Review of Various Artists - Code666 - Better Undead Than Alive 2

Various Artists

Code666 - Better Undead Than Alive 2

posted on 3/2010

By:

Matt Mooring

It’s highly unusual for us to review a label compilation, but then again, “highly unusual” and Code666 go hand in hand. This stronghold for the wonderfully bizarre has a well-earned reputation of offering up a consistent flow of unique metal in a variety of styles, and it’s because of this intrigue that I look into just about everything they do, even if not all their releases blow my hair back in the end. To celebrate their tenth anniversary, Code666 has managed to not only put together a compilation actually worth listening to, but even worth paying for. Not only does Better Undead Than Alive 2 offer up a bulging 79 minutes of completely unreleased music, but the Code666 folks handed over the tracks to Ephel Duath mastermind Davide Tiso to sequence and edit the album, along with contributing short, instrumental tracks between each song in order to blend the moods of the material and lend to listenability.

The album leans heavily on black, industrial, and avant-garde metal, and sometimes delivered all at the same time. But it’s the black metal based names here that make the biggest splash. Negura Bunget’s “Cumpana” shows that the Romanian wizards still have more than a few tricks up their sleeve even after their classic lineup imploded. And the story with The Axis of Perdition song is that there IS NO STORY, rather this is straightforward black metal, leaving behind the narrated style of the head-scratcher Urfe. Elsewhere, upstarts Fen close the record with the 15-minute “Twilight Descends (Eulogy),” which splits its runtime between moody black tones and yawning post-metal. The more industrial edged bands offer up inconsistent efforts. Minethorn’s slow churning “Icons” doesn’t quite live up to their Junk Hive Noir debut, but is solid nonetheless, while Herrschaft—a band that seems to be losing its way—kicks in the underwhelming “Abysmal Wounds”.

With any compilation, even one as slyly designed as this one, it’s inevitable that you’ll find some jewels and a few entirely skippable tunes, especially with artists as divergent as the Code666 stable. The Prophecy’s Opeth colliding with Toad the Wet Sprocket on “Adrift” nears the top of my list. But if you enjoy the atypical in any of its many flavors, Better Undead Than Alive 2 offers enough quality material of different stripes that you’re likely to find a good handful of asskicking oddity to embrace. Here’s to the next ten years.

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Various Artists

Code666 - Better Undead Than Alive 2

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