Release
The first track on the album, "Power", was featured on the "Wax Trax! Summer Swindle", a cassette sampler included with 45,000 issues of the July 1996 issue of Alternative Press. Another 50,000 copies of the sampler were to be handed out at summer college and beach events and given away at radio stations. 90,000 pre-release posters and information sheets were mailed out to fans.
Nicole Blackman wrote the promotional piece for the album's press kit, and at the request of Sascha Konietzko, wrote the first half of the promo as an insulting take down of the album rather than as a standard promo. The first letter of each line of the first section of the promo spelled out the phrase "April Fools Day Fucker" and included lines such as "It's been 100 years and fifty albums for the German/American rock squad—are they running out of gas or what?" and "KMFDM can't suck hard enough", a quote from the track "Inane". The second half of the promo included phrases such as "XTORT is a supersonic soundtrack" and "The new album is the sound of a band at the height of their powers." Carrie Borzillo of Billboard stated that KMFDM was "poised to make a significant commercial breakthrough." Konietzko stated at the time that there were no plans to tour in support of the album's release.
Xtort was released on June 25, 1996 on Wax Trax!/TVT on cassette, CD, and vinyl. The album was also released in CD format in Europe and Japan. In addition to being the first KMFDM album to chart in the Billboard 200, staying there for three weeks and peaking at No. 92 the week of July 13, 1996, Xtort sold over 200,000 copies, making it the best-selling album in the band's history. The song "Son of a Gun" was made into an animated video by visual artist Aidan "Brute!" Hughes, who also did the album's cover artwork. On March 6, 2007, Metropolis Records released a digitally remastered version of the album on CD and MP3.
Read more about this topic: Xtort
Famous quotes containing the word release:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)
“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)