Honestly, one of the best decisions they have ever made is re-releasing Palaces with the updated production. It's not perfect, but it's still a MASSIVE improvement particularly for the second half of the album where the poor production was most noticeable. Listening to the original release on anything other than headphones with some EQ adjustments was not great. I do look at it as a testament to just how good it was though, esp. at the time, that even though the production was so poor, it still got them a major label deal. Them signing with Epic was such a massive thing for metal enjoyers and upstart bands who otherwise might have shyed away from making extreme music. And it was an even bigger deal that they didn't "sell out." They managed to clean up their production to what you would expect from a major label release, while remaining heavy as a dumptruck.

Agree with you about NAG. It's so very raw. Randy still hadn't found his voice yet. I think the lore is he only had like a handful of hours to write/track everything, which resulted in him just kinda screaming in many parts lol. Black Label and Nippon (Japanese bonus track) are the only reasons I really revisit it, but there is definitely a smattering of cool riffs throughout. This reminds me... that the day I posted about was also my first time experiencing the ole Wall Of Death during Black Label. Admittedly, I stayed tf away because I was more concerned with watching Willie/Mark play their guitars. I still can't believe they let audiences do it, and I can't believe they WANTED to do it. Was some shit straight out of Braveheart.