Strapping Young Lad – ‘1994-2006 The Chaos Years’ Album Review

What makes people buy ‘best of’ compilations? To my mind potential purchasers fall into two camps: Casual fans of a given band, who can’t conceive of making their way through a whole album, or completist fans of the band who lap up everything that is offered. I frequently fall into the latter category, but there’s an important caveat: I’ll only go through my geeky, completist motions if something new is on offer. Hence, for me at least, the Manic Street Preachers ‘Best Of’ compilation offered value for money with plenty of harder-to-find tracks and a couple of new songs, while Alice In Chains (or rather their record label) put out a record utterly devoid of anything new, and thus unworthy of my hard-earned cash.

 Strapping Young Lad have managed to put out a record that will satisfy both the casual observer and the completist by adding a DVD to the proceedings which is crammed with material that fans will love. Nonetheless, let’s start with the audio disc. Gathering together tracks from all five albums from SYL, the listener is treated to a veritable tsunami of noise. There’s nothing here that fans of the band won’t have – the disc sticks resolutely to album tracks (apart from ‘Satan’s Ice Cream truck’ which was available on original pressings of ‘Heavy as a really heavy thing’) but as an overview of their career it works nicely and the audio has been nicely re-mastered to give the whole thing a seamless feel that lazier compilations sometimes have. Tellingly, even the material from way back in 1994 sounds fresh and still heavy as hell, and there is never the dip in quality that you experience with some ‘best of’ compilations, with every track being a solid, metal gem. For my money, highlights include ‘Love’, ‘Shitstorm’ and ‘Velvet Kevorkian’, but really picking the best tracks out of a set so thrilling in its disposition is rather like trying to spot your favourite grain of sand. 

So much for the audio disc; a good compilation, but nothing to get the fan worked up in its own right. The DVD is the real treat here and it features almost 100 minutes of SYL action. The main course is the full performance from England’s own Download festival, in 2006. Gathering together material from across the band’s career it is a solid set, with good sound and picture making for exciting viewing, although daylight performances are never quite as engaging as night-time slots. Adding in further value are the extra tracks which are cherry picked from a range of sources (the band’s own ‘For those abbot to rock…’ DVD, a now-deleted Century Media Promo DVD and more) and while the quality varies from track to track (although there is nothing here that could be classed as poor) they are a thoughtful addition. Finally a complete videography completes the set. While some bands videos are disappointing, SYL always put a lot of thought into their visual representation and so you get DVD quality clips like ‘Love?’ with its ‘Evil dead’-esque camera flourishes, ‘Relentless’ which is seemingly filmed in a live venue filled with barbed wire, and the distorted computer imagery of the previously-unreleased ‘Almost again’. All of this is held together by a decent, themed menu system which gives the package the feeling that it was put together by people who actually cared. 

Overall this is a package that has been put together with fans, rather than money in mind. Everything from the liner notes (written by the band themselves), to the art work, to the well compiled discs shows attention to detail, rather than a hurried cash in, and this would grace any fan’s shelf as well as providing a thrilling introduction to one of heavy metal’s best kept secrets. With Devin Townsend returning to the fray with new solo material, this is the ideal time to check out one chapter of his awesome, metallic history.