Normally, as a matter of principle, I don’t do On the Radar pieces about signed bands, but in the case of long-running Warsaw outfit Corruption, it only seems fitting. They’ve been together since the early ’90s, gradually morphed from death/doom into the stoner rock they play today, and if there’s one single band who laid the groundwork for the development of the Polish scene and the bands covered in this series — as well as acts we won’t get to, like The Vagitarians, Death Denied and Bullshit Baby — it’s them. Before there was a Polish scene to speak of, there was Corruption.

Next year the band celebrates its 20th anniversary, but for now, they’ve just released their album in five years in Poland called Bourbon River Bank that, at least judging by the songs they’ve added to MySpace, is full of brash riffage, Satan and boozing. To celebrate, Corruption just recently completed an 11-date tour of their homeland, hitting Warsaw, Gdansk, Krakow and Olsztyn along the way. Bourbon River Bank has a May release date set for the rest of Europe.

Of course, there’s no real way to tell without asking each individual band now in the scene how much of an influence Corruption has had on them — and no, I’m not going to do that — but I’m willing to bet it’s tangible. To be successful, every group of bands needs one act everyone can look up to, who’ve been around a while, who can draw people out to shows, who can give recording advice, etc., and given their relative experience as compared to a lot of the bands with whom they’re sharing stages, it’s easy to see Corruption in that role. The real bonus is that, by all accounts, they haven’t stopped unleashing liver-blasting rock and roll in the meantime.

Fact is, when Metal Mind reissues something, they do it up right — albums remastered on golden discs, digipaks, liner notes, limited runs, bonus tracks out the ass, sometimes redone art and sometimes not, and when they acquire a property, they consider the best way of getting it out there to the people. They’re not all great, because in the Polish imprint’s quest to mine the back catalogs of the likes of Nuclear Blast and Roadrunner there are duds a-plenty, but in the case of Mountain Mama’s, the triple CD box set combining West Virginian recently-reunited, mostly-instrumental riff-mongers Karma to Burn‘s three full-lengths — Karma to Burn (1997), Wild Wonderful Purgatory (1999) and Almost Heathen (2002) — they nailed it.

I’d liken it to the box treatment Warner International gave to Kyuss‘ Blues for the Red Sun, Welcome to Sky Valley and …And the Circus Leaves Town in 2000, but where that was essentially the three albums wrapped in cardboard, Metal Mind gives us these remastered three Karma to Burn discs in a custom digipak with striking artwork by Elizabeth Duebell biting the head off the Wild Wonderful Purgatory cover; redder and without the lady patriot. Hard to lose when you’ve got a Satanic goat dressed in Native American garb riding a horse carring the West Virginia state flag.

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