Soul Merchants’ music is best described as the band dubbed it 20 years ago: psychedelic death rock. On the surface, one could consider them Denver’s version of Sisters of Mercy, but even in the ’80s these guys were too old to be the new hip goth act and their ’60s psych and ’70s glam influences shined brightly over the darkness. Too punk for the goths and too goth for the punks, Soul Merchants never fit into the “scene” yet still collected a devoted fan-base during their brief 1985-’87 tenure. After an exhausting two years with over a hundred songs recorded, Soul Merchants threw in the towel and performed their final show at the inaugural South By Southwest in Austin. 
 
This double disc set contains 80 minutes of music on each disc, compiling the best material from their four-track recording sessions. The songs come from their cassette releases only, as the LP Gates of Heaven will likely be reissued as its own entity in the future. Each song was remixed and remastered from the original tapes at Absinthe Studio by former Soul Merchant Bob Ferbrache. 
 
Ferbrache also performed in Human Head Transplant simultaneously with Soul Merchants. He subsequently went on to create most music in Blood Axis, joined 16 Horsepower and Tarantella, and filled in for Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. However, he is perhaps best known fan apocalypse inside an orangeor his production work for NON, Death In June, Berlin, Bow Wow Wow, and, in Soul Merchant days, the Fluid, Warlock Pinchers, and Bum Kon.