After 17 years of mindless violence and gore splattered brutality Holland’s Last Days Of Humanity are no more, but their legacy lives on posthumously with Rest In Gore, a 128 track “best of” compilation that clocks in at 155 minutes with material that spans the entire length of Last Days Of Humanity’s active career.

The running order of the material is chronological, from newest to oldest, which is extremely bizarre to say the least. The first disc contains 67 tracks and starts with 6 tracks from the mind numbingly extreme Putrefaction In Progress CD, 4 tracks from the equally mindless blasting on In Advanced Haemorrhaging Conditions, all 21 tracks from their split with Lymphatic Phlegm, four tracks from their XTC Of Swallowing L.D.O.H. Faeces live album, all 9 tracks they contributed to Relapse’s Dutch Assault compilation, their cover of Regurgitate’s "Cyst Eater" from the Comeback Of Goregods Tribute To Regurgitate release, a previously unreleased track from 2001 entitled "Gushing Guts Disseminate from Festered Fungus Organs", 6 tracks from 2001 that were re-recorded but previously unreleased, all 4 tracks of their half of the split with Stoma, their cover of Impetigo’s "Revenge Of The Scabby Man" from Razorback Records’ Wizards Of Gore: Tribute To Impetigo and finally 10 more previously unreleased tracks.

The first 35 tracks were done in Last Days Of Humanity’s “new” style of relentless blasting brutality. Either you love it or hate it, personally I’m not fond of it, but the disc’s remaining 32 tracks more than make up for it taken from what I consider to be Last Days Of Humanity’s “glory” years when the band put more emphasis on playing bass heavy, mid-paced death metal-styled goregrind. The material is simply the most brutal goregrind ever recorded, the production is nasty as fuck and so dirty and disgusting it simply rules! This is the kind of shit that goregrind fans get hard ons over!

The second disc contains 61 tracks of the band’s first 8 years of recorded history, consisting of all 4 tracks from their split with Cock And Ball Torture, 4 tracks from their split with Morgue, 4 tracks from the legendary Hymns Of Indigestible Suppuration full length, 12 tracks from the unreleased split with Murder Corporation, 4 tracks from their split with Ratikis, 4 tracks from their debut full length The Sound Of Rancid Juices Sloshing Around Your Coffin, 4 tracks from their split with Confessions Of Obscurity, 3 tracks from their split with Vulgar Degenerate, all 11 tracks from the 1993 Human Atrocity demo and finally finishing off with 10 tracks from their 1992 demo entitled Last Days Of Humanity.

The second disc is where you’ll find the real blood and guts, there are so many rare tracks on here it’s hard to keep track of everything I’ve heard and haven’t heard before. Last Days Of Humanity’s best material occurred during the band’s first 12 years of existence and the second disc contains everything from their first 11 years.

This disc is a really only for die hard Last Days Of Humanity fans. There’s just so much material crammed onto two discs that it’s overwhelming to attempt to listen to it all. Last Days Of Humanity has always been one of those bands you can listen to for 20-30 minutes at a time, but anything more than that and it just becomes way too much. The way the compilation is presented is extremely odd too, playing the material from newest to oldest it just throws off the flow of the compilation and makes it difficult to follow.

The first thing I did after buying the compilation was to rip both albums to MP3, then I went through the effort of re-organizing the tracks from oldest to newest. When you listen to the material starting from the very beginning it’s a lot easier to take in and absorb. The only other complaint I have is no effort was put into cleaning up the material and giving it a cleaner sound, everything sounds exactly the same way it did when it was recorded, which means the majority of the 128 songs have an extremely raw production that’s often hard to listen to.

If you’re an absolute die hard Last Days Of Humanity fan then you need to add this disc to your collection, it’s absolutely worth checking out. For goregrind fans who are unfamiliar with Last Days Of Humanity you’d probably be better off starting with one of their full length efforts than diving right into this compilation. I’m a big fan of the band but even I can’t sit through one full disc at a time, let alone two. If you can go through both discs and still be screaming for more, you’re a much bigger fan than I and I think it’s safe to say you’re going to become a serial killer before both discs are done.

Written By: Teufel