"It has become the cult classic we always intended it to be…" Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt's Storm Corrosion gets deluxe reissue

Storm Corrosion, Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfeldt's 2012 side-project, is to have their sole 2012 release reissued on vinyl through Kscope Records on September 27. You can watch a video trailer for the new reissue below.

"It remains one of my favourite releases in my whole catalogue," says Wilson. "Part of what made it so much fun was that pretty much anything that either of us suggested, the other would agree it should definitely be pursued, no matter how crazy and off the wall it sounded. I don’t know what the people expecting a full-on heavy rock album made of it. In many ways it has become the cult classic we always intended it to be…"

"Throughout all of my years as a musician, it’s very rare for me to return to a record I have participated in myself for the sheer listening pleasure alone,” adds Åkerfeldt. “Storm Corrosion is the exception. It’s such a lovely record to me. I can distance myself from my own work on it and just experience it as a fan of its music. Everything about this record is strange in the best way possible.

"We’d talked many times over the years about doing a project with just the two of us,” continues WIlson. "In 2011 we quietly got together for a week at my studio, and started to make music, not knowing where it would take us, but knowing that the last thing we wanted to do was the obvious. Instead, we found ourselves making an album of weird psychedelic chamber folk music, almost child-like in places, with lots of dissonance, orchestral arrangements and weird bits."

The new reissue will be available as a gatefold vinyl double album in orange and purple vinyl, yellow and black vinyl, plus an eight-page booklet and on Blu-ray and CD,

The Blu-ray will feature a new Steven Wilson 2024 Dolby Atmos mix of the album's six tracks, plus Hi-Res stereo and 5.1 DTS HD surround sound mixes and instrumental mixes of each track, plus a mini-album documentary, the promo video for Drag Ropes plus a live recording of the song from Royal Albert Hall in 2015 and demo versions of Drag Ropes and Hag.

Fans have long clamoured for a second album of the disquieting acid folk-meets-prog the pair conjured up in Storm Corrosion and while both Wilson and Akerfeldt remain fond of the album, with a new Opeth album and a new Steven Wilson solo album on the horizon, it seems they'll be waiting a while longer.

"I love that record," Wilson told Prog back in 2021. "Obviously, there’s a geographical issue. We can’t just get together on Tuesday nights and jam and we don’t want to do it by email. We did Storm Corrosion when we were in the same room at the same time the whole time we made that record, and we wouldn’t want to do a record any other way. I like to think we’ll do it eventually."

In the brand new issue of Classic Rock Magazine Akerfeldt adds, "I went to see Steven in London to talk and to drink. I pitched the idea of a possible next record from Storm Corrosion, He didn't really buy into the idea.

"Steve doesn't want to send music [over the Internet]. He prefers to make it together in the same room. But I'll bring it up again. I'm sure we'll do something new."

Pre-order Storm Corrosion.

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Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.