EARACHE IS GIVING WORMROT’S NEW ALBUM DIRGE AWAY FOR FREE! #F*CKLEAKS

I may spend a lot of time bagging on head honcho Digby Pearson, but I gotta hand it to Earache Records: they’re definitely willing to experiment with the power of the Internet more than any other metal label. Exhibit A) Dig’s Ask Earache blog. Exhibit B) That free Gama Bomb album download experiment. Exhibit C) The Stagediving iPhone app. Exhibit D) They’re giving away Wormrot’s unreleased album Dirge away for free over a month ahead of its official release.

Wait, what? Dirge isn’t supposed to be released until May 3rd (May 23rd in Europe) and they’re giving it away for free download now? Zuh???

Seems as if Dirge leaked heavily over the weekend and was all over message boards, torrent sites and .rar blogs within hours. So if you’re Earache, you’re saying to yourself “Hmmm. If folks are going to download this for free anyway we may as well offer it up for free via official channels where we can also plug a limited edition vinyl, a CD+DVD combo, and t-shirts. If even just a small portion of folks passing through buy something, we win.” And they’d be exactly correct. If only more labels would think this way instead of trying to prevent something that is entirely unpreventable.

So, that said, go and download Wormrot’s new album Dirge entirely for free! No strings attached, except that you’ll have to see a tiny text ad for physical Wormrot goods. And hey, buy some of those too if you feel so inclined! Wormrot’s a great band they deserve it.

-VN