It’s kinda scary that these Brazilian Death Metal masters had already celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2007 and still aren’t as wellknown to the international Metal scene as they actually should be after such a long period of steady activity. Oh well, at least Ricardo of Peru’s Crypts Of Eternity zine was familiar with them and obviously such a big fan that he even started up a label to put out this more than 2 hours long double CD compilation of rare HEADHUNTER D.C. recordings. That’s what I call true dedication! The material on offer here is featured in chronological order, which means CD 1 covers the years 1987 – 1989 (the era of original vocalist Eduardo Falsão) and CD 2 continues on with the years 1990 – 2007 (with Sérgio Baloff on vocals). I guess it’s rather superfluous to mention that most of the material on CD 1 still lacks in the quality that HEADHUNTER D.C. later stood for as this should be pretty obvious… You want an explanation anyway? Well, part of the reason is first of all of course the still rather immature musicianship / songwriting qualities, but also the fact that it’s almost exclusively kinda weak sounding rehearsals and live songs from those days (the most interesting probably being the already pretty cool SODOM cover ‘Blasphemer’ from 1987). Did I say "almost exclusively"? Yes, cause they ended up digging really deep into the band’s archives and managed to locate no less than 6 studio tracks of an unreleased 12" EP from 1989, which is definitely the highlight on this first little silver disc. Quality wise CD 2 is the total opposite (well, at least for my personal taste)! Even though there’s also some rehearsal and live recordings on here, the band’s musical abilities had increased so much by now that’s it’s a real pleasure to listen to extremely raw versions of songs that later ended up on their full length albums. Highlights on here are without a doubt their "Promo Tape ’96", the unused take of ‘Álcool’ (the band’s contribution to the DORSAL ATLÂNTICA tribute album), the DEATH cover ‘Zombie Ritual’ (from a very good sounding 2004 live recording), as well as 4 songs (incl. the POSSESSED cover ‘The Exorcist’) that got recorded live in Santiago, Chile on January 26, 2007. Very cool are also two excerpts of radio shows that had featured HEADHUNTER D.C. in 1998 ("Sonic Insanity" from New York) and 2000 ("Factor RH", unfortunately this one’s in Portuguese). The great album cover artwork was supplied by Daniel "Desecrator" Corcuera, who should be known to most of the VOICES readers through his work for cult acts like EKRON CULT, DEIPHAGO, MAGNANIMVS, BESTIAL MOCKERY, SUICIDAL WINDS, UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN KULTEN, TOTTEN KORPS etc.etc. The fat booklet (20 colored pages) comes up with tons of old and rare pics, flyers, press features, a couple of lyrics, as well as liner-notes by vocalist Sérgio Baloff (in English and Portuguese). Unfortunately the printing partly turned out a bit dark, so that it’s kinda hard to check out all of details here and there. But it still looks very impressive! So, all in all this is a highly recommended, packed to the max, release for every HEADHUNTER D.C. fan that covers a good selection of recordings besides their regular album releases. Value for money guaranteed! More HEADHUNTER D.C. info / sound samples you will find at www.myspace.com/headhunterdc, Crypts Of Eternity Productions can be contacted for ordering details at the following email address: coe.prods@gmail.com.