progshine I got this CD a while ago on my mailbox and I had mixed feelings and I always have with old bands' new releases.

It turned out that this is a compilation that also brings us 4 brand new tracks from the core of Lucifer's Friends line up.

Now, let me say that this CD had everything to be a 5 stars. Lucifer's Friend is a great (and underrated) band with some amazing material and a great singer (John Lawton). And indeed, the music here is absolutely amazing, both the old tracks and surprinsingly the new 4 tracks too!

The fact this is going to be a 4 stars to me is the way they packaged everything. TO begin with there's only ten tracks on the compilation (CD 1). According to the CD booklet the tracks were chosen after a research in the web and the band thought that these were the tracks the fans liked most... this is dubious. In the end they have 4 songs out of the first album, one song out of Where The Groupies Killed The Blues, 2 songs out of Mind Exploding, 1 song out of Banquet and 2 songs out of Mean Machine. That means that there's no songs from I'm Just a Rock 'n' Roll Singer, Good Time Warrior, Sneak Me In or Sumo Grip for that matter and the CD is only 47 minutes long. The band could have packed the CD1 with more songs, songs from all the studio albums, etc.

Then we have a second CD with the 4 new tracks and it clocks only 17 minutes long. Now, if you have 47 minutes in one CD and 17 on the other, why not pack them together? Aesthetic reasons? Well, CHerry Red (their distributor) is selling it for the price of a single CD so I think it doesn't matter in the end, but for practical reasons it should have been better off with a single disc.

But hey, don't let my ramblings fool you, Awakening is well worth it buying, specially if you don't own their old studio records. For the old fans the 4 new songs are high quality material that brings the old Lucifer's Friend to a new era and John Lawton still sings amazingly well!