Want to make metal dangerous again? Cover your records in extremely corrosive goo.

Metal is a genre that generates a visceral, sweaty, sometimes vomitous reaction from the audience. What better way to reflect the contents of music than by adding the tactile sensation of squish to physical records. Morbid Angel agrees with me.

Way back in 1995, Earache put out a limited edition set of 1000 “slime packs” of Domination, a fitting tribute to “Where the Slime Live.” Each CD came specially packed in a plastic sleeve with some gooey green gunk swimming around atop the record. Unfortunately, there were some complications. As Digby of Earache noted on the Earache blog:

The first we heard of any problem was when an anxious warehouse manager called us up to complain that some of the boxes had been damaged in transit and the green slime oozing out had burned a hole in a workers clothing.It also stained the floor bright green, and couldn’t be washed off. Then when they discovered the packing slip which accompanied the CD, they immediately locked it away and refused to handle the shipment any more.

This packing slip was about 10 pages long, the first 2 of which gave the chemical composition of all the ingredients of the slime, the rest of the pages contained dire warnings about it. Do not inhale, Do not touch, seek immediate medical attention if on skin, may cause burns, may cause neurological damage and so on. It was scary and unreal.

Almost every copy of the slime pack was disposed of in a safe, well-regulated manner. Just kidding. Almost all of them were dumped in the river Trent. Only a small handful of copies were released to the general public and as recently as 2009, a copy of this possibly toxic record sold for $1200. Hot damn.

The idea was apparently born from Slayer‘s special “Blood Pack” single from Seasons in the Abyss, a limited edition pressing that probably sold way better than Morbid Angel’s foray into the world of squishy records. You can pick up a copy of this 1990 record for less than $30 on Discogs.

But the earliest and grossest example of this “slime” packaging concept came from Robb Flynn’s one good album, Eternal Nightmare. Vio-lence put out a very limited edition, “vomit”-caked promotional 10″ for Eternal Nightmare way back in 1988. If you’re feeling flush with cash, you can pick up your own copy from Discogs. The “vomit” was rumored to be made of vegetable soup and vinegar, so unless the seller has kept their record in the freezer since the Reagan presidency, the puke is gonna be all dry and crusty.

I believe that it’s time to resurrect this short-lived phenomenon of putting weird gooey stuff into album packaging. Municipal Waste can cover their next record in a soup of beer and chewed-up pizza, Eyehategod can soak their upcoming album in codeine syrup, and Steel Panther can adorn their newest with actual human shit.