To celebrate their 25th birthday, Roadrunner Records decided to do something special, something really special.
Instead of merely releasing a ‘best of’ album, compilation or something like that, Roadrunner’s A&R manager Monte Conner was asked to come up with an original idea. After some brainstorming, he came up with the following:

Four team captains: Joey Jordison (Slipknot), Dino Cazares (ex-Fear Factory/Brujeria), Robert Flynn (Machine Head) and Matthew Heafy (Trivium), were asked to write and produce songs for this album and recruit whoever they liked to record those songs. The only requirement was that the recording artists were singed to Roadrunner at one time in the past.

The result is a who-is-who of 25 years of metal with a Roadrunner touch. Big names like King Diamond (Mercyful Fate, King Diamond), Dani Filth (Cradle Of Filth), Peter Steele (Carnivore, Type O Negative), Glen Benton (Deicide), Max Cavalera (Sepultura, Soulfly) and Corey Taylor (Slipknot, Stone Sour) are combined with cult heroes (Jeff Waters, James Murphy, Josh Silver, amongst others) up to a stunning number of 55 musicians from 44 different bands.
Quite impressive.

The four team captains wrote all tracks except track 12 “Roads” which was written by Josh Silver (Life Of Agony) so the album is a gathering of songs by five writers.

Although the tracks differ greatly from each other; for instance “Annihilation By The Hands Of God” is a furious yet groovy death metal track, “Tired ‘N Lonely” is a surprisingly strong post grunge-rock track, “Dawn Of A Golden Age” with vocals by Dani Filth could have been on a C.O.F. album and “Rhoads” is a sensitive ballad sung by Opeth’s Mikael Akerveldt, the overall impression is that it is a very coherent album.

The packaging is also taken care off with great care. Each contributing musician has its own photograph with a short bio, the credits for each track are extensively documented and the liner notes by senior critic Don Kaye describing the history of Roadrunner are very comprehensive.
Added to all that is an hour long DVD with “the making of...” which gives a good insight in the whole process from idea to finished product.
The icing on the cake is the great sleeve-design and the slipcase, making this a wannahave album.

Roadrunner Records turns 25 this year, with this kind of talent on their artist-roster the next 25 will be even better.