Scarab have issued a statement explaining the recent pause in promotion around their latest album, Transmutation Of Fate, citing unauthorised physical editions, incorrect digital credits and what the band describe as a breakdown in quality control and administration.
According to the band, the album had been fully completed and delivered before release, with separate masters prepared for digital platforms, CD and vinyl, alongside complete artwork assets. Scarab say they had also prepared an independent promotional campaign for the album, but decided to stop activity after discovering that the final presentation of the release did not match what had been agreed.
The band said that multiple conflicting configurations of Transmutation Of Fate were placed into the marketplace without their consent, despite written refusals. These included standard CD copies distributed without the booklet, layout, liner notes, band member attributes and music composition credits. Scarab also said a separate print-on-demand CD version was made using their assets, while the CD artwork configuration was applied to vinyl editions without the band’s approval.
For Scarab, the issue is tied directly to how the album was meant to be experienced: “To us, a release is a complete audio-visual experience that requires full lyrics, conceptual artwork, and proper performance and music composing credits for every musician involved,” the band said.
They added that the visual material created for Transmutation Of Fate was intended to serve as the definitive representation of the music, and that seeing it stripped back and split across different formats was “deeply disheartening”.
The band also pointed to problems on digital streaming platforms, saying track-level metadata and performer credits were delivered with serious structural errors. According to Scarab, the credits currently displayed online are incorrect, incomplete and misleading, and do not properly represent the technical, musical and artistic contributions made to the album.
Scarab have now terminated the physical distribution rights with the provider involved. The band also said print-on-demand platforms have placed a compliance freeze on the unauthorised CD and vinyl storefronts.
The band apologised to fans who received what they described as non-compliant copies or saw the album misrepresented online. Scarab are now working to correct the digital metadata independently and reclaim the physical rights, with the aim of making full-booklet physical editions of Transmutation Of Fate available directly.
A separate update will follow with the full studio production, technical and creative credits, along with a dedicated link to the official lyrics for each track.
Scarab were featured with an interview in the first issue of AFRICA.ROCKS Digital Magazine.
