SUICIDE

HIGH NOON 'When The Night Calls'

As an extra note to buyers who think they have been screwed by receiving a bootleg and are not sure whether to buy a CD from eBay or any other untraceable seller/company: Most bootleggers will try to use the same artwork from the original 1st issuing of the CD. Remember, as stated in my bootleg guide, this original 1st issuing will already have had been printed once, meaning there would have been a process printing linescreen present at the time of the scanning of artwork for the bootleg pressing. The bootlegger will have not had the original artwork photoshop files to use for their new printing. Since there was an original linescreen already present, the bootleg pressing will be process printed once again. This will usually conflict with the original printing of the CD because the new linescreen will be placed over the old original version and cause a bad pattern effect on colours. Two badly registered linescreens over eachother usually cause this bad effect which professional printers call Moiré Pattern. A more sneaky bootlegger will know this and have a few choices to try and solve this. 1: Blur or descreen the scanned artwork to try and get rid of the original linescreen pattern from the original printing after they have scanned the artwork. Outcome: The artwork will now look blurry and totally shit so they just bump up the contrast abit and to them it is good to go. It still looks shit. 2: They will use totally new artwork with the use of parts from the older printing as much as they can get away with. Finally, it always good to ask a seller/company where they get their CDs from. If they can't say or give you the run around about where their CDs come from or say they don't know, which is total rubbish, avoid them or play Bootleg Russian Roulette. Every seller/company knows where their CDs come from, they don't just mysteriously appear ready for them to sell to the unsuspecting buyer. Bootleggers are con men so don't be surprised to see a few self bought original CDs as decoys mixed into their bootleg lot. eBay is infamous for those types of sellers. Time to shut up now, I am sure you guys are sick of reading my many words

Makes sense. Thanks.

Thanks to whoever has banned me from editing my bootleg guide. Your efforts are much appreciated.

No Problem. I updated a few things on that list.

Thanks David. I know the designer.

Nothing wrong with the cover. Looks Classic 80s Metal and there is nothing wrong with that. On the otherhand, if they put space ships shooting flying jesus dwarves dressed in spacesuits on the cover. I am sure people would complain about that also. So to each his own opinion.

I always see a few on ebay but more than likely those are just reissues. I don't think a few boxes mysteriously appeared from the 90s again. Mediocre glam. Nothing too catchy. Their 1st CD was better than their 2nd.

Avoid any company that can not be traced online. Also, an OBI indicates nothing. Alot of bootleg asian companies use OBIs but are still bootlegs. OBIs just provide additional info about the CD and tells a shop a basic example of what genre to catalogue it. Here is some basic info for spotting a bootleg. Spotting a CD Bootleg by sight: 1. Crappy printing: Most printing of cds is done on quality paper with colours being vibrant. No crooked artwork or blurred barcodes. 2. Look at your CD artwork carefully. Properly printed artwork is produced using printing presses, not laser printers, inkjet printers, dot matrix printers, or any other printer that can be bought and used on a computer desk in your own home. If looked at carefully, the artwork will have a tiny linescreen look to it. Mostly viewable when a colour fades into the white of the paper. This differs from a cheap printing done on a home printer. 3. Look for signs of scanned artwork: This is a big factor. A scanner will usually throw in alot of yellow colour into anything it scans. Colours are not vibrant because of this and darker colours will appear to have hazey yellow appearance. Also, white text will always appear to have blurred edges with bad colour tinting. Most scanned pics used for proper printing are colour corrected not used as is. 4. Look at the barcode, if one is present: Most bootleggers know nothing about barcodes as there are different types for different countries. A European barcode is different than a USA barcode in appearance. If a CD shows no indication or there is no knowledge of it being distributed worldwide lawfully yet does not use its own country’s barcode appearance, more than likely it is being bootlegged. 5. Look at the barcode and catalogue numbers: Most of the time they are a team. If a CD has a barcode yet no catalogue number, it could indicate a bootleg. Unless a band has self-produced their CDs and doesn’t give a shit about providing a catalogue number to it because they know they will probably break up in a year and not have a second cd. 6. Look at the barcode: Does it appear distorted in shape? Are the numbers under the bars looking distorted? Barcodes have a certain spec that needs to be followed when created. So someone who has scanned a fake barcode to use and then enlarges or distorts its dimensions runs the risk of the barcode not being scannable. 7. Look at the CD: Is it silver-pressed, a CD-R,or Silver-coated CD-R? A proper CD is silver pressed using a glass master of the music so there is no colour tinted emulsion on the data side noticeable. If a silver-pressed CD is placed side by side of a CD-R, you will see how its data side appearance is very different. Also, a silver-pressed CD and a silver-coated CDR data sides will be different in look also. 8. Look at the inner ring of the CD: Around the inner ring you will see the MPSI number of the CD. A dead giveaway to a bootleg is this number having the name of a CD-R brand with the numbers or no number present. 9. Look at the Disc Artwork: Is there artwork on it or just black thermal text over white or other basic trash on it. A lot of bootleg companies don’t use the actual disc artwork because they don’t know how to make it appear as the original on a new disc. To them it is much easier to print just black text on a white CD or a solid colour with no text or a distorted photo with no text or company logos. Also, the distorted photo will sometimes be badly cropped by the center disc hole with parts of faces missings and just not very thought out properly. A good photo disc tries to not have major parts of band members cropped off by the center hole or the disc's edge and and tries to have little to no stretching of the photo to fit the disc. 10. Look for bad bootleg production errors: A: Misspellings of band names: No KIZZ for KISS, No SKIDROW for SKID ROW, No VEIN for VAIN, No SEA HOGS for SEA HAGS, you get the point. B: An out of place font style used that totally feels like it doesn’t belong with the entire package. Most noticeable when someone is using scanned artwork and then decides to place new text in an area. The font will be brighter and cleaner than the scanned text. Same goes for parts of new artwork used over older scanned artwork. C: Remember, bootlegs are made for quantity not quality, so quality is the last thing that matters to bootleg producers. Crooked artwork with white paper edging usually means there was no bleed of the artwork over the cut edge previously. Indicating someone scanned older artwork at its exact size and placed it on the new artwork or the designer of the CD artwork just plain sucks. D: Watch for cookie cutter designing of CD artwork. Does the CD artwork by the company (if any) follow the same template look for every CD it releases. Meaning is it always the band logo in the same place, photo of the band in same place, title of CD in the same place. Although it is not always a sign of a bootleg, it does show a company takes no time for actual CD design concepts and more often is releasing CDs quickly and in quantity. 11. Word of mouth: If you have suspicion that a CD is a bootleg, I am sure others have talked about it somewhere on a message board like this one and others because of their own suspicions. 12. Remember the saying: “If it looks like a duck…” Just a few likely signs of a bootleg CD, but remember, there are actual bad printing CD replicators that exist and do produce bad quality CDs that are the real thing. Sometimes you get what you pay for on print jobs.

Some reissued CD artwork changes are indeed because of concerns with censorship and prude music shops. But also more than likely, as a reissue, the CD has probably lost its licensing from the previous older issuing of the CD. If a CD has been reissued on another company that it previously was, the copyrights and usage license (if it still is in active) still belongs to the original holder of the copyrights which would be the first company or designer. A company can not just reissue a CD without getting permission to use the original artwork. Same goes to any type of company wanting to reissue a CD. It is a violation of copyright laws and could lead to a nice lawsuit and/or cease & desist letters being sent, also the total buy out of the unauthorised pressed stock of the CDs if there is a violation so no underhand selling is made.

Also considering he has multiple accounts running and it is easy for him to win his own items he is auctioning to save low priced wins and give himself a nice big lying positive feedback. That is why I always put "NO MONEY ORDERS" in huge text size on listings and he usually messages asking if he can pay with a Money Order knowing damn well what the listing says. He is not very bright.

Just place a big "NO MONEY ORDERS" on your listing. If someone emails you asking if they win your item can they send a Money Order as payment then that is him.

Cool Band.

Self-Editing.

Good songs.

I appreciate all of the advice ...I truly do. However ...without disclosing the all the facts of what we are doing with Koch ...it is not nearly as bad as what you guys think. It is on a much smaller scale and way less constraints. I see where you are coming from …wanting to get paid right away, but one of our goals was to put our CD’s in stores worldwide (mostly small mom and pop stores and a handful of big mailorder stores). We keep our numbers reasonable so that we do not get stuck with excess inventory, and we will get paid quarterly which I am fine with this. Also, I have some great advisors that I am working with and trust. As we all know …we will all do business a little differently and that is totally cool with me. Bottom line ...we hope everyone loves the product Eonian puts out. Anyway, thanks for the advice. Talk to you soon. ~ Steve Sounds good.