Releases of Best Of albums that lovingly cherry-pick the true best from the back catalogues of three of metal’s finest are always welcome. They act as wonderful entry points for the uninitiated and should always be low-priced, as these are. OR... are they just a cynical marketing ploy to flog old meat to the converted?

A worry, though, is that with a band quite as splendid and revolutionary as Sepultura you really need to hear records like Chaos AD and Roots in their entirety, but their best-of release does a lovely job of taking a few key highlights from their four major releases as well as one from their rare Schizophrenia release. It is notable that all thirteen tracks are taken from the Max Cavalera days. Once you hear how amazingly good Sepultura used to be you are guaranteed to head down the shops and update your back catalogue, with a little feeling of shame that you haven’t had those records your whole life.

Cramming Peter Steele’s ridiculous, long-running vampire guise into one record is quite an effort, however. Especially as his cynical riddles can and do get rather tiresome sometimes. Type O Negative’s sordid gothic metal back catalogue is not quite as exciting or vital as Sepultura’s but there is, of course, enough here for even newcomers to enjoy. Again the tracks are well chosen: a twelve-minute epic kicks things off before a wonderfully spaced-out rendition of Neil Young’s ‘Cinnamon Girl’ and a thrashed-out version of Deep Purple’s ‘Highway Star’ puts this band in its righteous place of legendary.

Career-defining songs such as the thunderously groovy ‘Linchpin’ and the quite stunningly heavy ‘Replica’, along with their fantastic cover of Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’, ensure that Fear Factory’s is arguably the heaviest of the these three Roadrunner best-of releases. Taken mainly from Demanufacture and Obsolete, the industrial feel to their music means that it is probably the least accessible. There is also absolutely nothing new here, obviously, but for those that have never heard how pulverisingly heavy a band can be, this record is worth a purchase, if only for ‘Edgecrusher’. It’ll crush more than just your edge, I promise you.

These releases all have pretty crap artwork, but aside from the fact that these are all sanctioned without the blessings of the bands, they are also the best single-band mixtapes you’ll ever bear witness to. Everyone needs these bands in their life. Including you.