Black Is the Night The Definitive Anthology

"Black is the Night: The Definitive Anthology" is a 2-CD compilation by the British punk rock band The Damned, released on November 1, 2019. It spans their career from 1977 to 2018, featuring tracks from most of their studio albums, along with non-album singles and B-sides, including the new song "Black Is the Night." However, it excludes material from their albums "Not of This Earth" (1995) and "So, Who's Paranoid?" (2008). The band members themselves selected and thematically sequenced the tracks rather than arranging them chronologically. AllMusic praised the anthology for its thematic coherence, highlighting the band's consistent quality despite genre shifts from punk to garage rock, hard rock, pop, goth, and beyond. The inclusion of recent material was noted as evidence that the band remains connected to their creative influences. However, "The Big Takeover" criticized the omission of tracks from "Not of This Earth" and "So, Who's Paranoid?" as questionable and not fully representative of their discography. The anthology features contributions from various band members, including Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Rat Scabies, Brian James, Lu Edmonds, Algy Ward, Paul Gray, Roman Jugg, Bryn Merrick, Monty Oxymoron, Patricia Morrison, and Pinch. Additional musicians include Simon Lloyd, Anthony More, Gary Barnacle, Ray Martinez, Luís Jardim, Hans Zimmer, Kurt Holm, and Robert Fripp. The technical team includes producers such as Nick Lowe, Shel Talmy, The Damned themselves, Roger Armstrong, Ed Hollis, Hans Zimmer, Tony Mansfield, Hugh Jones, Jon Kelly, Bob Sargeant, Captain Sensible, David Bianco, and Tony Visconti. Phil Smee designed the ...