| a long winter presents:

album_information

artist: Entombed
|      album: Entombed
label: Earache
genre: Death Metal
released: Jul/09/2004
street: Mar/25/1997

release_information

|     tracks: 12
size: 62,7 MB
source: CDDA
ripper: Soulbleed
quality: VBR/44.1 kHz/Joint-Stereo
encoder: EAC/Lame 3.92

| track_list
trk  time  title

01  03:08 Out of Hand
02  04:40 God of Thunder
03  02:29 Black Breath
04  03:27 Stranger Aeons
05  02:42 Dusk
06  02:05 Shreds of Flesh
07  05:30 Crawl
08  03:50 Forsaken
09  03:55 Bitter Loss
10  04:59 Night of the Vampire
11  02:34 State of Emergency
12  07:41 Vandal X

total│47:00 min

release_notes

This retrospective compilation collects the singles and B-sides
Entombed released on a series of now hard-to-find EPs during the
band's tenure with Earache. Besides the singles "Out of Hand"
(Wolverine Blues), "Stranger Aeons" (Clandestine), and "Crawl"
(Clandestine), the best moments here are cover songs. Of these, the
death metal take on Kiss' "God of Thunder" from the Out of Hand EP is
an interesting comparison to the original, though the song loses its
appeal after a few listens. The brutal cover of Repulsion's "Black
Breath" from the same EP also stands out, being the most Entombed-like
cover on the collection. The handful of B-sides -- "Dusk," "Shreds of
Flesh," "Forsaken," and "Bitter Loss" -- date back to the Clandestine
sessions and tend to sound similar to that dark, brutal album.

But the real problem with this compilation isn't so much that the
material is weak because it isn't, even if it is mostly cover songs
and B-sides; Entombed's worst moments are still often better than most
death metal bands' best output. The problem involves the band's
continual evolution with every album. By the time Entombed parted ways
with Earache, it had recorded three very different full-length albums
with different vocalists and different approaches -- so since this
album focuses on a myriad of random B-sides, it fails to document the
group's growth well at all, which a successful retrospective album
probably should. Nothing here predates Clandestine, which is
unfortunate since the Left Hand Path era was a golden era for the
band, particularly since the band moved so quickly away from that
sound.

But as a handy collection of rarities designed for fans who already
own the group's albums and know the group's history, this collection
succeeds alongside Black Juju, another collection of Entombed's
countless released cover songs from the late '90s. Still, one wishes
Earache would have made a more sincere effort to document this group's
illustrious growth from a young and innovative death metal group to a
band working outside of generic constraints in its instinctual aim to
trailblaze new paths through heavy metal motifs. One has to wonder if
Earache had contemplated including any of the four infamous demos that
predated Left Hand Path, taking a similar approach to the label's
compilation of a handful of impossible-to-find Pungent Stench demos
for that group's rarities album.

About ALW

ALW is an internal group whose original intention was to make people
see how much better the quality of a VBR album really was. Well, we
pretty much succeeded, considering the scene is VBR now. So, we now
have a new focus (since even pH has bitten the bullet, thank god): to
be the best damn internal group there is. Whatever the album is, no
matter what the genre (unless it's gay, we don't like gay), we will
have ripped it. And to all you fags who wouldn't use VBR to save your
life prior to 2004, we just wanted to say that we told you you were a
stupid cocksucking bitch and that you were wrong, and now we want to
rub it in, just because we can.

Date of formation: 5/1/2003 (or, 10/2001 under TBR)
Group info: #alw / alongwinter.net / alongwinter@hotmail.com
Things we need: Sites, rippers, coders, your mom around our cock

Shout Outs:
(Scene) FNT, RNS, ESC, HXC, NUHS, QTXMP3, VIC, gF, COR
(Not) TBR, ENT, IPS, IRO, RDF (for also releasing VBR)
(Groups Who Suck) EOS (stop copying us), pH, KSi, KZT, DTA, iTS