CATHOLICON's Blasphyre has issued the following update:

"The special digital-release version of Of Ages Past is currently at the mastering lab being worked on by the legendary Brad Cobb, after an exhaustive three-month remix/reconstruction. Every part of the album was taken apart and put back together, with some freshly re-amped guitar tracks, replaced and re-edited drum sounds, and the vocals re-recorded for one song ('Faith Of The Fallen'). The track order may also wind up being a little different and we hope to have at least one bonus track that was left off of the original release version. Expect the album to finally hit iTunes (and the rest of cyberspace music retailing) sometime in the second quarter of 2010. While we fully stand behind the CD release version (and only the real CD has the extra box set DVD-ROM!); we realize that today there are simply people who don't buy CDs any more. Rather than ignore this growing (now the largest, actually) market; we've finally decided to do something special for them.

Our second and third albums (Death Throes and Treatise) have been available through iTunes for some years now. Our former digital provider (Crystal Clear) has decided to close it's doors and the albums may have dropped off of most digital provider's websites for the time being. These accounts were transferred to a new provider and they will be back up soon. We were originally going to pull the albums during this transition; but as we have no firm agreement on a possible remix/remaster of the albums at this time, we will allow the original masters to stay available for the near future.

Lastly, a special treat just for the MySpace crowd. Last year during a move, I uncovered the original 1998 DAT to our original album, Lost Chronicles. This album is practically out of print and has never been available online. Because the DAT was beginning to deteriorate, I knew it had to be transferred and restored before it was too late. Though sadly not in time to make it onto the Of Ages Past: Excommunicated box set DVDR, the album was nonetheless very carefully transferred, digitally through AES, on the best clean and working DAT machine I could find in Baton Rouge, on a balanced-power system with isolated ground, superb clock and capture interface, and carefully remastered in a 64bit environment.

While of course the album is as raw and chaotic as all hell; this remastered and loudness-maximized edition from the original source DAT gives the clearest view ever of whatever insanity was going on in that cursed and infamous 1997 production. Listening back to this new version, I have been pleased to hear a few little anomalies and background synth notes and other things that were buried in the din of the earlier released forms of this album. This version narrows the gap between Lost Chronicles and the production of the later albums by a noticable degree. This version is going to be put up on MySpace for a short time in the next month or so, and then taken back down. There are no other plans for it."