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Tribute albums fucking suck, that's all there is to it. Now, this new Avulsed album is essentially an EP of new material combined with a half-assed tribute album featuring a bunch of completely unknown bands covering Avulsed songs. I must have missed the point somewhere. The new Avulsed material consists of two new songs, a re-recorded oldie and three covers. So, we have Avulsed doing covers and other bands covering Avulsed. It's a novel idea for sure, but also a rather lame one. I would have been much happier with just a good solid 6 track EP than this bloated hour-plus of bloated excess. It was okay when Sodom did it, since that was a bonus disc and not part of the main album, plus it actually featured bands someone other than the bands' parents and friends have heard of.

That bitching out of the way, this is still a good buy for Avulsed fans. The three original tracks are good old death metal with a healthy dose of dark melody in the traditional Avulsed vein, and the WASP cover is actually quite well done considering it's not something which normally lends itself too well to reinterpretation, but they've struck a good balance between the original song and a completely retooled arrangement which entirely removes the bouncy feel and replaces it with a thrashy groove. The Exodus cover, on the other hand, is kinda forgettable and Gorefest is so similar to Avulsed's normal style that "Mental Misery" could pass as the original with a slightly deeper vocal approach.

All up, this is a fans-only release. It's definitely not the sort of disc one would check out as an introduction to Avulsed, but with a good 25 minutes of newly recorded material, it's worth it as long as it's purchased at EP price. The additional "tribute" material is completely worthless and just goes to show why only truly influential bands deserve such treatment. The rating I've given this release is a balance between the high quality of the new Avulsed material and the pointlessness of the rest, and should be taken as such. 3.5/5 for the new stuff, 1.5/5 for the rest.