So the 7xLP version arrived earlier in the week and I have been spending my evenings immersing myself in the extensive material. Packaging and presentation is simple and to the point, with nice heavy vinyls and thick plastic sleeves. And who wouldn't like the metal box used for the cover?!
On first impressions the musical scope is actually a fair bit more varied than I was anticipating. I had been assuming it was going to be mostly of the rhythmic industrial, power electronics and noise focus. So whilst it does span those sounds, other tracks touch on heavy electronics, death industrial, martial industrial and dark ambient.
Mikko mentioned earlier that this box set is not up to the standard of the 'War Against Society' 3xLP set. I would tend to agree with this comment, and would also add that it does not function as a focused conceptual compilation such as others like the Natural Order 2xLP set on StateArt or the Saturn Gnosis 2x10"ep set on Loki Foundation.
So to my mind it is really a question of how you approach this. If you consider it as 'just' a collection of tracks, where you can skip to the material you like, it works fine overall. However in listening to all tracks in order, there seems to be less of a focus on appropriate track positioning/ ordering. For example a track called 'Epileptic Dance Hit' (...yes it is as bad as it sounds...) follows Diutesc's track. This juxtaposition of unrelated sounds is just jarring to the overall flow of material.
Given the extent of genres covered, to my ear it is the rhythmic industrial material which sticks out the most (...in a bad way...) and does not suit the thematic sound/ focus of the rest. Also by 'rhythmic industrial' I mean it being of the heavy quasi dance floor industrial pounding material of the early Ant-Zen sound (noting also that P.A.L, Noisex, Salt are featured here).
Overall I would say there is about 65%-70% tracks I 'like' on this set, but I also don't imagine that I will play through the entire set of 'liked' tracks all that often, rather just be a bit more selective and pick and choose tracks to play. Known names also are on the mark, including Dagda Mor, Ex.Order (one of their most aggressive tracks actually), Rasthof Dachau, Operation Cleansweep etc, along with many positive surprises from lesser known/ unknown projects.
So all in all paying $77 for the the 7xLP set was worth it for me, and I am sure US and Euro people could get this for much less based on reduced shipping (Malignant currently has the 4xLP set for a mere $20).
So ultimately if you approach this as a 'collection of tracks' where you can pick and choose what you want to hear, it works fine. But as a solid and strong concept which ties together music, theme and packaging, it does not work so well.
