It's funny that my current bathroom reading is "Choosing Death" again. I got excited when this showed up. I mean, you got 2, count 'em, 2 ANTI CIMEX covers, a SIEGE cover, DISCHARGE, HELLHAMMER, ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT, DIE KREUZEN, HIRAX, AF, MASTER, etc. But then I thought about it and it's all covers. Why wouldn't I just bust out the originals and get down to those? Then I thought again and maybe that's the point, to show the youth the truth. Regardless, I'm like over 100 in punk years (they work like cat years I think) so this isn't really for me.

They cover everything well enough but don't really do anything with the songs. These are mostly just line by line interpretations, sometimes a bit faster but still line by line. And in contrast to the originals, the classic lines just don't feel the same. When Barney yells "Take your fucking cross and stick it up your arse! Religion is the game of the arseholes!" it's just not as devastating as when Jonsson yelled it back then. Ditto many others. But at the same time I haven't seen ANTI CIMEX's name pop up so often, so that's a good thing. It still would've been cool if they would have done CONFUSE, KURO, G.I.S.M., or S.O.B. covers to show their obvious Japanese influence.

I guess, everything aside, I'm more interested in hearing the new NAPALM record over hearing them cover tunes. I can only hope that this "digging in the vaults" expedition leads to them putting out a shredder on par with their classics. Maybe they can turn the tides and get back to smashing and bashing like the years of yore. One can only hope this will be the case. I haven't really been moved by some of the snippets I've heard post "Harmony Corruption", so if they are going to tear it up again, I'm all about it! I'd recommend it as a history lesson of extreme music for the young ones.

-Two Tub Tony

OFFICIAL SITE: www.napalmdeath.org

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