Relapse
2006
Embryonics 90-98
About This Album
Once their stunning fourth and fifth albums (2001's Organasm and 2003's Austral Alien) were finally given the international distribution they so rightly deserved, Alchemist have had wild-eyed addicts for their progressive space and death metal in a veritable tizzy, scrambling all across the Worldwide Web in often fruitless, exasperating, or extremely expensive searches for their hard to find first three LPs. So it's to these fans' great emotional and fiscal relief that Relapse Records eventually addressed the obsessions they'd engendered by releasing those latter-day efforts in the first place, with 2006's Embryonics 90-98: a two-disc, 28-track collection spanning the cult Australian quartet's "lost" years -- thank God! All fawning and grateful weeping out of the way, one will open Embryonics to find copious liner notes describing almost every single track featured on 1993's Jar of Kingdom, 1994's Lunasphere, and 1997's Spiritech albums, as well as assorted demos, live tracks, and even the title track from 1998's Eve of the War EP -- all jumbled together in non-chronological order. But because of the reliably top-notch, adventurous, and unpredictable nature of Alchemist's songwriting throughout the years and albums, this quite possibly dangerous strategy generally works in their favor -- regardless of the intentional chaos inherent to many Jar of Kingdom tracks (see "Brumal" and "Worlds Within Worlds," for example) and the understandable rough edges of promising (and ultra-rare) demos "Paisley Bieurr" and "Closed Chapter.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 2,3,5,7,8 and 11)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

Disc 2

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.