Noise Records is a German heavy metal record label founded in 1983 by German music industry personality Karl-Ulrich Walterbach as an expansion of his company Modern Music Records. It was sold to the Sanctuary Records Group in 2001 and ceased any activity in 2007 due to the bankruptcy of Sanctuary. The Noise catalogue was consequently acquired by Universal Music Group later on. In April 2016, BMG Rights Management, which had acquired Sanctuary Records in 2013, announced that it would revive the Noise Records label. History In 1981, Karl-Ulrich Walterbach founded the independent record company Modern Music Records GmbH in Berlin, Germany. In the first years of activity, the label division called Aggressive Rock Produktionen (AGR) published only punk German-speaking groups (Slime, Daily Terror, Toxoplasma, compilation series like "Soundtracks zum Untergang") and American punk bands (Black Flag with Henry Rollins, Hüsker Dü, Misfits, Angry Samoans, etc.). In 1983, Walterbach was working closely with Black Flag and the American label SST and was also in contact with American West Coast underground metal bands such as Saint Vitus. From this nucleus he developed the label Noise Records, which was in 1984 the first specialized outlet for European thrash metal bands such as Kreator, Tankard, Sabbat and Coroner, but released also the works of bands with other metal styles, such as Helloween, Running Wild, Celtic Frost, Grave Digger, Voivod, and Rage. In the early days, there was a two-year collaboration with the New York-based label Megaforce Records, which was the first publisher of Metallica. Through this deal, Noise published under license the albums of American thrash metal band Overkill and at the same time Megaforce issued Grave Digger works in the United States. Noise Records most successful band was the Hamburg-based power metal band Helloween. The Keeper of the Seven Keys albums achieved worldwide top chart positions and sales of over 1 million alone for Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II in the late 1980s. A European label deal in 1990 with the German EMI for four bands (Helloween, Running Wild, Celtic Frost, V2) was short-lived, because the management of Helloween decided unilaterally to have the group put under contract directly with the English EMI. The subsequent altogether 16 lawsuits were decided by the German courts in favor of Noise Records and settled out of court after a two-year legal battle. The settlement cost Helloween a seven-digit figure. The other result of the