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With Chris off on tour and Mark having just returned from holidays, we needed to do something fast that didn’t require a lot of research. Mark also had to find a host because, for the first time ever, Chris was not available to do a show.

In stepped Crag, and with it the idea of doing another covermount CD. You may remember that, at the end of the last one we did back in April (also with Crag) Chris plunged his hand into the great big covermount bag of doom and extracted Brutal Bunch volume 2. Well, if you do remember that – good work. If you don’t, well, you’re about to get real familiar with it real quickly.

From what we could gather in our research, Metal Hammer only issued 4 Brutal Bunch covermount CDs, doing so over 1995 and 1996. Much like the last covermount we did, the MO is very different from what Kerrang! Would do with their CDs: Brutal Bunch featured established (to a greater or lesser degree) bands, the majority of which appeared to be on major labels, big indies or offshoots thereof.

Volume 2 featured the likes of Korn, Helloween, Prong, Cradle of Filth among others, whereas the other 3 volumes impressively featured the likes of Alice in Chains, Skunk Anansie, Fear Factory, Silverchair and many more.

Unlike the Uncut covermounts though, all of the music on these CDs was current, coming from the bands’ recent releases.

Is it “brutal” though? Well, no, not especially. There’s some metal of course – it can be a Metal Hammer CD without some of that – but there’s also far too much MOR and post-grunge too.

So grab a drink, sit back and relax as Mark and Crag take you on a journey through this aural hellscape of a covermount CD.