Customer Reviews

Jesus Points the Bone at You

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On the surface, this looks like nothing more than a "best of" compilation, but don't be fooled by such an appearance! Thankfully, this CD is a selective historical collection of singles that defined the sounds and philosophies of Christian Death in each era of its existence from 1986 to 1991. These songs mostly appeared on 12" vinyl format, although many of them also appeared on full-length LPs. Obviously, the treasures here are the songs that have been long since out-of-print or generally hard to find. Specifically, songs like "Church Of No Return" (both versions) and the phenomenal "Zero Sex", which happens be one of the early signs that they were moving into a harsher, metallic direction as evidenced on "Sex & Drugs & Jesus Christ". Suffice it to say that "Church..." and "Zero..." are both worth the price of this CD alone, as these songs are pure gems. They have a heavy feel unlike anything on "The Scriptures" or "Atrocities", yet the melodies and attributes that were completely missing from "Sex & Drugs...". The equally scarce tune "What's The Verdict", a rare humorous stab at pure upbeat rock and roll, was Valor's offensive against the oppressive nature of catholic schools and the PMRC, the Washington wives' music censorship group which was in its heyday in the late 80's. Finally, the two singles from the "All The Love" / "All The Hate" two record set, originally released on one 12", are also included here - the wonderfully lush "We Fall Like Love" and the utterly ridiculous "I Hate You". Yet another awesome addition to this CD was the re-recorded version of "The Nascent Virion" by Valor's 1991 line-up (featuring Maitri, who was to be Valor's long-time female collaborator afterwards). Despite the great re-working of the song, I still think they should have also included the original, though. The real beauty of this collection is that it shows just how much this underground institution changed and mutated over a brief six year period. Despite the fact that I am still not terribly fond of the "Sex & Drugs..." and "Love/Hate" sessions, I still consider this CD to be great, if only to have a collection of those 12" gems that I only have on vinyl. If decimals would count in these reviews, I would actually have given this a 4.5 star rating. So why not the full 5 stars? Because I'm simply disappointed that there are two extraordinarily vital songs missing - and I'm at a loss to explain why!! "Between Youth", and "Jezebel's Tribulation" are the ones in question; the former being one of my favorite tracks ever, which was originally on the "Believers of the Unpure" / "After The Rain" 12", and the latter being a simply wonderful rare 7" that originally came with the "Scriptures" LP. Nonetheless, if you are interested in gothic music/death-rock, there's something here for you, since this CD touches so many musical bases that just about every fan of underground music will find something to love. Fans of Christian Death, especially those with no access to record players, should consider this a disk a necessity, since you will find the singles that are the mysterious missing links between their late 80's LPs as far as musical styles and thematic concepts are concerned.

this is a wonderfull comp of tons of there greatest songs.it's a must in the music library of any fan.It has the best version of believers of the unpure on it I have ever heard.