This stuff needed to be collected, plain and simple. For the sake of the music, yes, but also to pay tribute to Joshua "Ace" Stough's contribution to extreme music. I've been a fan of Dismembered Fetus and a friend of Josh's since 1995 and I haven't heard half of these recordings until recently. It's criminal how underrated Dismembered Fetus were as a band and how difficult it was for me to track down their earliest material. I considered myself to be one of the people in the fold (well, maybe just on the fringe), but it alluded me for nearly 20 years. Even in the Internet age, precious little information has turned up about them and only low resolution scans of Foetusgrubber's beautiful artwork could be found. There wasn't much to work with when compiling this collection, but with help from a friend and hours of plundering through fanzines untouched for almost two decades - here is the bulk of their work. The music is as visceral today as it was in the 90s and finally hearing the first two demos gave me a whole new appreciation of their evolution as a band. Literally all of it, though, is absolutely crushing. This hatred they captured on tape sounds genuine, too, and nobody since has been able to duplicate this sound. This is truly angry music, menacing and ugly. Fuck, I miss the 90s.
Thanks to Josh, Rob, Mike, Jeremy and Foetusgrubber for the solid body of work. Thanks to Christain Petersen for the source material and to Stumblefuck for help with the audio restoration. Hello to fellow fans and the D.F.M. who are still supporting this stuff all these years later.
This release is dedicated to Joshua "Ace" Stough. Though you're gone in form, the memories and your music will live on forever. RIP, 1975-2008.