A long five years after their previous full-length The Meads of Asphodel are back, and as irascible and misanthropic as ever as that spoken In the Beginning... intro piece quickly proves! Cursing the world of men and all their actions, the band have trailed this as something of a conclusion to the previous album's theme of death and worthlessness, and although recent re-examinations of Running Out of Time Doing Nothing raised it a little higher in your correspondent's estimation than in his original review, it's still comfortably the worst album in the band's oeuvre. Tomb Songs, with new material and some "quasi-live" recorded versions of older songs, fits in well alongside it but will please fans undoubtedly. You can't really argue with a song titled I Have Cancer but at Least I Will Die in a Whores Bed, a slow and doomy dirge dominated by battering drums and psychedelic synths until the closing gallop of metallic fury.

It's possibly the best of the newer material here; the punky heaviness of Infested by Fleas works well although the song structure feels a little disjointed, while Time Kills' experimental mixtures of chanted vocals makes it the most avant-garde piece. The "live" pieces are good for what they are, recorded versions of Jew Killer (although without original guest Hoest) and Creed of Abraham done by the band individually and pieced together - at least according to videos versions from the Meads' Youtube. They're worth a watch; longer-term devotees will enjoy seeing previous drummer Urakbarameel on the sticks, and Creed especially is amongst the band's best songs, so a rendition in probably the closest we'll get to an actual live performance by The Meads has to be significant. Not the band's best work, but a decent stopgap release; the EP is available name-your-price from their official Bandcamp.