Band:	Cro-Mags
Album:	Twenty Years Of Quarrel And Greatest Hits
Style:	Punk, Hardcore, Crossover thrash metal
Release date:	2006

01. World Peace
02. Show You No Mercy
03. Death Camps
04. Malfunction
05. Premeditated
06. Down But Not Out
07. Face The Facts
08. Pressure Drop
09. Street Justice
10. Do Unto Others [live]
11. Open Letter
12. It's The Limit
13. We Gotta Know
14. Crush The Demoniac
15. Age Of Quarrel
16. Life Of My Own
17. Days Of Confusion
18. Signs Of The Times
19. Don't Forget
20. Hard Times
21. No Sympathy
22. Pull Me Push Me
23. Fireburn
24. Can U Feel
25. My Life
26. Steal My Crown
27. These Streets
28. Don't Tread On Me

Best of albums are always a tricky affair. Usually they're not interesting enough for the fans because personal favourites aren't included and they have everything featured on the album. Another reason is that record companies and bands normally don't put any effort into compiling a Best of album. Usually it's just a quick cash-in. Well, one thing can't be said about Twenty Years Of Quarrel And Greatest Hits and that's that the record company and band haven't put some effort into compiling this Best Of?
What we get served here is a nice cross section of Cro-Mags' studio albums. But why nothing from their Alpha-Omega album from 1992 isn't featured here is anyone's guess. Luckily we do get the best tracks from classic albums such as Age Of Quarrel, Best Wishes, Near Death Experience and Revenge plus, and this is where it becomes interesting for the die-hard fan, one live track, two unreleased tracks, a solo track by Harley Flanagan from all the way back in 1982, and as icing on the cake the entire Reincarnation e.p. from White Devil. This e.p. was already hard to find back in 1995 when it was released and is nigh impossible to get your hands on nowadays.
White Devil was formed in 1994 by Harley Flanagan and Paris Mayhew, two of the founding members of Cro-Mags and they were joined by former Cro-Mags drummer Dave DiCenso in early 1995 and subsequently released Reincarnation. White Devil is very reminiscent of the Best Wishes and Alpha-Omega era Cro-Mags and was therefore seen by quite a few people at the time as the logical continuation of the then defunct Cro-Mags.

So, what do we get to hear music wise on Twenty years Of Quarrel And Greatest Hits?
New York Hardcore of the highest calibre that's what you get. Hardcore as hardcore was meant to be, not the stuff that gets labelled as hardcore nowadays. This is the truly pissed off variety played by musicians who had every reason to be pissed off with the government, false friends, and life in general.
The Age of Quarrel songs are a bit more punkish than the rest of the songs, although some very slight metal influences can be heard in them as well, i.e. slight Black Sabbath and Motörhead influences. The rest is more metallic and was called either hardcore metal crossover or metalcore back in the early nineties (depending if you were from the hardcore or the metal scene). Yes, people, metalcore? and no it sounds nothing like what is called metalcore nowadays, this is the original metalcore. So, this is not for the fainthearted.

All in all this is a nice compilation of Cro-Mags material which will make people who were into the eighties and early nineties NYHC scene misty-eyed. But Twenty Years Of Quarrel is also interesting for people who don't know the Cro-Mags and want to get a taste of what some real hardcore was like.
Just one little warning? the sound quality isn't what people nowadays are used to, although everything was digitally remastered for this album. So, don't expect a crystal clear production but expect a rough raw and at times stuffy production instead. And since this compilation features recordings from over an 8 year span the sound also varies a lot between the songs on offer here.