Deceased have become one of those not-quite-defunct, not-entirely-active bands where each reissue and compilation serves more to tease the possibility of new activity as much as it does to anything archival of substance to the catalog. Well shit, y'all, prepare for more vault-clearing, anticipatory frustration, because Hells Headbangers just threw down with a new 53-song, double-disc compilation of King Fowley's cover songs… and you're gonna kinda want it.
First of all, this collection encompasses two previously released Deceased cover albums in their entireties, 2002's Zombie Hymns and 2004's Rotten to the Core. If you lack either/or in your current collection, know that both are out of print so Cadaver Traditions is now the de facto means of acquiring them. If you do have either or both, that does represent an admitted bit of overlap with this collection, but the real bones of this motherfucker are the 17 previously unreleased tracks, which is essentially an entire third covers album thrown in for free.
Choice of covers range from the painfully obvious (Venom's "Black Metal", Mercyful Fate's "Doomed by the Living Dead") to the fairly obscure (Sheer Terror's "Here to Stay", Znowhite's "Do or Die") to the outright what the fuck??? (The Doors' "Not to Touch the Earth", "The Ballad of Harry Warden" from the My Bloody Valentine soundtrack). I'm not going to oversell this shit: it's either your bag or it isn't, but if you're in the latter camp this is a stellar way to get a lot of fist pumping, completist-appeasing material all in one clump for cheap.
Deceased do in fact have an album in the works for 2016, also due on Hells Headbangers. Don't try to tell me they don't.
