So what if it is a covers album? It is the right covers done the right way! So there’s no need for women and children to run around in panic because the rate is 6 out of 6! Anything else would be a blasphemy for this release. The tracks here all classics and Hatebreed do a fine job at making them sound like their own without ruining them. The selection of bands doesn’t require discussions and so does the song selection. From Merauder’s ‘Life is Pain’ (because any album that contains a Merauder cover starts from there, not from Track 1), through the Bad Brains’ ‘Supertouch/Shitfit’ (that sounds even more destructive than the original), ‘Thirsty and Miserable’ by Black Flag (Hatebreed being probably the first band to cover a song other than ‘Raise Above’), the inevitable in that case ‘Hatebreeders’ by the Misfits, to the culmination with Sub Zero’s ‘Boxed in’ we have a textbook of hardcore and metal history. One that is very well written! I wrote metal, yes. Because we also have Slayer’s ‘Ghosts of War’ here and it doesn’t really require any comment. But a hard moshpit instead! The gem here is Metallica’s ‘Escape’, though. Overall the strongest tunes are the covers of bands that sound hardly anything like Hatebreed and Jamey Jasta blows away all allegations that his voice had given the band a one-dimensional sound. When he needs to be James Hetfield, he is, when he needs to be John Joseph, he also is. The work with Kingdom of Sorrow obviously helped him give more diversity. And so what if Hatebreed are trying to reclaim their somewhat fading fame by borrowing some from the eternal well of imperatively classic bands? ‘To the Lions’ is an ideal album to listen to when you aren’t really sure what you feel like listening to. Like every good compilation!