album Helen of Troy (1975) but with a shortened title and was released as a single in both the UK and Europe in October 1982. Cale described his mood while making Music for a New Society as "grotesque." In an interview with Melody Maker shortly after the album's release, Cale said, "That album was agony. It was like method acting. Madness. Excruciating. I just let myself go. It became a kind of therapy, a personal exorcism. The songs are mostly about regret and misplaced faith." In What's Welsh for Zen? (1999), Cale further commented that "There were some examples where songs ended up so emaciated they weren't songs any more. What I was most interested in was the terror of the moment... It was a bleak record all right, but it wasn't made to make people jump out of windows." Release Music for a New Society was first released on vinyl and cassette in September 1982 by ZE and Island. In 1993, Yellow Moon Records reissued the album on CD for the first time, featuring the previously unreleased bonus track "In the Library of Force". On CD, the 58-second instrumental "Mama's Song", which originally featured as a standalone track on the vinyl LP release, was now incorporated into the running time of "(I Keep A) Close Watch". Additionally, the song "Sanctus" is commonly referred to as "Sanities"; the engineer's handwritten title of "Sanctus" was misread, and the track was first named "Santies" on the LP. The 1993 CD reissue calls it "Sanities". When the album was remastered and reissued in 2016, the song was titled "Sanctus (Sanities)". In January 2016, Music for a New Society was remastered and reissued on vinyl for the first time since its original pressing, and was also reissued as a double CD set including his remake of the album titled M:FANS. Critical reception Music for a New Society received positive reviews by critics; however, according to Cale, despite the record being his "best-received ever", the record was a commercial failure. The track "Sanities" ends with the lyrics, "All so that it would be a stronger world/A strong though loving world/To die in." A shortened and slightly misquoted version of these words ("It would be a stronger world, a stronger loving world, to die in") is the epigraph of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic book limited series Watchmen (1986–1987), appearing in the final panel of