Album Reviews

[VHscraps]

'Shell Shock' used to be my favourite tune on that. Lyrics are pretty funny - maybe unintentionally so. I wonder if it was influenced by one of tjose Vietnam movies, where the characters always seemed to end fucked up. I embarking on the journey fromy home town to see them in Glasgow, in 81 or 82, but getting to the gig to discover it had been cancelled due to poor ticket sales.

Ah, the pre-internet age.

[VHscraps]

That should read ... I remember embarking on the journey from my home town ...

iPhone keypad + big fingers = many typos. I apologise.

[binnie]

They should do a full UK tour - I think the demand would be huge given that it's been so long. I haven't heard the new record yet, but it's supposed to be very good.

[vandeleur]

Right it's my birthday today and spunked my first bit of birthday money on the torche cd... Cheers for the heads up binnie

[katina]

Happy Birthday Vandeleur !!!

Have a nice day listening to Torche !!!!

[DONNIEP]

Right it's my birthday today and spunked my first bit of birthday money on the torch cd... Cheers for the heads up binnie

Happy Birthday bro!!!

[vandeleur]

Cheers people ..44 +1

[DLR Bridge]

Happy Birthday! My next icy cold Newcastle will be in your honor. Cheers!

[vandeleur]

[binnie]

Kreator – Phantom Antichrist

Recent years have seen many metal masters return to their former glories. But this is special. The biggest of the ‘Big 3’ of German thrash – the other 2 being Sodom and Destruction, since you asked – Kreator were always special. Classic albums like ‘Pleasure To Kill’ and ‘Endless Pain’ were not just really fast, really warped and relentlessly heavy, they have something more. A presence, if you will. Whilst post-millenium albums have seen the band return to their thrash roots after some experimentation in the '90s (witness ‘Renewal’ and ‘Endorama’) they were good, but lacking something. Something intangible that you couldn’t quantify if you tried. But now, that presence is back – it is not an overstatement to pronounce this Kreator’s best record since ‘Extreme Aggression’ (1989).

It’s there in the title-track. This is the way Slayer used to sound: not just raw and fast, but drenched in an evil, a dark presence beneath the speed. There are so many rhythmic twists and turns here, so many slabs of riffage, that it coils you into another space. But this is no nostalgia trip. Its old skool, no doubt, but it is also doused in some modern colours borrowed from melodic death metal and aspects of the Gothenburg sound. But most importantly, Kreator are clearly hungry, even after 13 records. And that hunger is shown in the finesse of these songs, the little melodic nuances which somehow add to the darkness, the weight of what thunders out of the speakers. It is also present in the careful balance maintained between a richness of ideas without becoming overbearing: thus ‘From Flood Into Fire’ is a battle hymn for the forbidden, whilst ‘Your Heaven, My Hell’ has a scope so vast it sweeps across metal’s past and present in panoramic take. Best of all is perhaps ‘Civilization Collapse’, which sounds like the sun imploding. Propelled by a guitar sound most bands would sell their grandmother for, this is cinematic, grandiose stuff – for an album loosely based on the Book of Revelations, that is deliciously appropriate. The speed is raucous, but it is delivered with such control and with such prowess that the impact is greater because the songs are so memorable.

‘Phantom Antichrist’ is one of 2012’s best metal records by one of metal’s most accomplished bands: worship and pay tribute, because Kreator conquer all.

[SunisinuS]

Sixto Rodriguez: Cold Fact:

Would like a Review of this album:



Crooked Children Yellow Writing....



Inner City Blues. This Album reminds me of one of my favorite Bands.....give 'em a listen and a review we can collaborate on...

[binnie]

Never heard of that.

I'll have to check 'em out....

[binnie]

Upon A Burning Body – Red. White. Green.

You sense that Upon A Burning Body don’t do irony. At one point in ‘Desperado’, a defiant chant of ‘TO CONFORM IS TO BE DESTROYED’ booms out of the speakers. You see, in their minds they badasses: they dress up like gangsters, they’re proud Texans, and they’re resisting the world because nothing – absolutely nothing – could make them conform. It is deliciously funny, then, to listen an album so ball-achingly similar to a slew of deathcore bands – conforming to a musical genre, it seems, is not really conforming at all.

So, it is clear from a fairly early stage of that UABB do not really have an awful lot to say. And, listening to their music – breakdown heavy, growl filled, hardcore infused death metal – it’s soon apparent that they’re never going to push the envelope sonically, either. It’s a surprise, then, that ‘Red. White. Green’ (it’s a tribute to the Mexican flag) is so compelling. Clocking in at just 34 minutes, this is a cluster of slick, punchy bursts of brutality sugar-coated to give you a fix of heavy without overwhelming your senses. And the choruses stick like shit to a blanket. It’s easy to be cynical – you know that the record label went gaga when they found a well-styled band that could make a buoyant sub-genre more palletable – but UABB really just want to have fun. ‘Sin City’, for instance, is a bit like early Slipknot, a relentless melee of riffs which spams from bar to bar in the name of hellraising: ‘LIFE SUCKS, AND THEN YOU DIE!/ SO LIVE IT UP! WHO GIVES A FUCK?/ TEAR IT UP TONIGHT’. The party hard vibe is refreshing in a genre of music which idolizes melancholy. And you sense that they really don’t give a fuck – ‘Texas Blood Money’ is such a moronic display of power in celebration of their home state that it could only be delivered with a complete absence of a self-awareness.

UABB are not profound, they’re not original but they are a hell of a lot of fun. And, most vitally of all, they do what heavy metal should do: make you believe that you’re part of something bigger than yourself.

[78/84 guy]

Lynyrd Skynyrd- Last Of A Dyin' Breed. I thought I would put it here rather than start a new thread. I always cringe when someone in that band seems to leave us to early and Gary & Johnnie keep going on the road. The original band is in my top 5 of all time. I might be sick of alot of that stuff but I still love & respect it. Anyway's the bottom line for me is all the newer albums they have put out are all strong for the most part. Except maybe the first one. 1991. That was a little to modern sounding at the time for them. The last one, God & Guns was really strong I.M.O. This one is right up there with it. I bought the deluxe one at Best Buy with four more songs on it. It was worth it. Lots of great guitar playing and the songwriting is very strong. The title track & Start Livin' Life Again are really good. So if you are a sucker for the poor man's version of Skynyrd you will like this. I havent seen the band live since Leon died, and don't really care too at all since Billy died but this is a good lineup. I'll wait for the live dvd. I do wonder if he word LAST in the title has meaning ? Enough said.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Iron Maiden – Fear of The Dark (1992)

If an award existed for ‘the most uneven album ever released’ this would be in with a fighting chance of winning it. There are some glorious moments here, but they are balanced, perplexingly, by bursts of stunning mediocrity and, worse still, examples of a band who no longer knew who or what they wanted to be. ‘Fear…’ essentially had exactly the opposite problem of its predecessor, 1990’s career low ‘No Prayer For the Dying’: if the earlier album presented the world with a Maiden that was out of ideas, ‘Fear….’ was in part a Maiden with too many ideas, often pulling in different directions. Marking the end of the band’s decade long dominance of the genre and the beginning of 8 years in commercial wilderness, it would also prove to be the band’s last record with Bruce Dickinson who, in truth, often sounds bored here, over singing and over selling the songs as though he’s trying to convince himself – as well as the fans – that he’s still interested in heavy metal. He often sounds so melodramatic it is comical rather than powerful.

It all starts off promising enough. ‘Be Quick Or Be Dead’ has the rapid fire punky bite of the D’ianno era, booming things into life with more power than anything on ‘No Prayer….’. Elsewhere Maiden were keen to explore their heaviest side, with ‘Chain Of Misery’ delivering a polished slice of metal, and ‘From Here To Eternity’ doing its best to be a rabble rouser and coming up somewhat short. ‘Fear Is The Key’ is much more powerful, the simplest of metallic bravura spun through Zeppelin grandeur. This is an album which also features a stone cold lost classic in ‘Afraid To Shoot Strangers’. Beginning with the sort of eerie folk the band would later explore on ‘Dance Of Death’, it erupts into the sort of grandiose prog at which they excel, a mark of the quirkiness which separates them from the genre they were once supposed to represent. The title track is also a stalwart. Epic, anthemic and full of the drama you’d expect from a Maiden composition, it has become a highlight of the band’s live show – on record, however, it feels like Maiden by numbers, a Hollywood version of a much darker graphic novel.

There are some gargantuan missteps here, however. Much of this comes from the band’s decision to move away from their traditional good-verus-evil themes. ‘Childhood Ends’ – which is about world hunger – is, frankly, anodyne. Epic vocal aside, ‘Wasted Love’ – a smaltzy power ballad – straddles terrain that you just cannot wander into if your name is Iron Maiden. Worst of all, however, is ‘The Apparition’, which feels like a jam room outtake that someone wondered onto the record. Elsewhere, it’s a case of perspiration rather than inspiration: ‘Weekend Warriors’ and ‘The Fugitive’ are perfectly decent heavy metal tunes which would be passable on almost any other band’s output. When you’ve earned the status of demi-Gods, however, expectations stretch far beyond ‘solid’.

This was a band that was not writing as one – note the ‘Harris’ and ‘Dickinson/Gers’ credits – and clearly had conflicting ideas about where it was going. That they could still produce a compelling collection of songs is a testament to how talented its members are. But ‘Fear…’ is precisely that: a collection, rather than an album. Many of these songs stand on their own merits, but put together they pull themselves apart as an album. Dickinson leaving a year later left the door open for the band to explore a different route and in truth much of the celebrated ‘prog turn’ of the post reunion records had its roots in the Blaze-era. Looking back at the landscape in 1992 – Metallica, G’N’R, Faith No More, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Jane’s Addiction – Iron Maiden sounded – and felt – old and a little flat. That was something you could never have accused them of before. And after ‘Brave New World’, it was something we’ve yet to accuse them of again.