I can’t praise the work of Roy Fox and his Necroharmonic label enough! If I personally would have enough strength, time and money, I would probably do exactly the same thing as what he’s been doing for a couple of years now with so much class and dedication! I mean, whoever decides on re-issuing classic demo / compilation / ep material, definitely should make sure to use the Necroharmonic releases as a number one reference, because even if they’re always done from a fan’s point of view in the first place, they always get delivered in a total professional manner! So, forget about all the lousy bootlegs of half-assed compiled, poor sounding and shitty packed demo stuff on CD and spend your money on the real deal instead! For example on this ROTTREVORE retrospective, which is another godly item worth your attention. For those of you who aren’t familiar with these guys, ROTTREVORE was a helluva brutal Death Metal act from the US that only released one full length album ("Iniquitous") back in the 90s, that despite its cult status obviously influenced way more bands these days than you would imagine! Just have a listen to their extremely guttural vocal delivery (a shared duty between both their guitarists Mark Mastro and Chris Weber)… That way of singing was still a kinda new, unusual thing back then as everyone else was either using the "Thrash-style" or the typical Death Metal growls. And then there’s their overall verrrrrry brutal songwriting, often rather apocalyptic and doomy sounding and then all of a sudden extremely grinding, which they delivered in such an incredibly raw manner, that every other so-called brutal band sounds pretty cheesy compared to them. Just listen to the partly totally devastating bass sound on this compilation, which is simply amazing! So yeah, ROTTREVORE were definitely ahead of its time and unfortunately ceased to exist way too quickly… But their musical legacy luckily lives on and included a bunch of other releases, which were all put together for this nicely packaged release now (lots of old pics, covers, history, lyrics…). So, what you get here is their five song 1990 demo "The Epitome Of Pantalgia", the two 7"es "Copulation Of The Virtuous And Vicious" (4 songs – Relapse Records, 1991) and "Fornication In Delirium" (2 songs – Cenotaph Records, 1992), the band’s one-song appearance on the 7" compilation "Son Of Bleeaargh" from 1992 and their contribution to the "Pantalgia" Death Metal compilation album of the same year. The fact that the CD player offers you a total of 66 tracks shouldn’t confuse you anymore, as these "hidden tracks" kinda thing became rather common these days (and therefore is extremely superfluous). So, if you just skip tracks 14 – 65 you’ll get an idea of how ROTTREVORE introduced one of their songs live on stage (which means that the actual playing time is only 45:24min)… But that little point of criticism of course shouldn’t prevent you from buying this excellent disc, which is a piece of Death Metal history! P.S.: Guitarist / vocalist Mark Mastro re-surfaced in EVISCIUM lately (with a MCD release on Still Dead Productions)… That band could be seen as the logical next step to the ROTTREVORE sound, so check them out as well! For all further info check out the ROTTREVORE interview on our website or surf to www.eviscium.com/Rottrevore/index.htm or www.necroharmonic.com