AMG Review of Early Works Compilation

Eduardo Rivadavia
All Music Guide

2004's Early Works Compilation makes up for its unimaginative title by providing a huge service for doom enthusiasts: corralling most of the hard-to-find EP's released by Japan's Church of Misery into an extremely handy two-disc set. The first of these gets off to a very strong start thanks to the four cuts originally featured on the band's ultra-rare 1998 split LP with Canadian buddies Sheavy (highlighted by a heavily psychedelic "Road to Ruin" and a crushing cover of Saint Vitus' "War Is Our Destiny"), before dipping into the same year's standalone Taste the Pain EP, which further helped introduce Church of Misery's serial-killer-obsessed stoner/doom sound to fans worldwide. Replete with taped television reports relating their subjects' dastardly murders, standout tracks like "Room 213 (Jeffrey Dahmer)" and "Plainfield (Ed Gein)" bring an added dimension of pure dread to doom's already frightening template, and are guaranteed to lift even more eyebrows than CoM's amazing rendition of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." Disc two is a little less cohesive from start to finish, but boasts a real collection of long-lost Easter eggs to compensate for it. So, after churning through the two, excellent cuts from 1999's Murder Company EP (including the David Berkowitz exposé "Son of a Gun"), the listener is presented with an additional six offerings culled from individual genre compilations and unused studio sessions. Among these, CoM originals like "Where Evil Dwells (Richard Ramirez)," "Sick of Living (Zodiac)," and the previously unreleased "Retal (Howard Unruh)" are worthy enough, but it's tribute album fodder like their take on Trouble's "Come Touch the Sky" that arguably takes the cake. Still, in the end, it's the very unprecedented compilation of these 16 selections that will have Church of Misery devotees frothing at the mouth in excitement.