ANTHOLOGY I (1988 - 1992)

In 2016 I believed that for all intents and purposes there would not be another Mutiny in Jonestown studio album (2017's, "The Daemon's Mock Me While I Sleep" happily proved me wrong). I decided the best way to celebrate and enjoy the bands history and musical accomplishments was to create a multi volume anthology album series made up of tracks from the band's studio albums. As I listened to each album, I decided which songs best represented what the band had attempted to do, and what songs I thought stood out as the best examples of that. It wasn't simply a case of picking what I heard as the "proggiest" songs, but picking what I thought were the best songs, regardless of style. Obviously, it still happened that most of the anthology songs are the best prog songs on the album, but not necessarily all of the songs are prog.

This first anthology focuses on the early years of the band from it's inception in 1987 through 1992. The first 4 years the band produced 2 live and 6 studio albums so there was a lot of material to choose from. The first two albums the band released were live recordings culled from performances given to small groups in a recording studio. I decided to keep this anthology series restricted to only studio albums so nothing from 1987's, "In the Walls of Eryx" or 1988's. "Random Animal Parts" are included. This is why the anthology begins with the year 1988 rather than 1987 as this is when the first studio album was released. Also, the HP Lovecraft based songs are not included on the first three anthology albums. Even though chronologically the Lovecraft songs were obviously recorded during the spans of the first three anthology albums (1988 - 1992, 1993 - 2002 and 2003 - 2014), I chose not to include them, but to place them on their own compilation as "Anthology IV - The Lovecraft Connection". As a final note, songs from the compilation, "The Witching Hour" were not included in the anthology series. It didn't make sense to me to duplicate the contents of one compilation on to another; so, "The Witching Hour" actually complements the anthology series.

The first three studio albums were definitely focused more toward rock than the type of prog the band began shaping on the 4th album, "Lost in Line". Also, since this anthology does not include the prog songs from the Lovecraft album, "The False Hollow Phantoms of Beauty", I feel 3 stars is the proper rating to attach to this review. I think fans of the band who lean to the rockier side of the spectrum will enjoy this compilation, but those not yet into the band requiring a high content of prog to be converted will likely only find a few songs to their liking.