Beggars Banquet has opened the archive once again, letting a familiar duststorm roll through the room as Fields of the Nephilim’s Dawnrazor rides again—arriving December 12th on CD and expanded white double-vinyl. The timing feels almost fated: the UK band will soon carry their peculiar strain of Gothic Americana and occultism back into the West for the first time in years, appearing in Houston for Dark Ceremony in April 2026. For a group whose entire aesthetic grew out of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns—that widescreen collision of dust, danger, and myth, their return out West lands like a vision completing its long arc. With that rare appearance on the horizon, this remaster sharpens the album’s grain, tension, and frontier grandeur back into present focus.
Formed in 1984 under the relentless vision of frontman Carl McCoy, the Nephilim carved a place for themselves in British music by fusing Cowboy aesthetics, ritual intensity, and a serrated sense of scale. Their presence left its mark across genres far beyond their own orbit; you can catch their imprint in the wide crescendos of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the austere roar of Swans, the celestial weight of Explosions in the Sky, and the wilderness hymns of Wolves in the Throne Room and Behemoth. Dawnrazor was the ignition point; an album that felt less like a debut and more like an omen.
This new edition restores that omen in full. Early releases of Dawnrazor scattered tracks across territories, leaving no single edition to contain its complete form. The 2025 remaster corrects the record, assembling all fourteen pieces onto vinyl and on CD for the first time since the long-out-of-print five-album box. The expansion to a double LP gives the music room to stretch its legs with renewed clarity.
The album’s entrance remains a marvel of cinematic mood: Intro (The Harmonica Man) pulls Morricone’s theme from Once Upon a Time in the West and sets it against the Nephilim’s own rising dread, as if Leone’s ghost had wandered into an abandoned desert chapel. From there, Dawnrazor unfolds with steady purpose: Slow Kill, Vet for the Insane, Dust, and the title track each carving a different path across McCoy’s fevered frontier. And then there is Preacher Man, a cornerstone of gothic rock, carried by its thunderous drive and commandments hurled from the pulpit of some desolate parish.
Listen to Preacher Man below:
Nearly four decades on, Dawnrazor stands tall; an album built like a weathered monument, its surface cracked by time but its presence unwavering. This reissue reminds us of its foundations and the best of Gothic rock.
Pre-order the album here.
Tracklisting:
- Intro (The Harmonica Man) (2025 Remaster)
- Slow Kill (2025 Remaster)
- Volcane (Mr Jealousy Has Returned) (2025 Remaster)
- Vet for the Insane (2025 Remaster)
- Dust (2025 Remaster)
- Reanimator (2025 Remaster)
- Dawnrazor (2025 Remaster)
- The Sequel (2025 Remaster)
- Preacher Man (2025 Remaster)
- Power (2025 Remaster)
- Blue Water (2025 Remaster)
- Laura II (2025 Remaster)
- Secrets (2025 Remaster)
- The Tower (2025 Remaster)
Follow Fields of the Nephilim:
Or via: