A bad mix can kill a debut album before anyone hears it. For Black Label Society, the heavy metal band built around guitarist and singer Zakk Wylde, that almost became the story of their first record, Sonic Brew.
A delayed US release
The album arrived in Japan on October 28, 1998, when the record first went on sale there, but American fans had to wait. The US release on Spitfire Records did not come until May 4, 1999, held back because the sound quality of the original mix was judged too poor to put out.
That delay forced a decision. Wylde and drummer Phil Ondich went back into the studio and recorded a bonus track, "Lost My Better Half," for the American edition. The song was more aggressive than anything else on the record, and it changed the band's direction.
The song was more aggressive than anything else on the record, and it changed the band's direction.
Wylde's first album as frontman
Wylde wrote every song on Sonic Brew himself and handled guitar, vocals, bass, and piano, making it his first album as a frontman. The music mixed heavy metal, southern metal, groove metal, and hard rock, but the bonus track pointed somewhere darker and heavier. The album ran just under an hour, a full-length statement of intent. Wylde produced the record with Ron Albert and Howard Albert, while Lee DeCarlo handled engineering and mixing with help from Rony Brack. Frank Cesarano mastered the finished album.
The album's troubles did not end with the mix. The original cover looked so much like a Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky bottle that the company sent Wylde a demand to stop using it. Black Label Society reissued the record with a new cover built around a skull logo. The legal trouble over the cover was not the only wrinkle in the album's history. "Mother Mary," one of the songs on Sonic Brew, began as an unreleased demo by Wylde's earlier band Pride & Glory. A live version had been played at the Monsters of Rock festival in Donington in 1994, but the Black Label Society recording was almost entirely different musically and lyrically, keeping only the main chorus text.
Early American copies even included a free Zakk Wylde guitar pick, a small gesture that suggested the band wanted fans to feel they were getting something special after the wait. Later, a third version added a cover of Ozzy Osbourne's "No More Tears," the song Wylde had co-written with Mike Inez and others years earlier. The album also produced two promotional singles, "Born to Lose" and "No More Tears," though no music videos were made for them. A promotional video for "Bored to Tears" did appear later, released to mark the album's twentieth anniversary.
The Sabbath connection ran deep. The main riff of "Peddlers of Death" on Sonic Brew echoes the riff from Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" off Master of Reality, a direct nod to the band that shaped Wylde's playing. The original "Peddlers of Death" had been an acoustic bonus track on Wylde's solo album Book of Shadows. On Sonic Brew, the song was reworked with a heavier arrangement, and its main riff drew directly from Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf."
Sonic Brew came out on vinyl and CD, and AllMusic gave it four stars. Its rough edges and legal headaches did not sink it. Instead, the forced detour produced a harder sound that Black Label Society carried into everything that followed. In 2019, Black Label Society marked the album's twentieth anniversary with a remixed edition called Sonic Brew - 20th Anniversary Blend 5.99 - 5.19. Released on May 17, 2019, it included two bonus tracks: a piano rendition of "Spoke in the Wheel" and an acoustic take of "Black Pearl." The remixed album reached number 8 on the Billboard Top Independent Albums chart on May 31, 2019.