3 out of 5

Label: Alone Records

Produced by: Various

I’d say this is mostly for archival interests, being a singles and odd-sods collection.  More directly: I’ll likely never put this album on to listen to, but it’s a handy one-stop for all those various ‘Bannon singles, which prompts a question: are you a defender/fan of early RB, the dual-vocalist, screamo-hardcore noisy thrashers, or did you grow to prefer the Grips and beyond years, when Mike Anderson’s bi-polar rambles became more confident and the group geared themselves down an equally noisy but slightly more outre off-the-beaten path?

Personally, in case my bias doesn’t already show, I’m down with the latter; early Racebannon has energy, but sounds like a lot of hardcore to me, and the double shouty guy thing – with early vocalist Chris Williams – is almost an eye-rolling mark of genericness within the group’s genre.  So in my case, only a small grouping of tracks here merit listenableness – mostly the first half of the first disc – with the rest of the stuff interesting but, again, without context of where the group would go, somewhat unremarkable.  The second disc leans more toward unreleased material / takes, and there’s a lot of noise experimentation there, which is an intriguing side of RB that would mostly fall by the wayside, but overall – given the intensity of disc 1’s better (in my opinion) offerings – probably for the best.

Fans / collectors only, but certainly an appreciated compilation.