It doesn’t make much sense for a band to celebrate their quarter-century with an album of bonus tracks from their last six years, but that’s what we’ve got; PL have many decent b-sides and covers across their full 25 years but presumably a definitive rarities compilation was hamstrung by rights issues.
The band’s fanbase will own most of these songs if they shelled out for the special editions of their last three records, but will feel compelled to get this for the exclusive new track, satisfyingly sluggish true doom gem Loneliness Remains, and for re-rerecorded versions of Gothic and Our Saviour, which are fun but inconsequential.
Casual fans will find a handful of worthy out-takes that might be new to them, such as dynamic, gnarly headbanger _The Last Fallen Saviour _and the elegant Ending Through Changes, alongside a handful of crap (covering Everything But The Girl), but ultimately this feels like an incomplete, low-priority way to celebrate the long career of one of Britain’s best metal bands.
