A Minor Forest weren't the sort of band to wear out their welcome. In the wake of the group's dissolution, AMF purists are naturally eager to get their mitts on as much of the band's recorded output as humanly possible. For everyone who wants a complete AMF collection but doesn't want to spend lots of time and money hunting around in record shops and on E-Bay, My Pal God offers So, Were They in Some Sort of Fight? It's big, it's thorough and it's swollen with double-CD goodness.

For your hard-earned money, you get singles, b-sides, tracks from compilations and split 7"s, unreleased material, the excellent "Joyful Ride on the Donkey" 10" and, of course, the band's ever-popular, super-limited tour 12", minus its potentially frustrating locked grooves. These 22 tracks paint AMF as a supremely varied band, capable of dishing out a tasty mixture of proto-slowcore, electronic-spiked experimentation, feedback-slathered minor-key punk rock and metal, eardrum perforating noise and playful goofiness -- often within the space of a single song. You'll quickly realize that despite their devotion and intensity, A Minor Forest was one of those rare bands that indulged their sense of humor through music -- not silly lyrics, but the regular perpetration of technical and stylistic trickery (locked grooves, etc.) with a nodding assent to listeners. Tracks that make So, Were They In Some Sort of Fight essential to any good music collection include "No One Likes an Old Baby", "Disco Party", "Speed for Gavin (the lesser version)", AMF's cover of the Little River Band's "Lady" and, of course, the eardrum-perforating title cut. Not only is So, Were They In Some Sort of Fight? essential to any complete AMF collection; it will also give newbies a reason to start an AMF collection.