Odds-and-ends style anthologies have become de rigueur lately. Everyone from Tom Waits to The Deftones has released such a collection in the last few years. And I guess it’s a good sign for Lamb of God that they’ve been around long enough and become popular enough to warrant such a release. Anthologies can provide a great showcase of an entire career, giving fans a peek at how their favorite bands developed while giving them a taste of what might have been by including songs that were axed along the way. On the other hand, anthologies sometimes reach too far, scraping together a collection of songs that only the most diehard fans would care about. Sadly, Hourglass comes closer to the latter than the former.

The bulk of Hourglass’ third disc is compiled largely from a mix of import-only bonus tracks and a collection of early songs from their Burn the Priest days. Both the Burn the Priest and bonus tracks are already widely available, which would make it safe to assume the hardcore Lamb of God fans already have them. So, outside of about five rehearsal demos, there’s not a lot of new material to dig into here. To add insult to injury, the vocal tracks on the rehearsal demos are poorly recorded, giving little reason for any but the most devoted completionist to drop their cash.

However, Hourglass does fare better for newcomers. The first two discs work as kind of an oversized greatest hits compilation, pulling together 26 of their best tracks from over the course of their career. So if you’ve heard a track or two from Lamb of God and dig their atmospheric thrash, then Hourglass provides a great jumping off point.

Lamb of God was considerate enough to offer a cheaper edition of Hourglass that only contains the third disc for those precious few fans who own all the albums but never picked up the original Burn the Priest album. But then, why not just grab that album? Hourglass is ideal for new Lamb of God fans, but unless you just really want to own a handful of poorly recorded rehearsal demos it’s hard to recommend Hourglass to existing fans.

Review by David Feltman