Daniel Amos Horrendous Disc Remaster Story

The story of Daniel Amos's Horrendous Disc has been told many times. They recorded it in 1978 for Maranatha! records but before it could be released, the label released the band and gave them permission to shop the album around. Maranatha! was getting out of the Contemporary Christian Music business to concentrate on children's records and their very popular Praise series.

(Disclosure: Jerry Chamberlain says there are "lots of inaccuracies here." When I reminded him that most of the information came from DA's own website, he said that he's been working with the creator of the site to fix things. I really don't know which details he thinks are inaccurate. The basic story has been told in many different forums and is, I believe, accurate. When they release the final product with a booklet telling the story, I'll be happy to revise this post.)

In a move that made sense at the time, DA signed with Street Level Artists Agency and Solid Rock Records. Larry Norman, the owner, was a legend in the burgeoning CCM field. By all accounts, he was also a difficult and controlling person.

To make a long story short, Norman insisted on changing some of the songs and remixing it himself. All of this took a tremendous amount of time and the album, which was essentially completed by the end of 1978 wasn't released until April 1, 1981. Norman was apparently moved to finally get it out because DA had announced that their next album, ¡Alarma! was set for release on June 1.

Despite the delays, Horrendous Disc acquired legend status in the CCM world. DA fans already knew the songs from hearing them at myriads of concert the band performed during those years. Still they eagerly snapped up the album.

For the longest time, the album was only available on vinyl since Norman owned the rights to the album. Solid Rock finally released it on CD in March, 2000. Fan complains centered around the sound of the disc and the inclusion of not one, but two versions of Larry Norman covering his favorite DA song, "Hound of Heaven."

Financed by a Kickstarter campaign, DA has released a special edition of Horrendous Disc. Befitting an album that originally took three years to release, it has missed its original release date of August, 2017. When it was announced in early December that the album wouldn't be coming out until early 2018, there was apparently a hue and cry from the long-waiting Kickstarter contributors.

So, DA quickly responded by giving those fans a code to digitally download the first two discs of the project. The completed collection will have four discs. In the next post, I will review the digital download of those two discs.