A Perfect Circle – Mer De Noms

I recently got a new pressing from February 2025 without a capitol sticker, says "Printed in the U.S.A. Made in the Netherlands", huh? The barcodes still match and the artwork is super crisp, even better than most of my vinyls. Sound is clear, no surface noises, wall of rich bass and distinctive instruments/vocals.

This pressing is quite good; I much preferred it to the original CD. More dynamic, lots more thump and low mids, and the high end isn't as grating or fatiguing.

Marantz SA8005
Technics SL-DD22 (Audio Technica Series V cart)
Cambridge Audio 640p
Yamaha AS-501

Nice pressing. Huge bass, nice wide soundstage, good music. Recommended.

The music is great but this pressing is flat. Did a side by side comparison to the streaming version on spotify and it sounds identical. I had to turn the volume way up to get the same dynamics as the other records I was playing that day. Looking at the reviews, it seems there are better sounding pressings for comparable prices.

Perfect pressing. Seen some pressings that claim to be this one but are
Easily detected by the highly pixelated cover art. Mine has the hype sticker, features beautiful high quality reproduction of the cover art and it sounds amazing. This takes me back to my youth only with a heavier weightier sound. Highly recommend

Despite unforgiveable front and inner artwork (virgin records what are you doing? seriously?! this would take anyone with a basic adobe skillset 10 minutes to solve) - the records and the music on them, in all truth, sound fantastic. It's just a shame this release hasn't had the basic level of care go into it's presentation. This is the kind of album which works so well on vinyl, it should look as good as it sounds, but they've catastrophically f'd that up here

The Vinyl pressing is almost perfect, slight noise from the grove, but acceptable, vinyl is clean and flat, and sounds better than the CD version, so decent mastering too... but that cover! How the hell did that get past quality control? I could have done a better job on a HP inkjet printer at home!

Oh, and mine came with the correct album version of sleeping beauty, not the live version.

I seem to have a version that is not listed here. I bought it recently from HHV.de for 52 euros. The runout says: HDP2021 / UMG492531E / B. GIEL [or something] / Welcome to 1979. It 's a gatefold, the cover looks fine, not pixelated at all. It didn't have hype stickers. It has the extended intro to Sleeping Beauty, but it's not the live version I think (never heard that version before, but on my copy it sounds like the studio version to me). Any idea's? Is it a bootleg?

I cannot fathom how this release has gotten the rather good rating it has here on Discogs. Aside from the sound quality, packaging and overall quality of the full product should also be a big part on how we rate releases.
And quite simply put - this release is abysmal.

Almost all artwork is completely pixelated, especially the front cover.
I love this album so much, I thought I should at least give it a spin to see if the sound quality is ok and was pondering to keep it, but I got two copies of Side C/D in my version, so even that they got wrong. Along with the confirmation/fact that it STILL contains the live version of Sleeping Beauty, I was so angry that I sent it back without even listening.

This should not be the standard for a band as big as APC and a release this sought after, simply horrific QC and a cash grab for the money that is asked for a reissue like this nowadays as well.

I agree with the other comments. No 'milky' sound or anything else, basically, no surprises. In a blind test, I wouldn't guess this one to be a picture disc. But of course this being a picture disc, that is what you get so.. for some the gatefold may be better.