New Renaissance Records

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New Renaissance Records
Active years since 1984
Seat Burbank , California , USA
Sub-label Colossal Records
Genre (s) Heavy metal , extreme metal

New Renaissance Records is an American metal label that was founded in Burbank , California in 1984 . A sub-label of this is Colossal Records.

history

The label was founded in 1984 by Ann Boleyn , who was also a singer in the band Hellion . Since Hellion released songs for a small punk label called Mystic Records in their early days , Boleyn learned how small labels work in this way. The band, again without a contract, released a demo on their own label Bongus Loadus Records. Since the demo was quite successful, a European release was licensed through Music for Nations . Since this release was also quite successful and the band could still not reach a contract, but the demand from the record distributors for further metal releases increased, Boleyn founded New Renaissance Records. Since, according to Boleyn, in the early 1980s, many people thought that metal would have died in the 1970s, she chose the name New Renaissance Records. The label initially only consisted of Boleyn himself, although a short time later she was supported by volunteers free of charge. They were later employed for a fee. New bands were usually introduced first on a compilation ; on the one hand to find out how the audience responded and on the other hand to get to know the band better. If the result was positive, an album release usually followed with the option of further releases. The money that the label made available to the bands was usually measured by the sales success of the records. Boleyn initially let the bands choose the recording studio and producer independently. However, since she found that most of the time artists had not made the appropriate choice, she soon voted for them. The label did not have its own producers or recording studios. The album covers were often designed by the bands themselves. When this was not the case, a friend of Boleyn's named Drew Elliot was often used for the covers. Elliot designed covers for bands like Phantom , Savage Steel , Necrophagia , Blood Feast and Indestroy . Initially, many of the bands were signed on the advice of the distributor Greenworld, even if Boleyn didn't like this music himself. That was to change later: Boleyn mostly paid attention to the drummer, she said that if he wasn't good, in most cases the band wasn't either. Further criteria were the songs themselves and their impression of the bands' performances. The latter is important because a band can only be successful if they also play concerts. The releases of the compilations made bands such as Morbid Angel , Flotsam and Jetsam , Artillery , At War , Blood Feast , Wehrmacht and Prong known. The label further increased awareness of the bands through advertisements in magazines and fanzines . In addition, numerous radio show moderators were contacted, which, according to Boleyn, the telephone costs amounted to 5,000 to 7,000 US dollars. There were around 2,000 contact persons on the promotion list. The release of the albums in Europe was mostly handled by various labels, with Music for Nations being used in particular. Although the label had hardly released any records in recent years, it is still active. Boleyn used the break to attend law school .

Bands (selection)

Publications (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Renaissance Records. Discogs , accessed September 24, 2013 .
  2. ^ László Dávid: New Renaissance Records. voicesfromthedarkside.de, accessed September 25, 2013 .