The Best Of The Doors

"Testament Of Rock - The Best Of Astral Doors" culls tracks from all five full length releases and various E.P.s and elsewhere and serves as an extraordinary introduc-tion to a band that's already an integral part of melodic heavy metal history - and they've only just begun. Mighty riffing, majestic vocals and supreme solos are the order of the day on 'Testament of Rock - The Best of Astral Doors,' a greatest hits collection that hits harder than most.

Bobby Womack has had his fingers in so many different pies that his career has probably suffered for it. Instead of being pinned down to one time and one sound (à la Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix), Womack's work includes everything from the grittiest of blaxploitation ("Across 110th Street") to the smoothest of vocal pop ("I Left My Heart in San Francisco"). (And, by the way, he excelled at both.) He was also a rare triple threat – hot guitarist, hitmaking songwriter, and torrid vocalist. But, more than for his musical skills, he's probably best known for marrying Sam Cooke's wife scant months after Cooke's death, and shepherding Sly Stone through the darkest days of There's a Riot Goin' On. The 2008 collection The Best of Bobby Womack: The Soul Years presents Soul Maverick #1 in a tight set of 22 songs from the prime of his career, the late '60s and early '70s. All of his best singles are here, as are the best tracks from his best albums, Communication and Understanding. Finally, the new remastering here provides sound that is vastly better than Womack has ever been given in the digital era. Some fans may still prefer a double-disc set like Midnight Mover: The Bobby Womack Collection, but The Best of Bobby Womack: The Soul Years is easily his best single-disc compilation.

Isaac Hayes' stint with Polydor in the late '70s isn't always looked at as being one of his better eras. In fact, it's not looked upon highly at all by many of his fans. It's important to keep in mind, though, that Hayes had already seen enormous success and had released a sizable amount of legendary albums by the time the late '70s came around. In this respect, you really can't expect his later work to be on par with his classic early-'70s era with Stax no one could one-up albums like Shaft and Black Moses. Plus, the late '70s wasn't a kind era for any early-'70s soul icons as disco and funk moved black music from behind closed doors and into the clubs. Hayes had learned this the hard way during his short-lived mid-'70s run with ABC Records where he struggled to even chart, not to mention score a big hit.

In the decade between the end of World War II and the advent of rock 'n' roll, Tony Bennett emerged as one of the premier pop singers of his generation – the heir apparent to figures like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and other iconic balladeers whose versatile and engaging vocal styles had already translated to huge successes in the 1930s and 1940s.

Jerusalem shows the Swedish Classic Hard Rock/Power Metal favorites at their best, both in songcraft and in production, bringing in Daniel Bergstrand (In Flames, Meshuggah) for the mixing. Jerusalem is by far the most ambitious album from Astral Doors and the concept of the lyrics is darker, more political and more provocative than ever before.