Howie Abrams (former Roadrunner Records A&R executive): Ray let me know that he’d been thinking about starting another label (he’s the co-founder of Revelation Records). I was never clear on how that all came together.

Howie, tell me a bit about the Supersoul and Roadrunner connection. Vision of Disorder 7 Willow St, Portchester, NY, circa 1994. We just all thought “look at all those bands.” And that is what we wanted. We signed away our songs and rights to our merch since they also owned Blue Grape merch company and that was a non negotiable part of the deal. Our lawyer, who was recommended to us by Ray (he was also his lawyer)-that’s how dumb we were-even he said this is the worst deal in history. Every band told us don’t sign with Roadrunner. We had been approached by some smaller indie labels at the time.

They could have offered us the worst deal in history and we were going to take the deal. He told us about his label (Supersoul) that he was starting with Howie Abrams and Roadrunner and said he wanted us to be their first band.

Mike Fleischmann (bassist): We had met Ray through playing a show with Shelter in Pennsylavania. How did you guys meet Ray and why did you decide to do the deal? The deal with Roadrunner went through Supersoul, a label owned by Ray Cappo, singer of Youth of Today, Shelter, and Better Than a Thousand. We had a deal on the table from a record label that had all of these bands that we loved: Sepultura, Type O Negative, Madball, Life of Agony, Fear Factory, Machine Head). I may even be forgetting some - that is how stacked the label was at that time '95/'96. I was 18 at the time and the other guys were all 20. Mike Fleischmann (bassist): We had no management at all going into the Roadrunner deal. Going into your first proper record deal, you guys had a lot of momentum. No Echo chatted with Vision of Disorder bassist Mike Fleischmann and vocalist Tim Williams, plus former Roadrunner Records A&R executive Howie Abrams, about the making of the album. Metal and hardcore had been merged way before they came around, but Vision of Disorder carved out its own lane within that stylistic space, and their debut record captured that, warts and all. Songs like 'Element,' 'Through My Eyes,' and 'Watering Disease' burst through with a specific energy that was unique to the group. While it's sonically not the best representation of the Long Island band, Vision of Disorder still delivers in a big way. After not listening to record in quite a while, I threw it on recently and was reminded how much I loved the material and performances on it. The eponymous debut album from Vision of Disorder sounds as fresh and engaging today as it did when it was released by by Roadrunner Records in 1996.

System of a down self titled zip