Next to Metal Blade, Combat Records were probably the most important and influential of the original US Metal labels, but its creation and history is a slightly more complicated affair than your One-Lone-Metal-Pioneer-Strikes-Gold!-type of story like those of Metal Blade's Brian Slagel or Megaforce's Jon Zazula. Luckily The Corroseum recently recieved some precious inside intel from one of the Combat 'main men' from the 80's, former production manager Joe Leonard.

In the beginning there was Important Record Distributors, a.k.a. IRD, who started out in New York in 1979 by Barry Cobrin and Steve Mason. In the beginning, IRD mainly delt with pressing & distribution of domestic as well as international indie labels (for instance you'll find their familiar logo on early releases of Megaforce, Roadracer and Metal Blade) but in 1983 Barry and Steve started up the IRD in-house label Relativity, and designated one Walter O'Brien to manage it. It was a rather eclectic affair, or as Joe Leonard puts it, "..the company did not really have a creative direction in the early days. Important was a warehouse set up and a sales office. [...] Walter was managing the label as a 'one man show'. Barry, although the owner of the label, had a whimsical interest in it. Sometimes enthusiastic and sometimes absent from the office for weeks on end, attending NY Mets baseball games."

After noticing the success of Johnny Z's Megaforce Records (whom they distributed), Walter convinced Barry that they needed a Metal sublabel. The origin of the label name is fairly undramatic. Joe: "The idea of the label name go back to Koz [IRD imports manager]. A few minutes away from the IRD office in Queens was a baseball batting cage park. Koz used to go to the batting cage after work and had a baseball bat that was made by a company called COMBAT". Since The Rods were recently dropped by Arista, they became the first band signed to the label.

Joe continues: "Walter then launched the infant label with licenses ( Mercyful Fate, Tokyo Blade, Oz etc...) and the sales on Combat releases took off along with Megaforce's titles. As IRD was pressing Metallica 'Kill em All' and the other releases (Raven, Manowar, Anthrax etc...), the cassette format began to outsell vinyl records at a pace of 4-1. This created a huge advantage for IRD to seek other deals and especially European deals as European labels usually did not manufacture the cassette format on releases or were made on a limited basis [...] The pressing and production of the labels had grown in leaps and bounds so much that Walter sought out a Record manufacturing broker to handle the album cover artwork and pressing coordination. As there may be some 'missing in action' catalog numbers, it is most likely due to the outside broker relationship as Walter was simply overwhelmed at that time. Added to Walter's avalanche, was Barry's absentee method of management and keeping the 'boat at neutral' and at 'anchor'."

It is at this moment that one Steve Sinclair and our friend Joe Leonard (incidently the then vocalist of NY HM obscurists Frigid Bich!) steps into the picture. "I started running the label with Steve and our first signing was Megadeth. Steve then struck a deal with Roadrunner for product (Tank 'Honor & Blood', Jaguar, Jag Panzer and some other releases) as well as a deal with Metal Blade for Trouble... later on Slayer. After I started running the label with Steve , we took a pretty aggressive approach to running it. We cut off the record manufacturer broker and transferred all of our masters and production materials to 3 different pressing plants. [...] We also resurrected Relativity which had been dormant since Walter left."

Joe summarizes: "The label's genesis was more of a patchwork that was not put into an organized path until Steve and I took over. Don't get me wrong, their were good intentions by the people before us but we inherited a mess and had to build a label rather than a pressing entity that served the import distributor. The labels went from being a series of side projects to the life blood of the company in 1985."

• The missing numbers in the list are confirmed off-topic Relativity releases (they shared the same serial index and includes everything from Tangerine Dream to Alien Sex Fiend to musical soundtracks) so I have of course left them out, bar a handful of noteworthy exceptions. I still need info on the ones with the usual "Know More?"-pic, even if plenty of them (all perhaps..) will probably turn out to be Relativity- and not Combat releases.
  
  
• I've included the titles of Combat's HC/Punk sisterlabel Combat Core, since these bands and albums are commonly considered part of the Combat-family. These artists later shifted to Combat Records after the CC imprint was scrapped in 1987.
  
  
• On the other hand I've left out the Sub-Core Records material, seeing as they weren't really related to Combat at all but originally an indie HC label that later got picked up by Relativity. I think.

• This list is now enhanced with a new "Versions"-column, where I've listed all the known pressing variations of each Metal vinyl release. Most notable variation details are labels, barcode/no barcode and vinyl color. Here are some examples of the standard labels that Combat have used through the years:
  
  
  
  
• * = Die-hard, completist collectors take note! Versions marked with an "*" exists in at least 2 different pressings with the same label color but with text design variations - sometimes very minor ones. Here's some examples of how these might look:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Bear in mind that there might be multiple pressings of the same release, were the different editions have label- and sleeve designs that are damn near indistinguishable from each other. For instance I haven't bothered to research any variations in run-out groove etchings - I'll leave minute details like those to Discogs. This page is only aiming to give a good overview of the label output.
  
  
• I will not bother to research CD, MC and non-Metal variants due to time restraints and personal disinterest, but if you would like to make such a page, let me know and I'll be sure to link it.
  
  
• There's no way in hell that this section is complete, so please let me know if you've discovered any more versions not in the list, either by email or at the forum thread.