitude so things only have to work for me to hell with what anyone else thinks. So if I specialize in anything it is doing it myself, on my own terms, and never compromising.

I was in a conversation once with another label/distributor head who was suggesting to me that being diverse and not centering in one genre and sub-genre within that genre would hurt me and the label’s reputation. Well if he turns out to be right I guess I’ll suffer for my alternative way of thinking and approach to what I do.

As the label proceeded through 2008 and 2009 we continued with newer current metal bands, but this was not satisfying the collector in me. Last year we launched the Lost Relics series that would focus on re-issues and digging up lost and obscure metal and hard rock. It is really fun seeking out this stuff but it is certainly a lot of work. And there are pros and cons to both playing rock archeologist and working with new bands. Honestly I’m not sure which I prefer doing at this point, but I will say there are a lot of relics to dig up (laughs).
Really I cannot express how much fun it is an what it means to me. I was telling Dave Smith from Blacksmith that meeting and talking to him is has cool to me as one might think meeting Gene Simmons or Bruce Dickinson would be. I know that is difficult to understand for some people but I feel some sort of a connection with this bands, it doesn’t matter how “big” they became or not. Besides I have met Bruce and well it was pretty lame.

HRH: What made you decide to get into reissuing out of print (or never in print) material?

Jeremy: I am a collector of rock and heavy metal and I got tired of not being able to find stuff I wanted on CD. In some cases it is not even possible to find it on vinyl. I was always hunting for bands and I knew there were other people around the world who shared this interest.

I discovered several years back that there was a large demand for obscure releases and the only answer to these demands were bootlegs coming out of Japan, Germany, South America, and other places. People paid high dollar for these things simply because they could not get the release any other way. I’m not talking about well-known bands that were out of print I’m referring to real obscurities like Paradoxx’s Plan of Attak. You were not going to find this on vinyl so the only other way to have a hardcopy was a bootleg. Well I wanted to dig up some of these bands and maybe give them proper releases even possibly gain them more attention than their first go round.

One of my favorite types of bands to hunt for is obscure circuit bands. Those bands that put out a very limited amount of vinyl, never strayed far from the respective areas and are now lost in time. Such was the case with RITUAL, the first of the Lost Relics series. This band made a lot of waves around the New York and Jersey area and even a bit abroad but never quite broke out. These types of bands intrigue me. Not only does their music capture a time for me but it tells a story as well. Often these bands gave it their all and it just wasn’t enough at the time so life went on. To me there is a very human element there and in ways I can relate.

Did I answer the question in there somewhere? (laughs)

HRH: What was your first reissue?

Jeremy: Three releases in I began talking to my friend Scott Waldrop (TWISTED TOWER DIRE guitarist) about releasing the first two TTD albums The Curse of Twisted Tower Dire and The Isle of Hydra, both of which had been out of print for years.

I am a little foggy on how it came about; I think Scott talked me into it (laughs). I know he brought the idea to me and he sold it pretty well. Scott suggested that doing the releases would help me to gain a lot of attention really quickly in Europe and it did. The releases expanded the ground gained from HELLRAZOR’s In the Wild and they set the standard for the label.

Scott and I worked pretty closely on the releases. I wanted to make them something special for the fans. One of my stipulations was to have the early demos especially the Janet Rubin material. The first demo I ever heard of the band was with Janet so they were really important to me to have on the release. Apparently they were quite sought after because the most praise I heard from fans was about those demo tracks. Second to that was the packaging that included photo galleries, video interviews and a nice booklet. Pre-order packages sold out within little over a week after they were announced.
HRH: How important is it to you to give buyers something extra in terms of packaging and/or bonus content (in contrast to the bare-bones Wounded Bird reissue, for example)?

Jeremy: I hate getting lame ass re-issues with nothing new added. Well it does not bother me has much if I don’t already have the album but if I’m going to buy it again then there better be something to make it worth it for me and preferably not just a lame ass live track.

I recently picked up Black Sabbath’s Seventh Star Deluxe Edition and the bonus is a poorly recorded live audio that everyone already had a bootleg of anyway. It was a rip, what about the Seventh Star version recorded with Tony Martin? Now that would be true bonus material.

I always thought it would be cool to be able to package CDs with things inside them like how KISS’s Love Gun LP came with a pop gun or Alice Cooper’s Whiskey and Lace. Of course with a CD you do not have much to work with as far as size. When I was a college radio DJ I did see some really cool promos that reminded me of those really neat packaged records

I think since hard copy music is becoming more and more difficult to sell these days that labels should offer all they can. Some labels like to hold out on material for whatever reason. I think it’s either greed or the label is just run by people who don’t give a damn about the release and the fans. I like to give everything I can give – demo tracks, video content, interviews, anything I can to the person buying that CD. I feel they deserve it for being collectors and sticking with the medium. Besides I want to be able to give what I would like to see.

HRH: Are you a collector, and if so does that affect how you approach your releases?

Jeremy: I approach everything has a collector, I do things the way I would like to see them if it was some other label’s release. I also think it helps the bands I speak to feel more comfortable with me knowing that I am a collector and have so much passion for this.

HRH: Are there any reissues that made you think “Damn, I wish I had done that one”?

Jeremy: I wanted to do Satanic Rites and when I started looking into them I discovered that they maybe another one of those difficult bands to track down so I added them to my list to seek out. I soon discovered that Cult Metal Classics were doing it. I would have also liked to have done the Cerebus they did, it just seemed to make sense that someone here in the U.S. and the same state even would do it, but CMC did a really good job I thought.

My friend matt has something coming out on Dive Bomb that I would have liked to have done, it would have been a very personal one. But I know Dive Bomb will do a good job of it and I would not want to see anyone else doing it.

HRH: Do you release your reissues in MP3 format? Why/why not?

Jeremy: We have not yet. If we do we will certainly not cater to the downloaders as we would to the CD buyers. For instance the album may go up digitally but the bonus content would not. I personally do not care for the digital world and strongly feel that those buying the CD should get something more. To be honest I don’t feel that it is really an issue; these releases are for collectors and collectors are not downloaders typically.

HRH: Do you think the CD will remain a viable format? Are its prospects different for niche, collector-oriented music than mainstream releases?

Jeremy: It is hard to tell if the CD will disappear or not. If I go on what I see at the pressing plant down the road well then it does not look to good for CDs. More mainstream music I believe will keep moving from hard copy formats while some genres like metal will be the last to go. I do hope CDs stay around at least until I go (laughs). Collectors will always want CDs and vinyl.

People tell me that everything is going to downloads or back to vinyl. Well I think of all the things lost in the crossover to CD and how many more albums will be lost if formats shift back. Sad thought really.

HRH: What’s next for your label (new releases, upcoming projects, etc.)?

Jeremy: There are always things in the works. Currently a new incarnation of The Reticent are working on new material for a November release. This one will be a bit different than the previous two. We are also in talks with a few other current bands; a really cool Exciter like thrash band, these guys look and sound like they stepped out of a time machine. We are also looking into a doom band with a cool Cirith Ungol type sound.

As for the Lost Relics series there is a few things in the works now. When I first started the re-issue projects Blacksmith was at the top of my want list and well it is happening. I am so excited about this and it has turned out to be even better than I had hoped. We will be releasing our first DVD with the Blacksmith release full of rare live shows. There is also an unreleased album that will follow the Lost Relics release.

The Blacksmith project has been incredible, once it was announced the band instantly started to get European festival offers, and well this all led to resurrecting the band.

Other things in the works include the Thunderstick material recorded in the early 80s after he left Samson. That project is proving to be interesting as well. And New York band M-16’s Locked and Loaded is slated for some time this year.
There are other but they are in very early stages at this point. Hopefully these we will be able to continue with these long into the future; as long as there are collectors who share my love of this stuff I can’t see any reason for stopping.