Embrace The Dead (1999)
2nd full-length studio album

Release Dates (Original)

THT Productions, August 1999 (Cassette, CD)
Fleshwalker Records, June 2000 (CD)

Release Date (Re-mastered Re-issue)

Kekal, May 2012 (Digital)
Hitam Kelam Records, October 2017 (2CD combo)

Track Listing

1. Longing For The Truth
2. Embrace The Dead
3. The Fearless and The Dedicated
4. Source of Existence*
5. Healing
6. The Final Call
7. From Within
8. Scripture Before Struggle
9. Millennium
10. Embrace The Dead (live, 2004)**

*Bonus track only available on THT Productions cassette version
**Bonus track only available on Bandcamp digital format

Album Description

The band's 2nd full-length album "Embrace The Dead" was recorded back in 1999, and has been marked as the band's most challenging and problematic album recording session ever, ranging from technical issues, financial difficulties, to many other things including the lack of promotion and distribution of the album. The idea of the band's 3rd album title, "The Painful Experience", was actually referred to "Embrace The Dead".

The original versions (CD and cassette tape formats) have been sold-out since 2004.

The album was re-mastered in 2008, and in 2009 it was re-issued as "Embrace The Dead 1999" as a limited edition free-download to 1000 downloads only (the only digital download available at that time), and was closed once again after it reached the number of downloads in less than a year.

In 2017, the album was again re-mastered digitally (from original mix) and was re-released again in physical format as a limited-edition 2CD package along with "1000 Thoughts of Violence" album. Digital download has also been made available again via Bandcamp.

Credits

Album Line-Up
Jeff : guitars / vocals / keyboards / programming
Azhar : bass / vocals
Leo : guitars

Produced by: Jeff with KEKAL
Engineered & mixed by Habil Kurnia, Prastowo Aklisugoro, Denny Andreas, & Jeff
Recorded & mixed at: Yaski Studios, Jakarta, Indonesia, February - July 1999
Mastered by: Habil Kurnia at Dunia Digital Mastering House (original THT Productions cassette version)
Cover lay-out design by Jeff / Soundmind Graphics
Keyboards by: Jeff & Habil
Additional guitars by: Azhar
Additional bass by: Jeff
Female Vocals by: Vera
Drums by: The Black Machine

Buy Embrace The Dead Physical

Original Used CD and/or Cassette (sold by online re-sellers) on Discogs site

Note: The original CD and Cassette Tape versions are now out-of-print and has already been sold-out at official stores/distributors, but if you are into collecting out-of-print physical releases, you may still get the used copies sold online via Discogs site. See from the list of resellers here. They accept PayPal for international orders.

Buy Embrace The Dead Digital

Direct from Kekal @ Bandcamp (2017 Re-mastered Version)

Note: This album is not available on the mainstream streaming platforms, and never will! Bandcamp is the only official source to get this album in digital format.

"Embrace The Dead" is often said to be somewhat a 'mistake' in direction, but this album is also many of your fans favorite, so can you elaborate that? Why calling it a mistake?

Well, we were dealing with a few aspects during the songwriting and recording of the album, which I consider to be the least 'honest' album that we've recorded, because we wanted purposely to record a melodic album with typical black metal and power metal riffs and adding some gothic romanticism with the keyboards, but not because we really like the music styles, but more to get away from the shadow of "Beyond The Glimpse of Dreams", to appeal to a more 'normal' mainstream audience in metal. I thought that was a mistake, because the album then became less Kekal in direction, but technically, as well as the songwriting, it was a huge jump over "Beyond The Glimpse", and I like the guitar sounds. We used a 1969 Fender Bassman amp the studio had at that time. It sounds amazing. Let me set it straight: "Embrace The Dead" is a pretty good album from what it is, and it is still a solid Kekal album. The only problem was because everyone was confused. Back in 1998 and 1999, Indonesia was in political turmoil, and we watched and read the news every day as things became more and more violent, and it was very hard to find a decent job in Jakarta. The economy was hit really hard, and we ran out of money. When you're in a situation where you don't know what to do, the natural way of doing things is to conform to what's already established, and that's what we did on this album. So I remember discussing it with Leo when we started to write the songs, that this album would be less offensive and more melodic with some black metal, power metal and gothic metal elements thrown in. The first song we developed together was "The Fearless and The Dedicated", and it sums everything up. Music genres play the biggest role in "Embrace The Dead", and we talked about genres more than basic ideas or moods for the musical references, and started to listen to what's 'hot' in either mainstream melodic black/death metal and gothic metal music around that time, tried to incorporate all the interesting pieces from those genres with hope that more people will buy the album. That's what I call a mistake or misstep if you want to be honest with your music. Music is not like selling cupcakes, it should be based from the inside rather than from 'what's currently in'. Also, the recording session was very chaotic and disorganized, so everything just fell all over the place.

Why did "Embrace The Dead" become the toughest of all Kekal's recording history?

"Embrace The Dead", to me, is just another classic example of a new band in the late 90s with no money trying to record a self-produced album, independently. It was a year before we started using our computer to record the music digitally, so we had to rent a studio to record the album using analog tape. It started with almost no budget. We entered the studio in February 1999, and right from the first hour there were problems with the 16-track analog tape recorder. It was working at an unstable speed that resulted in constant changes to the tune and pitch of the recorded instruments. After hours of putting down guitar tracks and hearing the terrible results, almost frustrated, we gave up and quit recording that day, as the machine needed some rest. Due to the lack of a steady budget, we couldn't even book the studio beforehand. We had to use the studio during off-time sessions between the other customers' booked days of recording sessions. Like when they had already finished their recording sessions before their final reserved days, they would leave some time off, and that was the time we should enter the studio! Not only did we have to be ready with all things, we made a total uncontrolled chaos in production and sound settings as well. You can figure out how many sound engineers we used, and we needed almost 7 months to complete the album. That's because we only used the studio no more than 6 hours per week!! Imagine that we needed to set the mixer and sound settings every time we entered the studio, and chased by time to record our tracks in a few hours. We even left some small mistakes on the tape!

Get the entire Kekal digital album discography (a bundle of 19 Kekal digital releases sold on Bandcamp including 13 full-length albums and 4 EPs) for only $29 USD. That's a 50% off a-la carte price.

A great way to check out the music of Kekal.

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