The Ravages of Time

The Ravages of Time (The Best of Threshold) is the first compilation album by British progressive metal band Threshold. Threshold has always been one of my favorite bands and I had the opportunity to see them live last year during their Live Reckoning Tour. Dead Reckoning was their latest studio album, it would be the last album to feature Andrew “Mac” McDermott on vocals, so Damian Wilson ( original Threshold singer who provided vocals for the albums Wounded Land & Extinct Instinct ) stepped in to tour with the band and is still with the band to this day

This compilation featuring over 140 minutes of music from all their studio albums plus some previously unreleased radio edits. The album was released by Threshold’s previous label, Inside Out Music. The track listing for the compilation was selected by the band ( Karl Groom and Richard West ) in conjunction with the label. “The decision to include the unreleased single edits was because we know there are a lot of fans who are frustrated when there are edits made but not available on CD” Richard West said. “Of course there wasn’t room for everything but between us we thought it was a good overall list”. Well, is that true Richard? Is this a good list? Let’s find out!

The compilation is divided into two discs, the first one is called The Latter Years ( Hypothetical - Critical Mass- Subsurface - Dead Reckoning ) and the second disc is called The Former Years ( Wounded Land - Psychedelicatessen - Extinct Instinct - Clone ). The first disc has a very solid tracklist with songs like Light And Space, Mission Profile, The Ravages Of Time ( obviously ) and Oceanbound. The tracklist is very solid on this disc, a few of my all time favorites ( and crowd favorites ) from the so called Latter Years are missing though, and those songs are Long Way Home and Turn on Turn In ( both from Hypothetical ). I am not a big fan of radio edit’s ( especially with progressive metal bands ) since there is always a big removal of epic music, but the edit’s on this disc are pretty good! Slipstream has a different intro and Pressure has some of the solos removed. I never understood why they made Pilot In The Sky Of Dreams their video for Dead Reckoning, the album version is fantastic, but the edited version misses so much fantastic sections, that it´s almost an completely different track.

Allright, let´s move on to the second disc, The Former Years. This disc contains all the pre Hypothetical stuff and has all the oldies. The tracklist on this disc isn’t as good as the first disc. This disc has a serious lack of Paradox, Into The Light and Virtual Isolation. But, as always, it’s a compilation, so you can’t please everyone. The songs on this disc are the remastered versions, and they sound better than the originals ( in my opinion ). This disc features one radio-edit, Exposed. Exposed is one of my favorites from Extinct Instinct and this edit is pretty good. It misses some sections, but it remains a great song.

Conclusion - So what can you expect from The Ravages of Time? Well, you have 140 minutes of progressive metal greatness, and it comes with a pretty booklet with all the lyrics, pictures from different time periods of the band and a little story about the band. This is a great package and it costed me € 20,- and I can assure you that it’s totally worth it! Like I said before, you can’t please everyone with a compilation album, but I really enjoyed this one. This is the perfect introduction for new Threshold fans and a must have for ( progressive ) metal fans!

Rating - 92/100

Review by JustinMetal88

Review written by me for my metal site, Metal Mania Online.

www.metalmaniaonline.com