Expanding 2000's The Early Years double-disc compilation even further, 2011's
The Old Testament, the last release overseen by Seth Putnam before his passing, essentially wraps up the start of the
Anal Cunt story as completely as possible over the course of nearly two and a half hours of sometimes offensive, often wrong, and still thrilling music from their earliest years, when cohesive riffs and clearly audible lyrics were often the last things on their minds. From the vantage point of the 21st century, such moves as overdubbing purportedly thousands of songs on top of each other or sounding like a gabbling shriekfest over a blur of indecipherable textures feels less like a loving takeoff on grindcore in the vein of
Lawnmower Deth and much more like a birthpoint between black metal and noise music in the vein of labels like Load. (Not for nothing is one of the tracks from a compilation originally titled Master of Noise.) The bonuses on this version of the compilation come at the start and ending -- where The Early Years began with "47 Song Demo," the even earlier "1st Demo" kicks things off here, featuring Putnam and
Tim Morse on seven minutes of stop-start mayhem that, thanks to the lo-fi recording quality, sounds even more frenetically insane than can be imagined. At the other end of the collection is some slipped-through-the-cracks hilarity, starting with what might be one of the most inspired covers in metal around -- "Riverbottom Nightmare Band," the theme song of the enemy band from the Jim Henson holiday special Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas. In
Anal Cunt's hands it's at once just recognizable enough and completely wrecked, and one couldn't imagine it any other way. Liner notes from Putnam and
Morse complete the collection. ~ Ned Raggett