GP is not quite correct. It wasn't completely re-recorded, but Dave Mustaine re-recorded many of the guitar solos on the album, and the whole album was remixed.

At any rate, it's not the same (classic, imo) album that was released in 1990.

Same story with the original Star Wars films. Lucas remastered and changed the originals, and you can mostly only get the original versions on VHS.

Playing devil's advocate, it's the artists' content. Don't they have the right to go back and make it more in line with their original vision?

Let them make a new version if they want, sure, but removing access to the original is what rankles.

Exactly, I'm not going to argue that artists don't have the right to re-release their material. It's the destruction of the original that to me is unconscionable.

Imagine this in a historical context, what if the publisher of Poe or Hemingway just decided to burn all their manuscripts and stop publishing because it was a better tax write off than their accountants though they would make on the lifetime sales of the work.

Because this is exactly what we are doing to future generations, lighting art on fire.

Many of the vocals were rerecorded as well.