Sacred Reich guitarist Wiley Arnett recently guested on the Chuck Shute Podcast. He discussed the band's new album, offered his thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic and its affects on the concert scene, and the band's attempts to regain the rights to their catalogue from Hollywood Records. Following is an excerpt from the transcript.

Chuck Shute:  I heard Phil (Rind / vocals, bass) talking about your guys's old catalog, that you guys are still trying to get the rights to that old catalog because some of these old records are out of print, and they're selling for like 40 or 50 bucks on eBay. So I guess Phil wrote this big long email to the record company, pouring his heart and soul out to Hollywood Records saying "Look, I know this isn't a priority for you, but this is our life's work. We really need this" .... and the response he got back was "You're right. It's not a priority for us." This is just terrible. So did you guys ever get the rights to those old records?

Arnett: "No. No, it seems like we were running into strangers who are busy with other shit and were brutally honest - 'You're right, this is not a priority for us" - that really did happen. And it was a beautifully articulate letter that Phil wrote. He did a really nice job of framing up the a reasonable debate about why we should engage in this conversation. And there might be compromise....'We need to split the difference. Yeah, let's get busy with it. You keep a piece.... we'll do the pushing. Yeah, to see if we can create some money for you.' But it's such small potatoes for what they're doing, and it just fell on deaf ears. We've been unable to secure the Hollywood Records stuff, which is Independent. Okay, and A Question, which was an EP that we kind of dropped out of ourselves because they were impatient while we were getting Independent ready. They just signed us and needed something. So we did the Question EP.

Chuck Shute: So you can still get them on iTunes on Spotify and stuff, right? Or you just you guys don't own it? 

Arnett: "Right, we don't we don't have the right to reproduce it and release it and distribute it through Metal Blade, our current record label. We want to rerelease it. We wanted to print them up and have new ones sure that the prices that you were talking about down to a reasonable price, and we don't need to have a million of those laying around. But even if we just printed 5,000 or 10,000, it would drive down that price. We hate the idea of thinking that people are spending.... some of the things we've seen on eBay, because it's so weird. It's a tremendous compliment to think to something you did so long ago. It's become valuable. But you also recognize this because it's rare. It's like Brazilian ginger root, you got to really dig for it."

Check out the complete audio interview and the transcript here.

Sacred Reich recently launched their new video for "Salvation". Frontman and bassist Phil Rind comments: "We want to put something positive out there right now. 'Salvation' is about music's ability to encourage and inspire us and bring us together."

"Salvation" is off the band's latest album, Awakening. Watch the video (shot and edited by Fiaz Farrelly) below.

(Photo - Stephanie Cabral)