A Comprehensive Retrospective... is just that, a collection of early recordings, a few live tracks and a few demos. It includes songs recorded for their first demo with their original original lead singer Damien Moyal as well as the first demo with their original vocalist Chad Gilbert from Hearts Once Nourished With Hope and Compassion fame. The first couple tracks were recorded in 1995 with Moyal on vocals. Early Shai Hulud resembles all the Shai Hulud that you learned to love. Moyal has a biting, bark-like scream and although the songs itself aren't nearly as complex as more recent Shai Hulud songs, it is still a familiar song. The lyrics are brutally honest and intensely angry, and the guitars reflect this. However, the guitars do not do their standard guitar-hook-leading-into-yet-another-guitar-hook-into-another-guitar-hook etc. thing nearly as much as they did before their demise. It's an unpolished sound, but in the world of hardcore, nothing works better. The most interesting part about A Comprehensive Retrospective... is to watch the slow progression of Shai Hulud into what they became before they died: by far one of the more intense hardcore acts in existence. This is an album for the tried and true Shai Hulud fans. Shai Hulud may sort of live on in the Warmth of Red Blood, but the hardcore world will probably never see such a fine-tuned machine of pure rage in a long while.