As many people have no doubt said before, the significant problem of 'best-of' albums is that they serve little to no purpose to anyone familiar with said the band in question. If you're a fan, there's no use getting a compilation - you probably already own many of said band's albums. On the other hand, many would argue that a best-of is not the best way to discover an artist, since a big part of appreciating a work of art is appreciating it in its entirety, which you cannot do if you only listen to a few songs from each album, assuming the album as a whole is coherent in itself, that it.

Fortunately, I've found that these problems don't seem to arise with EVERGREY's double compilation album. Now, let me say it right off the bat - I'm not familiar with their music. I've listened to Tom Englund's voice thanks to AYREON, but this was my first taste of his own band. And I enjoyed the heck out of it.

To put it simply, every single song on this compilation is good. I'll give some specific recommendations at the end of the review but suffice to say that this is a great introduction to EVERGREY's music. Doing a quick research, you can see that these two CDs cover pretty much all of the band's career, but there are still a few unreleased, unplugged songs for the most hardcore fans. These are good as well, but not worth getting the whole release for them, that's for certain, since there are only two. Get them of iTunes or Amazon if you want them.

So yeah, no score for this album? I think that's only fitting. Don't get me wrong, I loved listening to this compilation CD, but is this an accurate representation of EVERGREY's music? I couldn't say, since I didn't know them beforehand. All I can say is that they've definitely got me curious to discovering their whole albums.

Songs to check out: "The Masterplan", "Blackened Dawn", "Blinded", "The Great Deceiver", "Monday Morning Apocalypse", "Wrong", "Recreation Day", "Fear", "Frozen".

(Online August 31, 2012)