Scar Symmetry is giving a good chunk of their back catalog their first ever vinyl pressings this year! Included in the run are Pitch Black Progress (2006), Holographic Universe (2008), Dark Matter Dimensions (2009), and The Unseen Empire (2011), all of which are available for pre-order here before their April 14 release.
The press release for the vinyl reissues also notes that Scar Symmetry has completed work on their long-awaited new record The Singularity (Phase II – Xenotaph), though no release date has been announced. As for why the new album has taken so long, Scar Symmetry guitarist Per Nilsson explained in a recent interview that it was a combination of things.
"It's been a really, really drawn out process. I wrote the songs [for Phase II] back in 2016 – the main [parts] of the songs were written back then. We recorded drums also in 2016, and then we recorded the rest on and off for for the next few years.
"Then in 2017, I started playing with Meshuggah and I also started playing with Nocturnal Rites. Which was nice for me because it was something that I needed at the time. I felt like doing something else after many years of doing Scar Symmetry. That sort of put the Scar Symmetry thing a little bit on the side. We never went on a real hiatus. We were in cryo-suspension or something for a bit."
Nilsson notes that Scar Symmetry has been working on all the behind the scenes stuff like booking agents and legal representation over the past few years after re-signing to Nuclear Blast, but has sadly hit a new snag with the artwork for Phase II.
"We've had the album release postponed almost a year longer than what we thought because we had a sad thing happen where the artwork artist that was working on the artwork for us, he disappeared. Then he let us know that his mom had passed. It's a really sad situation.
"We haven't really talked about [that situation] a lot, but that postponed things a lot because then we had to find a new artwork artist. Yes, we're currently still in a holding pattern waiting for the release date to be set."
