Underground band utility man Joe Preston has accumulated an enviable collection of bass-playing credits over the years, from his early-'90s involvement with subsonic frequency pioneers Earth and their disciples of a decade later, Sunn 0))), to his stints with indie rock stalwarts the Melvins and, most recently, new millennium metal beasts High on Fire -- many of them carried off concurrently with his long-running solo project, Thrones. Begun in 1996, Thrones had Preston handling all instruments himself while traversing an eclectic musical terrain common to all his collaborative efforts cited above (and a few more, besides) over the span of a few albums and literally dozens of singles and one-off compilation entries. And that's where 2005's Day Late, Dollar Short enters the picture with positively heroic results, as it assembles these assorted odds and ends into a single, astonishing, and nerve-jarring 19-track exposition of an otherwise scattered seven-year career. "The Suckling," 1994's first blood, offers a rather inauspicious post-Melvins dirge, but its surprisingly lively B-side romp through Ultravox's "Young Savage" quickly renounces such limitations and paves the way for a string of interesting covers. Those are generally saved for a little later in this time line, however, as the numerous 7"s released in the next few years showcased Thrones' originals like the crushing semi-industrial sludge of "Beddleman," "Coal Sack," and "Simon Legree" (featuring a nice Ian Gillan sample), and the Queens of the Stone Age-like oscillating groove machine called "Senex." At the other end of the spectrum are minimalist Dada-esque experiments like "Piano Handjob" (our hero caught red-handed while testing the limits of a sequencer) and "Easter Woman" (electronic bleeps and bloops galore), and contemplative synthetic ballads like "Silver Colorado" (a tortured Mellotron lullaby) and "Epicus Doomicus Bumpitus," which may sound like a tribute to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire, but is actually based around an obscure children's television show theme! Next, a haunted remix of "Valley of the Thrones" and the gargantuan grind of "Obolus" bookend an amusing cover of Rush's "Oracle" and a