They recorded it for a record company who rejected it as too avant garde and commercial suicide. It was shelved for over a year. They fought with the record company and got out of their contract, and eventually won the rights to said album. After shopping it around, a bidding war ensued for that unique piece of art. A subsidiary of the original record company bought the SAME DAMN ALBUM and released it, and it proceeded to go Gold. This was the first "commercially successful" album the band had ever released.
You can read the story. It was a harbinger of the end for the stodgy, old AR bs of the superficial record labels.