LUCA TURILLI: The Infinite Wonders of Creation

Produced by Luca Turilli
Released: 2006

Luca Turilli is the guitairst and songwriter with Italian band Rhapsody of Fire (previously known as Rhapsody) and this review will show you that I can't say I've ever been much of a fan of that band and their plastic-sounding B-Grade spaghetti sword-and-sorcery film soundtrack music, and as such I wasn't looking forward to this. Released from the constraints of his main band, however, Luca Turilli has made the sort of album to which Rhapsody has only ever aspired.

The Infinite Wonders of Creation opens with a truly rousing orchestral piece that sounds like it came from the soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings and is far more convincing than anything Rhapsody has ever done. This impressive beginning leads into a couple of Blind Guardian-style epic metal tracks, featuring a combination of soprano and tenor singers and solidly metal guitar lines and riffs. Being less than familiar with any of Turilli's other solo outings, this album reminded me at times of Therion, not just stylistically but in general.

The amalgamation of metal with the classical and operatic style is seamless and the overall concept is, as you could expect from Turilli, well executed. It's hard not to make comparisons with Rhapsody here, as I have done several times, and fans of that band should really love this. Even those who have no time for that band, however, may well appreciate The Infinite Wonders of Creation.

1. Secrets of Forgotten Ages
2. Mother Nature
3. Angels of the Winter Dawn
4. Altitudes
5. The Miracle of Life
6. Silver Moon
7. Cosmic Revelation
8. Pyramids and Stargates
9. Mystic and Divine
10. The Infinite Wonders of Creation

Rating: 76%

ICED EARTH: Alive in Athens: The DVD

Released: 2006

Iced Earth's 1999 double-live album Alive in Athens is this generation's Live After Death, one of the best live heavy metal albums of all time. The accompanying DVD statement, finally issued seven years after the triple CD and multi-LP box set, is a disappointingly flat and amateurish concert film. I'm pretty sure it's not what Jon Schaffer would have wanted to give to his fans, which is probably why Century Media waited until the band had moved to another label before they released it. And considering how much effort Schaffer puts into everything his band releases, it's pretty obvious that he had no say in Alive in Athens: The DVD. The booklet is just a reprise of the one from the CD and the footage is decidedly ordinary.

On the plus side, the audio is excellent, but if you've already got the CD or quintuple-vinyl version of this you'd already know that. As such, the DVD doesn't add much to the experience. If anything, it probably detracts from it, because when you watch a concert as long as this on TV, you really want something more than static camera angles, poor framing and unimaginative editing. Many criticised Iron Maiden's Rock in Rio DVD because of the myriad of quick edits, and while it's true that at times it was a bit of a headspin, their two and a half hour set never got boring.

By halfway through Alive in Athens, you'd swear you were watching the single most boring live band in history. Sure, 80% of Iced Earth's songs are based around the same riff, but I've never been bored by their albums. So either they are incredibly tedious live, or this DVD makes them out to be that way through amateurish production. Maybe it's a bit of both, as I've never been to an Iced Earth gig, but snappier editing would have made this far more enjoyable regardless.

I stuck with this for about two-thirds of the way, because I wanted to write a decent review, because I like Iced Earth and because I wanted this to get better. But it never did. By the end of "Dante's Inferno" I was considerably underwhelmed and by the end of "My Own Savior" I was stifling yawns. Live DVD albums aren't supposed to put people to sleep.

Alive in Athens: The DVD is doomed almost right from the start. The static camera angles cut off part of the stage so that even in the long shots, you rarely see Larry Tarnowski. The close-ups focus on Matt Barlow and Schaffer even when Tarnowski is soloing his tits off, as if whoever was directing didn't know which guy was the lead guitarist and the whole production is presented with virtually no inspiration whatsoever. When a band like Dungeon can make a lively and entertaining live concert DVD with virtually no budget at all, it's staggering to think how awful Alive in Athens turned out considering the budget a the band like Iced Earth probably had to work with. Even if you are a rabid fan (and IE has plenty of those), you should avoid this.

1. Intro
2. Burning Times
3. Vengeance is Mine
4. Dark Saga
5. Last Laugh
6. Cast in Stone
7. Last December
8. Pure Evil
9. Desert Rain
10. Dante's Inferno
11. The Hunter
12. Melancholy (Holy Martyr)
13. Angel's Holocaust
14. Stormrider
15. The Path I Choose
16. Watching Over Me
17. Diary
18. Blessed Are You
19. When the Night Falls
20. My Own Savior
21. Travel in Stygian
22. Violate
23. Stand Alone
24. Brainwashed
25. Disciples of the Lie
26. I Died For You
27. Prophecy
28. Birth of the Wicked
29. The Coming Curse
30. Epilog

Rating: 54%

MORTAL SIN: An Absence of Faith

Produced by Phil McKellar

Released: 2007

An absence of faith is probably a good way to describe my attitude toward Mortal Sin when they first got back together – yet again – a few years back. But after seeing them live a few times to find them better than they ever were, my belief was rekindled. After just one spin of this corker I was almost as ready as I was back in 1986 to shout their praises from the rooftops.

You can usually tell how good an album is going to be from the very first moment. “Out of Darkness” immediately proclaims An Absence of Faith to be a really good album. It has both raw melodic catchiness and a driving groove, thus combining the band’s archetypal sound with a modern feel. When it comes to classic bands, only the best can try this and pull it off without looking like has-beens. Mortal Sin nails it time and again with a virtually endless procession of hook-laden riffs, sustained dual-guitar interplay and memorable choruses. One of the most pleasing aspects of An Absence of Faith is that Mat Maurer’s vocal delivery has developed a well-apparent depth and diversity. Similarly, his lyric-writing has also matured, making his pointed political statements far more barbed.

“Deadman Walking”, “Before the Bough Breaks” and “Rise or Fall” are all deadset rippers, paying obvious respect to the band’s origins but without sounding dated. The epic “Tears of Redemption” is the obvious centerpiece, acting both as sequel and update to “Lebanon” and a tribute to Mayhemic Destruction. This is, however, the track I like the least as it sounds like the band is trying just a little too hard. Maurer throws in an entire verse that strings together titles from the first album and the chorus with its "I refuse to be a Muslim" refrain just didn't work for me. “My Nightmare” and “Say Your Prayers” also prove that they can’t all be gems, but the great moments far outweigh the lesser ones. “Eye in the Sky” and “Broken Promises” round out the album just as well as the early tracks begin it, with darting solos from Nathan Shea and Mick Sultana and rumbling drums from Luke Cook, combined with more of Maurer’s topical observations.

If you aren’t banging your head within fifteen seconds of this album kicking in, and keeping it up for most of the next 48 minutes, you simply don’t deserve to live.

1. Out of the Darkness
2. Deadman Walking
3. Tears of Redemption
4. Before the Bough Breaks
5. Rise or Fall
6. My Nightmare
7. Say Your Prayers
8. Lost Within
9. Eye in the Sky
10. Broken Promises

Rating: 85%

STRAPPING YOUNG LAD: City

Produced by Devin Townsend

Released: 1997

What do you do when your previous album sold a stunning 120 copies in the US alone, you have no band, no money and you're sleeping on your A&R guy's sofa eating noodles and margarine and listening to Morbid Angel and Shihad? If you're Devin Townsend, you write some of the angriest and most intense heavy metal music of all, get Gene Hoglan to play drums for you and record them as City.

City really is the last word in angry music, created not by a group on its way to being comfortable millionaires pissed off about being heckled or getting bad reviews but by a frustrated genius existing hand-to-mouth for months. Sure, there's some other guys who play on this, but City is Devin Townsend's album; it is his energy, vision and rage that drives it smashing through every pre-conceived idea about intensity and extremity. To the untrained ear or a first-time listener, this will be nothing but a ceaseless cacophony as Townsend crams every space with as much noise as possible. It sounds at first like extremity for the sake of it, but as overwhelming as the relentless, multi-tracked guitar onslaught is, repeated listenings reveal Strapping Young Lad's genius for infectious hooks and melodies that surprise with their ability to seemingly come from nowhere and add further dimensions to the music. There is also Townsend's bizarre sense of irony, with his minimalistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics both evoking his frustrations and rage and poking fun at the ludicrous extremity of metal.

And, as mentioned several times already, City is ludicrously extreme. "Oh My Fucking God" is one of the heaviest, most full-on and over-the-top examples of industrial grind ever recorded with Townsend's apoplectic vocals pushing the envelope into the realms of the truly insane. Similarly, "All Hail the New Flesh" and "Detox" are triumphs of noise and total chaos but even there a cleverly-timed keyboard surge or poppy melody will suddenly burst forth, making you wonder how they ever got there in the first place. "Home Nucleonics" is another crushing barrage but in "AAA" a monstrous groove takes precedence until "Underneath the Waves" unleashes further mayhem. The Cop Shoot Cop cover "Room 429" gets in the way a bit, somewhat breaking the flow of the album because the epic, surging "Spirituality" would be the perfect way to come in after the layered screaming of "Underneath the Waves". A minor quibble however, because CSC was a major inspiration for City so the homage is somewhat deserved.

This is an exhausting and overwhelming work, a masterpiece that combines both bombast and subtlety in a curious and staggering unison and a statement in the extreme that may never be matched.

1. Velvet Kervorkian
2. All Hail the New Flesh
3. Oh My Fucking God
4. Detox
5. Home Nucleonics
6. AAA
7. Underneath the Waves
8. Room 429
9. Spirituality

Rating: 100%

HERRATIK: Wrath-Divine

Produced by Astennu

Released: 2006

After five years working under the name Abortus, under which they issued two albums, this Sydney band changed its name to Herratik in mid-2003. Wrath-Divine was recorded in October 2004, but saw release only in mid-2006 through British label Copro. The album sees Herratik taking up precisely where they had left off with Process of Elimination, with a furious barrage of blasting, thrashing death metal. Production-wise, this is something of an improvement on the abominable sound of that previous release; Wrath-Divine retains the band’s signature sound but producer Astennu’s experienced hand has given it considerably more definition.

Herratik’s attack is a truly ferocious noise built on raw and ridiculously overdriven, distorted guitars that takes its cues from underground European extremists like good friends Mystic Circle, whose former drummer Necrodemon provided the beats for Wrath-Divine. The album then is pretty relentless, bludgeoning the listener with a mixture of crushing guitar volume and speed virtually from the outset.

“I, Heretic” and “Dance on Your Grave” are quite sturdy openers, raging, furious and loud. As strongly as the album begins though, Wrath-Divine is ultimately let down by a distinct lack of ideas and variety. By track six the songs have become less and less distinguishable from one another and there’s a marked lack of real diversity beyond the blitzkrieg-like pace and delivery. Coupled with that is the feeling that almost every song seems at least a minute too long, with a lot of verbose but over-repetitive lyrics, as if they didn't know how to bring things to an end.

With four Abortus-era tracks tacked on to the end, Wrath-Divine runs for an exhausting sixty-four minutes, which is far too long for almost any album and certainly one as samey-sounding as this.

1. Intro - The Holy Plan
2. I, Heretic
3. Dance on Your Grave
4. Above Your Lies
5. New Gods
6. Wrath-Divine
7. X
8. Forget Me Father
9. New Era
10. Forked Tongue
11. Take You Down
12. Sadist-fy
13. Process of Elimination
14. Re-pray

Rating: 50%

ANARION: Unbroken

Released: 2006

Melbourne’s Anarion has come a very long way since their first album The Journey Begins… from 2001. Indeed, Unbroken is perhaps one of the best Australian metal releases of 2006, albeit a greatly undiscovered one. This is an album of unabashed heavy metal, an excellently-produced volume of grace, style and speed that is a far cry from the ritualistic power metal evident on their debut.

As good as this album is, Unbroken does start off on shaky ground. The very first track is a pure speed metal belter that would be a true gem if the entire bridge section wasn’t a direct Strapping Young Lad rip-off, the blatancy of which left me thoroughly aghast. Beyond this audaciously plagaristic act, however, Anarion has made a terribly strong and original sounding album. It’s always good when a band takes the time to analyse what they need to do and how they want to sound and Anarion has obviously done a lot of homework. The songwriting is drastically improved, resulting in catchy, flowing tracks.

The playing was always quite good but on Unbroken the band pull off some truly spectacular and breathtaking moves including some mind-numbingly face-melting guitar solos that would leave even some far more established players gasping in awe. Vocally, Riccardo Mecchi is melodic and powerful without sounding like a million other power metal singers, something that could be said for Anarion as a unit. While they can no doubt be considered among the legions of power metal acts, Anarion’s music is distinctive and draws from a wide and diverse frame of reference that encompasses a range of genres.

If there was a need, the closest Australian artist I could compare them to is possibly Dungeon, whose sound they admittedly do come close to at times (certainly fans of that band would love this), but Unbroken shows Anarion to be a band that is developing a sturdy sense of identity and with material as strong as this deserve to have a bigger share of the national metal stage.

1. New Eyes, Old Lies
2. Blind Mortality
3. Greed of Man
4. Live in Me
5. Broken Truths
6. Below
7. Conflicting Self
8. Buried
9. Another Level

Rating: 90%

BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION: Runaway Brides

Released: 2006

One of these days I'll get around to reviewing the first Brides of Destruction album Here Come the Brides, which came as a complete surprise to me. This combination of punk rock attitude and spitfire sleaze rock was over too soon but left other 80s stars making comebacks lying bleeding in its wake and remains one of the few albums I have in its entirety on my iPod. Afterwards, Nikki Sixx went back to the circus that is Motley Crue and while he left the Brides a bunch of songs they really weren’t able to recover. I asked a friend what this was like and was told it was a disappointment, but I didn't know how much of a disappointment that would be until I managed to get a copy.

Runaway Brides misfires to about the same degree Here Come the Brides went off. The songwriting isn’t quite there, the production is slicker and more commercial, thereby taking away the street-level edge the band had before, and both Tracii Guns and London LeGrande seem far more restrained. LeGrande’s vocal dexterity and Guns’ blazing lead guitar were part of what made the debut album cook, but here it sounds like someone told them they should stop having such a great time. LeGrande actually sounds terrible on this, leaving me to wonder whether his performance on the first album was some kind of lucky fluke. There are five more songs here than on the debut, which gives it the running time of a complete album but as none of them are actually memorable it hardly seems worth the effort. Even the ones Nikki co-wrote are simply forgettable.

Tracii Guns has always managed to just miss the boat when it comes to real success and with Runaway Brides it he did it again. BoD pretty much came to a halt after this, which was a real shame, because the first album was awesome.

1. Aunt Biente
2. Lords of the Mind
3. Deadman's Ruin
4. Criminal
5. This Time Around
6. White Trash
7. Brothers
8. Never Say Never
9. Blown Away
10. Porcelain Queen
11. White Horse
12. Tunnel of Love
13. Dimes in Heaven

Rating: 25%

BRAND NEW SIN: Tequila

Produced by Joey Z and Brand New Sin

Released: 2006

Brand New Sin’s previous album Recipe for Disaster was one of the most over-rated CDs of 2005. Apart from one song, I couldn’t see the value in it at all. One year later the band delivered Tequila, which is an altogether different proposition. This is the album that everyone was telling me Recipe for Disaster was supposed to be. Brand New Sin plays heavier, dirtier and meaner than on the last outing, and Tequila is thus far more satisfying. All that time on the road hanging out with Zakk Wylde, Pepper Keenan and Lemmy really paid off and they proceeded to come out with a set that the first of those gentlemen would likely be proud to call his own. This is down home southern fried heavy rock, the type you might hear in a biker bar just before an epic fight breaks out, and then with the next track becomes the soundtrack to the fight.

“Said and Done” drifts in like the Man With No Name and then swings into action with a huge slab-like groove and “Did Me Wrong” follows with metallic riff-heavy rock. Then comes “Spare the Agony”, a moodier piece with a slow-building intro of clean guitar over a rumbling bass line. This one could well have come off Black Label Society’s Mafia set. “Old” has a real commercial hook but is far too heavy for radio to play and “Motormeth” is pure flat-to-the-floor rocking. Short segments of dark acoustic guitar are sprinkled through the album too, adding a sense of overall diversity, and it winds up with a really cool version of “House of the Rising Sun” that starts out as a nicely brooding blues before loudly kicking into top gear near the end.

Whatever they might have promised before that I felt they couldn’t deliver, Brand New Sin certainly brought it home this time.

1. Said and Done
2. Did Me Wrong
3. Spare the Agony
4. Ice Man
5. The Proposition
6. Old
7. Worm Whore
8. See the Sun
9. Motormeth
10. Numero Dos
11. Elogio
12. Reaper Man
13. Acehole
14. House of the Rising Sun

Rating: 85%

RHAPSODY: Symphony of Enchanted Lands II - The Dark Secret

Produced by Luca Turilli and Alex Staropoli

Released: 2004

This is the second part of the Enchanted Lands saga that Italy’s most gloriously over-the-top band began in 1998. It is quite rightly labelled a symphony because, honestly, this album isn’t really metal and barely even rock.

Symphony of Enchanted Lands II is about as heavy as a tissue box and as metal as the tissues inside. It’s classical music with the occasional intrusion of rock instruments, mostly keyboards with some guitars now and then. Indeed, Luca Turilli’s guitar is buried so low in the mix the riffing is almost non-existent. Once in a while, he does come to the fore, most notably on the sprawling “Sacred Power of Raging Winds” when the guitar takes on the lead violinist role in an extended interplay with flutes, which sound synthesised but apparently are not.

Overall however, this doesn’t offer much more than what Rhapsody has done previously, even if, with the use of a 60-piece orchestra, a choir and veteran actor Christopher Lee providing the narrative parts, it is significantly more impressively executed than before. The band’s obsession with Lord of the Rings-style sagas is almost grossly out of hand, with entire lyrical passages virtually torn directly from Tolkien’s pages and no matter how hard they try it’s difficult to take songs with lines like “The dragons are flying in the blue skies” seriously. Fabio Leone’s vocals let the side down as well, wavering between excellent to close to awful and try as he might he still can’t quite get a grip on English phrasing. Lee’s work is, as you’d expect, nothing short of brilliant here, but rather than help the story it sometimes gets in the way: this album is 72 minutes long and the narrative sections take up almost a quarter of that time.

Rhapsody’s fans most likely really enjoy this but it is really far too pompous and overdone for anyone else.

1. The Dark Secret (The Ancient Prophecy - Ira Divina)
2. Unholy Warcry
3. Never Forgotten Heroes
4. Elgard's Green Valleys
5. The Magic of the Wizard's Dream
6. Erian's Mystical Rhymes/The White Dragon's Order
7. The Last Angel's Call
8. Dragonland's Rivers
9. Sacred Power of Raging Winds
10. Guardiani del Destino
11. Shadows of Death
12. Nightfall on the Grey Mountains

Rating: 40%

GAMMA RAY: No World Order!

Produced by Dirk Schlächterand Kai Hansen

Released: 2001

Gamma Ray's most recent album was a rare miss for this usually most consistent and excellent of pure metal bands, but No World Order! sits among a string of albums starting with 1995's Land of the Free when these guys could virtually do no wrong. Coming two years after the awesome Powerplant, Gamma Ray was again able to bring forth a rock solid album of downright catchy and often remarkably heavy power metal that always strikes the right balance between all its elements. Tackling the subject of the Illuminati, the reptilian order of alien mystics supposedly set to one day rise to dominate human affairs, No World Order! is ablaze with all the blistering dual guitar breaks, infectious riffs, watertight bottom end and hook-laden melodies that makes all of their albums pure heavy metal joy.

Gamma Ray has always been a band that can wear a stunning array of hats throughout the course of an album, and this one is no exception. No World Order! sees them once more shifting musical gears, from the melody-laden speed metal of ‘Dethrone Tyranny' to the Judas Priest-like ‘The Heart of the Unicorn' to the blatantly pop-metal ‘Heaven and Hell' and into the metallic rock mode of ‘New World Order' with its big, fat almost Purplesque riffing, with consummate ease. The ghost of old school Priest raises its head again in ‘Solid', which sounds almost exactly like ‘Rapid Fire' off British Steel. From almost any other band this would come across like outright plagarism, but in the hands of masters like Gamma Ray it's nothing short of a glorious homage.

No World Order! is another masterpiece from the European power metal gods. This is so metal it's gold.

1. Induction
2. Dethrone Tyranny
3. The Heart of the Unicorn
4. Heaven or Hell
5. New World Order
6. Damn the Machine
7. Solid
8. Fire Below
9. Follow Me
10. Eagle
11. Lake of Tears

Rating: 92%

BEYOND TERROR BEYOND GRACE: Extinction|Salvation

Released: 2007

With no song over two and a half minutes long, the debut album from teenage grind quartet Beyond Terror Beyond Grace doesn't let its listeners up for breath for very long. Apparently recorded in one take, ExtinctionSalvation is a 25-minute relentless onslaught of death and grind.

After the short ambient piece that serves as an intro, BTBG blaze through the next six tracks with an unassailable grind intensity that offers little respite and little variation from a full-on volume overload. It's only with track 8, "Surveillance", that the band shifts down a few pegs, crawling through a two and a half minute instrumental of slow-chugging death metal.

This death metal influence then continues into the next track. "Defeated" begins with an ominously churning riff that suddenly erupts into flat-out grind once again at the 41-second mark. "Erosion" and "Divinity Collapse" continue in the same fashion before the definite punk inflection of the very obviously Napalm Death-like "Democracy" and its ridiculously appropriate lyric "Choice equates with the lesser of two evils" spewing forth from 40 seconds of pure sonic hatred.

So it goes for the duration, as BTBG combine the dynamics of grinding death metal riffs with punk drumming and grindcore's frantic, incomprehensible vocal onslaught. For a bunch of guys who just finished high school it's a spectacularly old-school approach that eschews all sense of melody and technicality while focusing on blatant tear-your-head-off overkill. They've learned well from their masters and with its deliberately understated packaging and decent production ExtinctionSalvation has set Beyond Terror Beyond Grace up for what could be a bright future on the grind circuit.

1. 002618
2. Fading Light
3. Smiling in the Face of Despair
4. Reinvention Ghost
5. Recycled Carnage
6. Shards
7. Ultimatum
8. Surveillance
9. Defeated
10. Erosion
11. Divinity Collapse
12. Democracy
13. Machine
14. Born and Raised
15. Unattainable
16. Empty
17. Apathy and Acceptance
18. Gaze of Finality
19. 022617

Rating: 85%

ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY: Staring at the Divine

Released: 2001

I've been thinking of creating a website dedicated to album covers with boobs on them. If I ever do, this album's cover will be one of the star attractions. Staring at the Divine could mean the pose of the large-breasted female of the cover or it could mean what you are doing when you're looking at the cover, but it also means that inside is a killer record.

By about the second bar of the second track I was banging my head merrily with a big smile on my face and thinking, “What a fucking great album!” And so it is! Anyone looking for big fat beer-drinking rock n roll need go no further than this baby. Alabama Thunderpussy's fourth full length album is nothing less than a glorious noise of enormously obese guitars chugging out dirty, low-down rock with a voice fuelled by moonshine and unfiltered cigarettes. Staring at the Divine is AC/DC with a monstrous bass sound, a happier Black Sabbath or maybe what Lynyrd Skynyrd would’ve sounded like if they’d formed in the early 90s instead of the 1970s.

Staring at the Divine is, quite simply, everything you could want from a sludge/rock album and even serves up some good ol’ banjo-pluckin’ hillbilly music to close the set. Need more be said? Just rock.

1. Ol' Faithful
2. Motor-Ready
3. Shapeshifter
4. Whore Adore
5. Hunting by Echo
6. Beck and Call
7. Twilight Arrival
8. Esteem Fiend
9. SSDD
10. Amounts that Count

Rating: 85%

BLACK STEEL: Hellhammer

Released: 2005

Black Steel was one of the few bands on the Perth scene playing melodic metal and was that city's answer to the likes of Dungeon and Black Majesty. Their second album Hellhammer showed them to be heading in a significantly heavier and thrashier direction than was apparent on 2001’s Destructor.

Black Steel had a proud tradition of throwing up the cheesiest album covers in Australian metal and they certainly didn’t disappoint here, with dragons and Orcs and a castle being pelted by a meteor shower. Inside is where it counts of course, and the opening riffing of ‘Annihilate’ is pure aggression, leaving you with the feeling that this is going to be a bit of all right. This is until Matt Williams opens his mouth. I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke, but I’d always felt that he was the weakest link for this band, and his performance here really bares this out. As reasonably well suited as he was to the sound of previous Black Steel outings, his style doesn’t gel well with the band’s new found aggression and power. Of course, he isn’t helped much on the first track thanks to a very weak lyrical arrangement which makes this sound like a bad 80s thrash song, and I can’t explain the logic behind making it the opener when the single track ‘Relentless Force’ is so much better, though perhaps more in keeping with Destructor’s musical direction than what they’re doing here.

Hellhammer does feature some superior playing. Jamie Page is an outstanding guitarist and Damien Petrilli a drummer of equal standing. What the album does seem to lack though is really quality, memorable songs. The title track and the Judas Priest-like ‘Grind to Metal’, plus the previously mentioned ‘Relentless Force’ certainly stand out, possibly because Williams sounds at his best on them, but overall the whole album lacks the catchiness and appeal of the East Coast’s power metal brigade, or of their WA buddies like Voyager. As an album, it’s not terrible, but as the ultimate statement of Black Steel’s intentions and obvious abilities, Hellhammer fells a bit short of the mark.

1. Annihilate
2. That Was Then, This is Now
3. Hellhammer
4. Grind to Metal
5. Up Against the World
6. Going Down
7. Relentless Force
8. Live for the Fight
9. Slaughterhouse
10. The Holy Devil
11. Death or Glory

Rating: 65%

ALCHEMIST: Spiritech

Produced by Alchemist with DW Norton

Released: 1997

On Spiritech Alchemist continued to thumb their noses at current trends, setting off on a mystical journey where the rules of the road are their own, paving the way with a trademark melting pot of styles that belongs to no other band. With the previous album Lunasphere Alchemist had begun to show exactly what they were capable of but it took this release for them to truly nail all the divergent aspects of their sound.

While the two epic tracks which book-end this album, the indomitable 'Chinese Whispers', a vast cut that stands to this day as one of Alchemist's very best, and 'Figments', could quite easily have been at home on Lunasphere, the rest of the tracks contained mark something of a further progression from the surf-grind driven style that was at the very heart of that most excellent album.

Most noticeably, that surf guitar sound gave way to a good deal of pure death metal riffing, especially in 'Hermaphroditis', which was as close to a straight-forward metal song as the boys are ever likely to get. The predominantly Eastern sound which is at its strongest in 'Road To Ubar', wasn't lost however, nor was the intertwining dual slide guitars that are a hallmark of Alchemist's work. Some of the tracks also made good use of tribal rhythms, a facet of their music that became central to later recordings. 'Beyond Genesis' comes in with a huge jungle drum beat which 'Spiritechnology' takes up, weaving conspiracy theory samples into the framework.

Lyrically, Alchemist's focus here changed from issues of the spiritual as evidenced on Lunasphere and was now preoccupied with the disturbed balance between nature and technology, again something that would be carried across to the next two album. Adam Agius continued to extend his vocal abilities, best evidenced in the aforementioned 'Chinese Whispers', the album's true stand-out and one that remains a staple of their live set to this day. Here is where everything they do comes together in one place, grinding guitars, BM-like vocal shrieks and a long, almost ambient middle section featuring polyrhytmic drumming, squealing synths and trippy guitar lines. This is a true masterpiece.

Spiritech is another excellent album from a supremely creative and interesting band, and remains perhaps their finest moment.

1. Chinese Whispers
2. Road to Ubar
3. Staying Conscious
4. Beyond Genesis
5. Spiritechnology
6. Inertia
7. Hermaphroditis
8. Dancing to Life
9. Figments

Rating: 96%

JUDAS PRIEST: Screaming for Vengeance

Produced by Tom Allom

Released: 1982

In 1982 Judas Priest was the biggest heavy metal band in the world, which is probably why their album from that year, Screaming for Vengeance, is held in such high regard. Two singles from British Steel helped smash America open for them and while the follow-up was lukewarm and forumlaic it kept them in the charts. It was their task on their ninth album to capitalise on the success they had achieved, and boy did they. Screaming for Vengeance came in the midst of a run of slick, commercial metal records for Judas Priest and this one brought home the bacon like nothing had before.

Yet in spite of the reverence held for this album, in hindsight Screaming for Vengeance has surprisingly few highlights. The 'Hellion/Electric Eye' double is a great beginning, a pure classic Priest mixture of melody and speed with a catchy hook that doesn't go away in a hurry. After this however, Screaming... just kind of trundles along. The next two tracks come and go without really leaping out and the obligatory FM radio track '(Take These) Chains' doesn't suck as much as some of the songs Priest wrote themselves but isn't exactly memorable either. 'Pain and Pleasure' is dreck of the worst order; for an album so highly regarded, the first half is almost a complete write-off. Then comes the good old Judas Priest one-two sucker punch. 'Screaming for Vengeance' sees the return of the inimitable melody/speed/hook thing that this band can do so well, followed up by 'You Got Another Thing Coming', perhaps the best of Priest's three big commercial hits (the other two, of course, are 'Living After Midnight' and 'Breaking the Law') even if it does sound a little dated today.

Indeed, the entire album hasn't aged well. Most of the tracks are just okay at best and there just isn't the timeless aura about it that earlier Priest releases still have even now. Screaming for Vengeance ends well with the last two songs showing more of Ian Hill's bass work than usual, but overall 26 years on it really doesn't live up to its reputation.

1. Hellion
2. Electric Eye
3. Riding on the Wind
4. Bloodstone
5. (Take These) Chains
6. Pain and Pleasure
7. Screaming for Vengeance
8. You've Got Another Thing Coming
9. Fever
10. Devil Child

Rating: 69%

HARDCORE SUPERSTAR: Dreamin' in a Casket

Produced by Adde and Martin Sandvik

Released: 2007

The sleaze and glam metal scene of the mid to late 1980s ranks as one of rock's most maligned and is also therefore one of many music fans' guilty pleasures. Whether you're an acknowledged fan or a secretive one, a long-timer or a newcomer, trying to find a worthy sleaze album is a difficult thing these days, with both the old guard and the new school often disappointing or showing us why the whole thing fell on its face in the first place. Hardcore Superstar is one of the band that walks the walk and talks the talk properly, and on album number five they have outdone themselves, really nailing the sound they've been working towards for many years now.

Having evolved from a punkish pop-metal style back at the beginning of the decade, this bunch of Swedish tattooed loveboys really take the sleaze metal cake on Dreamin' in a Casket. Whether you're looking for straight-down-the-line hard rocking or a big singalong chorus hook, Hardcore Superstar delivers both in spades. The album opens with a killer triple punch of "Need No Company", "Medicate Me" and the title track and doesn't let up from there, locking onto the throat with a massive drum sound and surprisingly heavy and aggressive guitars. "Wake Up Dead in a Garbage Can" and "Sophisicated Ladies" are the embodiment of pure gutter sleaze rock n roll, both with a hint of self-deprecating humour that does them a huge favour. Built around what sounds like a recycled and heavied-up ZZ Top riff, "Sensitive to the Light" kicks all kinds of butt and "No Resistance" is just a complete balls-out attack. With no pause for a ballad or even a slower track, Hardcore Superstar simply oozes a street-level intensity but delivers it with a flawless modern production.

This is a ripper album of sleaze and energy that should please almost anyone who just wants to rock out. Just killer.

1. Need No Company
2. Medicate Me
3. Dreamin' in a Casket
4. Silence for the Peacefully
5. Sophisticated Ladies
6. Wake Up Dead in a Garbage Can
7. Spreadin' the News
8. This is for the Mentally Deranged
9. Sensitive to the Light
10. Lesson in Violence
11. Sorry for the Shape I'm In
12. No Resistance

Rating: 89%

TIMELESS MIRACLE: Into the Enchanted Chamber

Produced by Anders Theander and Pontus Lindmark

Released: 2005

Power metal fans who stumble across this blog will most likely find themselves wondering why I continue review bands of that ilk when I clearly don't seem to like them and can only find horrible things to say about them. The strange truth is that power metal of the European kind is the sort of metal that I should like, because it is melodic and catchy but for some reason I end up hating it because almost all of it ends up as overwrought, over-polished symphonic dreck that comes off as shameless Helloween cloning. So, imagine, if you will, what Rhapsody would sound like if Fabio Leone was replaced by Kai Hansen from Gamma Ray. That should give you some idea of what Timeless Miracle is like. Then imagine what I must think of it. If that isn't too difficult, you can just skip to the rating at the bottom without reading the rest of the review. If you'd like to find out anyway, read on.

This Swedish band's debut album is nothing more than a completely shameless clone of every idea those two bands (Rhapsody and Gamma Ray) have ever had, without any attempt to develop any kind of identity of its own. Utterly unimaginative titles like "Curse of the Werewolf", "Witches of Black Magic" and (so help me) "Return of the Werewolf" combine with generic, totally unoriginal songs to create an overly long excursion into regurgitated tedium. I had only listened to two and a half songs of this CD when I started to write these words, but I had already heard enough of this mammoth, one-hour plus long effort to know what I was going to hear. Into the Enchanted Chamber is symphonic power metal where the keyboards completely dominate the sound, taking on the role of folk instruments, flutes, string sections, accordions and all manner of different things at different times. This would be striking if Rhapsody hadn't done it so much better years ago (then overdone it to the point of being ridiculous). The guitars are mostly relegated to pumping out heavily clichéd power metal riffs at ridiculous speeds, along with the occasional melody line here and there.

By the time I had forced myself to listen to most of the stupidly over-extended 14-minute closing number, I felt like making my way to some German power metal festival and slaughtering everyone there for making this sort of thing popular enough that a band without a single original idea could get signed to a label and release an album so creatively bereft. There is nothing at all timeless about this, and the only miracle is that I didn't smash this CD into a million pieces.

1. Curse of the Werewolf
2. Witches of Black Magic
3. Into the Enchanted Chamber
4. The Devil
5. The Red Rose
6. A Minor Intermezzo
7. Return of the Werewolf
8. Memories
9. The Gates of Hell
10. Down to the Gallows
11. The Dark Side Forest
12. The Voyage

Rating: 25%

CATHEDRAL: The Garden of Unearthly Delights

Released: 2005

After being attached to Earache for virtually their entire career, Cathedral moved into a new era with their debut for Nuclear Blast, and it would have been hard for them to have made a better start. Not only have they made possibly their best ever album, they have done it by stripping back to a raw, almost dirty sound and turned into a somewhat more angrier band.

The Garden of Unearthly Delights is the true classic that Cathedral long promised but never quite delivered. The crux of it is “The Garden”, a track so long it is virtually an album unto itself, an immense 27-minuteepic that is rather like all of the best aspects of the band’s entire discography compressed into one enormous, sprawling beast of a track. At various stages slow then rocking, ponderous then riff-roaring, delicate then dark, disjointed then catchy, discordant then melodic, and combining every facet of their sound from folk to psychedelia to bone-shaking doom, “The Garden” is quite feasibly the greatest doom epic of all time. This track alone would win The Garden of Unearthly Delights a very high score, but the rest of the album is just as good.

“Corpsecycle” is pure Black Sabbath worship from the one band who really knows how to do it, “The Tree of Life and Death” is built on a massively distorted bass line that thumps away at the back of the skull with a monstrously slow section that hearkens back to The Forest of Equilibrium, however briefly, and the mostly instrumental “Oyo the Manslayer” is the ultimate stoner-doom jam.

As fine as all their releases have been, Cathedral finally made the album of their career here, a gigantic slab of a record that raised the bar for all doom bands to come.

1. Dearth AD 2005
2. Tree of Life and Death
3. North Berwick Witch Trials
4. Upon Azrael's Wings
5. Corpsecycle
6. Fields of Zagara
7. Oro the Manslayer
8. Beneath a Funeral Sun
9. The Garden
10. Proga-Europa

Rating: 97%

THE HAUNTED: rEVOLVEr

Produced by Frederik Nordström, Patrik J Sten and The Haunted
Released: 2004

A lot was riding on The Haunted's fourth album. The previous release, One Kill Wonder, was a polarising one in that critics seemed to love it but fans’ opinions seem to suggest that it was everything from below par to just plain sucky. Marco Aro’s lifeless vocal performance is often considered to be to blame for this but in reality there’s only so many times you can record the same song on the one album before it sounds like you’re repeating the same ideas over and over again and it was hard to believe that the geniuses behind bands like At the Gates and Witchery could have thought that an album like One Kill Wonder was actually worthy of release.

The Haunted have emphasised the ‘evolve’ part of this album’s title possibly to acknowledge the fact that evolving is what they had to do to stay relevant. Part of this process was to switch labels to Century Media, who gave this release a groovy cardboard slipcase and plenty of support. Another was to get in the studio with the proven wizard pairing of Frederick Nordström and Patrik Sten. There was also the very smart move of bringing back original vocalist Peter Dolving, whose range and abilities provide many a highlight here. Yet another part was to show that they don’t need to play at breakneck speed the whole time to make a solid and solidly enjoyable thrash metal album. That’s not to say that this is a slow album by any means, as blitzkriegs like ‘Who Will Decide’, ‘Liquid Burns’ and ‘Sweet Relief’ prove beyond doubt, but it is considerably more diverse than previous efforts. ‘All Against All’ shows a decidedly more melodic side and ‘Burnt to a Shell’ and ‘Abysmal’ are slower paced but lack none of The Haunted’s typical menace.

rEVOLVEr is a monster, precisely the album this band needed to make to atone for the sin of the album before and one that probably saved them from disintegration.

1. No Compromise
2. 99
3. Abysmal
4. Sabotage
5. All Against All
6. Sweet Relief
7. Burnt to a Shell
8. Who Will Decide
9. Nothing Right
10. Liquid Burns
11. My Shadow

Rating: 85%

HEAVENLY: Sign of the Winner

Released: 2001

One of the things I look for in a metal band is what it chooses to call itself. Hailing as they do from France, a country that also boasts bands called Fairyland and Magic Kingdom*, it could be just some kind of cultural thing, but for some reason the name Heavenly just doesn't sound very metal to me. Not knowing much about them before I dared to listen to this album for the first time, I did some Googling and the results were quite amusing, as it turned out that a group of people on a message board I occasionally visited had got most upset when they read a review of this album that asked "Is this band serious? This album should be filed under 'comedy'." Several of them went so far as writing voluminous essays defending this stupidly-named band and even dumber-monikered album, so I knew what I was getting myself into as I prepared to press "play".

Comedy is almost right. Seriously, I almost pissed myself when I listened to this! Heavenly is limp-wristed saccharine-coated cheese metal that makes Narnia look like the heaviest band of all time. Wanky, unimaginative songs filled with unbridled widdly-diddly guitar masturbation and enough castralto vocals to make you puke, Sign of the Winner epitomises everything that power metal's critics point to as bad and magnifies them to the nth degree. This is the kind of crud that makes people think that power metal fans are nothing but dorks with big thick glasses who get their thrills from Dungeons And Dragons and trading Spiderman comics. If there are any redeeming features, it is that it's all good for a laugh, even though it clearly isn't intended to be. And it goes on like this for almost an hour, song after song of embarrassing try-hard Helloween worship that seems to get more and more vacuous and empty as it goes on.

Heavenly is one of those bands that really proves that it takes more than just musical skill to make a good band. Sometimes it also requires restraint and the ability to write a decent song.

1. Break the Silence
2. Destiny
3. Sign of the Winner
4. The World Will be Better
5. Condemned to Die
6. The Angel
7. Still Believe
8. The Sandman
9. Words of Change
10. Until the End

Rating: 20%

*Update May 18: It turns out Magic Kingdom is from Belgium, not France. But it doesn't matter because it's still a gay name for a metal band, wherever they may be from.

DRAGONFORCE: Inhuman Rampage

Released: 2006

DragonForce's previous album Sonic Firestorm was a breathtakingly over-the-top collection of hyperfast power metal laden with seemingly infinite wild instrumental breaks featuring blazing guitar and keyboard solos and the occasional bit of singing. Inhuman Rampage sees them continue in the same vein to the extent of not being that different, but when a band does this so well and is obviously having so much fun doing it, it probably doesn't really matter.

Like its predecessor, Inhuman Rampage is the ultimate triumph of style over substance. The songs are blindingly fast with soaring, chest-beating choruses and dazzling, endless, wrist-breaking dual guitar solos with equally histrionic keyboards thrown in for good measure. It doesn't really matter what the lyrics are about, because the solos go on for so long you can barely remember them. It's cheesy beyond belief, but it's also very clear that DragonForce at no time ever pretends to be anything more than they are, and that is an insanely fast band having a complete blast. The album is one infectiously catchy track after another, and while each one really doesn't sound that different from the next the whole thing is done so well and is so ridiculous at the same time that's it's hard not to like it.

I reviewed Sonic Firestorm in my zine when it first came out and said pretty much the same sort of thing, but in truth there isn't much else you could say. I'm not sure how much longer DragonForce could go on in this vein without becoming just a little bit tedious, but while they do the ride is going to be fun.

1. Through the Fire and the Flames
2. Revolution Deathsquad
3. Storming the Burning Fields
4. Operation Ground and Pound
5. Body Breakdown
6. Cry for Eternity
7. The Flame for Youth
8. Trail of Broken Hearts

Rating: 86%

ASPHYXIA: Asphyxia

Produced by Asphyxia

Released: 2008

Almost ten years ago a teenage death metal band from Hobart won a grant from their state government that allowed them to release their first album. That band was Psycroptic, now one of the most celebrated Australian metal bands internationally. While Adelaide's Asphyxia may not quite be ready to step up to that level just yet, the path they have taken to come this far is almost identical.

With help from the SA Youth Arts Board, this band has put together a pretty impressive debut album, recorded only six months after their first live shows. Asphyxia presents a good mix of well-played death metal blended with melodic thrash and the occasional progressive moment. While tracks like "The Hooded Figure" give away their age and relative inexperience (though, to be fair, there are bands twice their age that still write songs far worse than this) it is otherwise difficult to tell that these guys aren't even out of high school. The guitar tone is sharp and crunchy and there is some excellent soloing throughout. Zach Taylor handles both the bowel-shaking rumbling growl and the barking shriek with equal aplomb and there isn't a clean vocal line to be heard.

"Silvertongue" sets the tone nicely after a brief acoustic build up, a nicely demonic track that has as a companion piece the album's closer, "Dragonlore". "Horrific Reign" harbours more of a Cannibal Corpse influence than the rest of the tracks, which with their thrashy guitar sound probably owes more to bands like Malevolent Creation. Asphyxia also has an epic, progressive proclivity also, best exemplified in the 7-minute plus album centrepiece "Blood and Snow", a track that highlights this young group's real potential.

Asphyxia is a promising beginning. There are moments where it is clear they are trying to mix things up a bit too much and a more defined direction would certainly not be a bad thing. However, for a first time effort from such a young band one could not really ask for much better and there is definitely the capacity for a bright future from what is on display here.

1. Intro
2. Silvertongue
3. Horrific Reign
4. Defiled
5. The Hooded Figure
6. Blood and Snow
7. Martyr
8. World Overthrown
9. Dragonlore
10. Outro

Rating: 72%

VARIOUS: Metal: A Headbanger's Companion

Released: 2007

Whether you have a friend to whom you wish to expose the extreme side of things or whether you are just testing the waters yourself and wish to explore further, Earache's massive 6-CD box set Metal: A Headbanger's Companion is a good place to start. This immense collection features every artist the label ever released, comprising a whopping 106 tracks spread over a range of genres. Indeed, calling it Metal is really a complete misnomer designed to attract that specific audience because not only are the tracks grouped together into their stylistic similarities, Earache has even labelled each volume according to what these are. Nevertheless, any collection with this many songs is going to have something on it to make it worthwhile and this is a pretty impressive bunch of tracks from some of the greatest extreme music acts of the last 28 years.

As mentioned, each volume features a different genre and what could be more appropriate than filling the first CD with 17 death metal songs? How about making the first five Deicide, Morbid Angel, Napalm Death, At the Gates and Carcass? Want more? What about Decapitated, Entombed, Bolt Thrower, Hate Eternal, Akercocke, Vader, Blood Red Throne and more? If that wasn't enough, volume two is entitled "Grindcore", and what better way to kick that off than with "Scum" by Napalm Death. Grind was always at the heart and soul of Earache Records and this second CD is stacked with 20 tracks ranging in duration from Brutal Truth's five second "Collateral Damage" to December Wolves' gruelling six minute "Desperately Seeking Satan". Also here is more Napalm Death, two songs each from The Berzerker, Anal Cunt and Mistress, the immortal Terrorizer, more Carcass and Bolt Thrower and the excruciatingly insane Watchmaker, one of the most extreme bands ever.

Next up is the ambiguously titled "Metal/Rock", a somewhat uneven 19-track jumble of thrash, melodic rock, stoner, nu-metal, metalcore and rapcore stuff that couldn't be comfortably included anywhere else. This isn't to suggest there's not good stuff on here. Carcass appears yet again, this time in a more melodic guise, alongside The Haunted, Cathedral, Usurper, Confessor, Biomechanical and the awesome Sleep. New thrashers Evile get a spot too, but a good percentage of this CD is made up of radio rock like Shortie, horrible nu-metal like Addiction Crew and indescribable rap-metal like Dub War. Volume 4 provides further proof that Metal was the wrong thing to call this; indeed, even "Industrial" as the title of this chapter is utterly inappropriate. Most of the 15 tracks here would be more likely played at rave parties than on a metalhead's stereo. Ultraviolence is Hi-NRG techno with no metal element whatsoever, Generation X-ED, Scorn and Signs ov Chaos are industrial techno not industrial metal and Mortiis is ambient electronica. Sure, he used to be in Emperor, but Def Leppard used to play heavy rock too. Still, this CD does have Meathook Seed, Pitchshifter and the almighty Godflesh so isn't not a complete waste but, let's be honest, this one is as metal as a Prodigy album.

CD 5 is "Punk and Hardcore". Again, not metal but there's plenty here that a headbanger could throw themselves around to: Municipal Waste, for example, as well as The Dillinger Escape Plan, Clutch, Coalesce, Hellbastard and Extreme Noise Terror. And Napalm Death again, of course. In fact, this volume could well rip a new arsehole in much the same way as the first two. The sixth CD, "Leftfield" is a showcase of the more experimental acts that have wandered through Earache's offices, starting off with the sublime Cult of Luna and their creeping 11 minute epic "Finland". This one is indeed the CD to check out for those wanting to go beyond the standard limitations of rock and metal with such inclusions as Ephel Duath's twisted jazz metal, Painkiller, Godflesh, Carnival in Coal circus of craziness and, finally, the hilarious Crotchduster with their amalgam of everything, "Mammal Sauce".

This is an incredibly misnamed and exhausting set of CDs and if Earache were serious about pushing it as a metal collection and not just a catalogue-wide compilation of everything they could find then they could have ditched the "Industrial" CD altogether and kept half of the "Metal/Rock" one in the archives. Nonetheless, if you know someone who really wants to hear a bit more of this extreme music stuff and doesn't want to buy 50 different albums, then this may be the ideal recommendation.

CD 1 - "Death Metal"

1. Deicide - Homage for Satan


2. Morbid Angel - Maze of Torment


3. Napalm Death - Suffer the Children


4. At the Gates - Blinded by Fear


5. Carcass - Incarnated Solvent Abuse


6. Decapitated - Spheres of Madness


7. Entombed - Left Hand Path


8. Bolt Thrower - World Eater


9. Hate Eternal - Behold Judas


10. Akercocke - The Penance


11. Severe Torture - Endless Strain of Cadavers


12. Vader - Dark Age


13. Blood Red Throne - Mephitication


14. Anata - Downward Spiral Into Madness


15. Nocturnus - Droid Sector


16. Carnage - Infestation of Evil


17. Massacre - Corpsegrinder

CD 2 - "Grindcore"

1. Napalm Death - Scum


2. Brutal Truth - Walking Corpse


3. The Berzerker - Reality


4. Terrorizer - Dead Shall Rise


5. Bolt Thrower - Through the Eyes of Terror


6. Mistress - In Disgust We Trust


7. Napalm Death - You Suffer


8. Anal Cunt - Pepe the Gay Waiter


9. Mistress - Happily Ever Disaster


10. December Wolves - Desperately Seeking Satan


11. Watchmaker - Conference Call Immolation


12. Cadaver Inc. - Primal


13. The Berzerker - Mono Grind


14. Brutal Truth - Collateral Damage


15. Nox - Satan Ex-Machina


16. Anal Cunt - No We Don't Want to do a Split 7 Inch With Your Stupid Band


17. Carcass - Pyosisified (Rotten to the Gore)


18. Unseen Terror - Charred Remains


19. Hellbastard - Justly Executed


20. Filthy Christians - Zombie Holocaust

CD 3 - "Metal/Rock"

1. Carcass - Keep on Rotting in the Free World


2. The Haunted - Hollow Ground


3. Cathedral - Hopkins (Witchfinder General)


4. Adema - Shoot the Arrows


5. Candiria - Remove Yourself


6. Biomechanical - Regenerated


7. Society One - Hate


8. Linea 77 - Charon


9. Urkraft - Liberation


10. Evile - Enter the Grave


11. With Passion - Pale Horses Ride


12. Addiction Crew - What About


13. Shortie - Truth


14. Gandalf - L8X Queen


15. Sleep - Dragonaut


16. Confessor - Collapse Into Despair


17. Usurper - Metal Lust


18. Pulkas - Rubber Room


19. Dubwar - Nar Say a Ting

CD 4 - "Industrial"

1. Godflesh - Defiled


2. Mortiis - Parasite God


3. Pitchshifter - Triad


4. Society One - Everyone Dies (Rock Stars Don't Count)


5. Ultraviolence - Hardcore Motherfucker


6. Generation X-ED - Industrial is Dead


7. Scorn - Silver Rain Fell


8. Signs ov Chaos - Believe


9. Adrenalin Junkies - Holocaust Blast


10. Ewigkeit - It's Not Reality


11. Morbid Angel vs. The Berzerker - Day of Suffering


12. O.L.D. - Glitch


13. Misery Loves Co. - My Minds Still Speaks


14. Meathook Seed - Famine Sector


15. Ultraviolence - Strangled

CD 5 - "Punk & Hardcore"

1. Municipal Waste - Unleash the Bastards


2. The Dillinger Escape Plan - I Love Secret Agents


3. Clutch - Impetus


4. Candiria - Blood


5. Coalesce - A Safe Place


6. Heresey - Nausea


7. Napalm Death - The Kill


8. Extreme Noise Terror - Murder


9. Hellbastard - Death From Above


10. Disgust - Mother Earth


11. December - Umbilical


12. Beecher - Fucntion! Function!


13. Linea 77 -Touch


14. Fudge Tunnel - Hate Song


15. Iron Monkey - Supagorgonizer


16. Rabies Caste - Got it from Blake


17. Crowpath - Chased, Caught and Charged


18. Janus Stark - Enemy Lines


19. Lawnmower Deth - Do You Want to be a Chuffed-core?


20. Heresy - Visions of Fear


21. Intense Degree - Skate-bored

CD 6 - "Leftfield"

1. Cult of Luna - Finland


2. Callisto - Blackhole


3. Ewigkeit - It's Not Reality


4. Ephel Duath - Crystalline Whirl


5. Scorn - Days Passed


6. Painkiller - Dr Phibes


7. O.L.D. - Break (You)


8. Godflesh - Tiny Tears


9. Carnival in Coal - Right Click... Save as


10. Blood From the Soul - Guinea Pig


11. Akercocke - Prince of the North


12. Mortiis - I Am the World


13. Spazztic Blurr - Mexicali


14. Crotchduster - Mammal Sauce

Rating: 70%

SAXON LIVE IN SYDNEY

The Forum, May 7 2008

Saxon, LORD and Black Majesty all on the same bill. Could there be a more metal gig anywhere in Australia tonight? Certainly not in the Hordern Pavilion across the road, where Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet for My Valentine and Atreyu were playing to a full house of pretend metal fans. The crowd might have been miniscule at the Forum by comparison, but the metal was bigger than a fucking big metal thing.

Black Majesty hit the stage early and to very few people but they didn't let that stop them ripping out a nice set as if there was 1000 people watching. Cranked as they were, the volume was too much for the sparsely populated room and that meant there wasn't a lot of clarity in their sound, a problem that continued throughout the night although the denser crowd later on did soak up some of the bleeding. Nevertheless, Black Majesty would have been disappointed that only people familiar with their songs would have been able to make anything of them because if you did manage to stand in the right location they were quite good. They've really come a long way as a live band and they no doubt stamped themselves into the memories of anyone who got there early enough to catch them. Gio's vocals were pretty spot on and I couldn't help but be somewhat mesmerised by the bass guitar with all the lights and stuff all over it.

Like Black Majesty, LORD had to endure a bad mix and a smallish crowd but also like them they didn't care. Virtually all of the old Dungeon material was excised from the set tonight as they concentrated on key tracks from both LORD albums instead and they seemed none the worse for it, even showcasing at least one new song that went down as well as any of the favourites. This is one band that can take any show they play and turn it into a celebration of their own with a glowing display of energy and fun and tonight was no exception with "Lost in the Light" capping off a solid set only slightly marred by Lord Tim's less than amazing guitar sound on the night he retired his long-time axe for good.

For a good percentage of the by-now reasonable crowd it may well have been enough just for Saxon to be on stage in Sydney for the first time ever. And while you could find dozens of bands half their age who act like they're doing us a favour by coming halfway around the world to play, Saxon work for every cheer they get. Instead of wearying them, age is treating these old Yorkshire campaigners like a good bottle of wine. At 57 Biff Byford is more than twice as old as Tim Yatras from LORD but remains in as fine a voice as at any time in his career and the rest of the band are just as great. While across the street A7X were most likely spitting their mishmash of pseudo-metal with plenty of angst and oh-so-serious pretentions, here Saxon was holding sway with nothing more than good old fashioned heavy metal songs about rocking out and kicking arse with no need for theatrics or histrionics. And they were loud, really, really loud, blasting out with an immense volume that hardly affected their sound the way it did for the supports. Paul Quinn and Doug Scarratt threw around catchy riffs and plenty of trade-offs like the severly under-rated guitar team that they are and Nibbs Carter made sure he was keeping everyone entertained. The set was a sprinkling of classics and Inner Sanctum stuff, kicking off with "Atila the Hun" and rocking through good oldies like "Motorcycle Man", "Strong Arm of the Law" and "Witchfinder General". "Let Me Feel Your Power" also got an airing and the main part of the show was finished off by the ridiculously infectious "I've Got to Rock (to Stay Alive)". It would have been awesome had Angry Anderson turned up to help out with this one, but alas that wasn't to be.

I had to skip the encore so as to avoid being stranded in the city until 4am for a train home, which is a bit of a shame because Saxon seemed like they were just getting started. The crowd may not have been what it should have been for this legendary band's first appearance on these shores (and their first tour outside of Europe in six years), but the people who did turn up saw three great metal acts playing it the way it should be done.

Set list:

1. Atila the Hun
2. Dogs of War
3. Let Me Feel Your Power
4. To Hell and Back Again
5. Motorcycle Man
6. Metalhead
7. Power and the Glory
8. Solid Ball of Rock
9. Witchfinder General
10. Guitar Solo
11. Strong Arm of the Law
12. Princess of the Night
13. I've Got to Rock (to Stay Alive)

Encore:

1. State of Grace
2. 20,000 Feet
3. Denim and Leather
4. Ashes to Ashes
5. Crusader

LORD: Ascendence

Produced by Lord Tim

Released: 2007

As LORD currently tours around the east coast with Saxon (review of the Sydney show to follow), it's time to take a look at their album Ascendence. To those who were familiar with Dungeon, it shouldn't take more than half a brain to figure out that the Ascendence of the title is a resurrection from the ashes of that great Australian metal band. LORD is two-thirds of that band's final line-up and as can probably be expected, this is very much a transitional album, featuring a style, a sound and material that fans and followers of Dungeon would find pretty familiar.

The opening intro "Echoes of the Past" helps to lay that past to rest before "Reborn" rises up like the demon on the cover on a firestorm of loud, supercharged guitars. Right away then that typical Dunge... er, LORD sound is stamped all over this: the guitars are HUGE! As always, guitar freaks will be shitting their pants in anticipation of this album and with a couple of masterclass plank wielders in the shape of Chris Brooks and Mark Furtner helping Lord Tim out on a few tracks, you just know that there is going to be some spectacular six-string wrangling going on here.

Fortunately the songwriting is also firmly in place, and that means big, catchy songs with big, memorable singalong choruses. Indeed, LORD's formula here is the same that Dungeon used for all those years. At times, maybe almost too close a copy. For example, the main vocal melody lines from "Same Old Lines" sound, somewhat ironically given the song title, rather like that in "A Rise to Power". The comparisons are too many to list but in the end it doesn't really matter because LORD is really just a new beginning, as tracks like "Reborn" and "Legacy" point out.

"Rain" is the track where things start to get really interesting on Ascendence. Beginning with a nice bass intro this one opens fairly quietly with thunder rolls in the background before going into a nice mid-paced chug with some charming backing vocals from pop singer Tania Moran. Another thunderclap then leads into a solo trade-off between Lord Tim and Brooks that's worth the price of admission alone. Ditto for "Through the Fire" where they both seem to push each other to new limits of fret-burning. "Limb From Limb" is a fast, heavy and aggressive track that recalls the A Rise to Power track "Traumatised" but with a more believable effort on the shrieking vocals. The next track, "220" is merely an unashamed shredfest with Tim and Furtner apparently trying to melt each other's faces off. That gives way to the album's epic, "Legacy". Moran's vocals chime in again during the choruses here and it's a bit of a shame that the production doesn't really bring them out a bit more often.

No album these days is really complete without a bonus track, and on this it's a version of Pantera's "Shattered" with a slightly updated guitar mix from the one that appeared on 2006's The Art of Shredding tribute album. This tidies everything up very nicely with a good, faithful acknowledgement of a prime influence.

In the end, Ascendence delivers everything expected of it, certainly no less and probably not really much more. In that regard, LORD could be criticised for taking zero risks with this album. If there is that feeling of safeness about it though, it can be excused for the moment as the band lays to rest the last vestiges of its past while laying a pretty decent foundation for the future.

1. Echoes of the Past
2. Reborn
3. Going Down
4. Same Old Lines
5. Rain
6. My Own Way
7. Through the Fire
8. The Calm
9. Limb From Limb
10. 220
11. Legacy
12. Shattered

Rating: 86%

'NEATH: The Spider's Sleep

Produced by 'neath

Released: 2007

When thinking about progressive death metal, names like Alchemist and Opeth spring quickly to mind. If The Spider's Sleep is any indication, however, then 'Neath will soon be another name to add to this prestigious list. With a glowing review in the hardcore magazine Death Before Dishonour of all places already behind them, it is abundantly clear that 'Neath is set for bigger things. According to their MySpace, the band has spent most of its time in the studio working on its music, and this has certainly paid off for them.

'Neath would probably rue any comparison to Opeth as such things tend to stick like shit to a blanket, but with inflections from the likes of Green Carnation, The Spider's Sleep is really in the same ballpark. The album's five tracks sprawl across 37 minutes of savage but melodic riffing, darkly moody sections dripping with sinister reverb, crushing guitars, thundering drums and shades of atmospheric keyboards.

The songs have a natural flow that sounds like they grew out of long, extended jams and don't rely on jaw-dropping technicality or overtly virtuoso playing like so many other bands in the progressive field. This gives The Spider's Sleep a warmth of character and a sense of immediacy that does the band immense credit, as they could have quite easily over-played everything. Instead, 'Neath has crafted a stunning debut album that should have all fans of modern progressive metal beating a path to their door.

1. When the Birds Lie Dead
2. The Spider's Sleep
3. The Silk-laden Whore
4. Sordid Grim Lie
5. Blank Identity Crisis

Rating: 93%

SAXON: Power and the Glory

Produced by Jeff Glixman

Released: 1983

Saxon was one of the leading bands of the so-called NWOBHM in the early 1980s with the three albums prior to this one making them on par with Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Motörhead. By the time of Power and the Glory, however, all of those bands had gone to the next level and Saxon needed something to take them there as well. Bringing in an experienced and well-respected producer the way that Maiden and Leppard had done should have helped, but Saxon let themselves down by not really coming up with any new ideas.

The title track starts the album in true style, a big, heavy anthemic metal rocker with all the band in fine form. "Redline" is almost as good but suffers from being too much like "Motorcycle Man" but not as memorable. Unmemorable applies to much of the rest of the tracks too, and if they do stick out it's usually for the wrong reason. "Nightmare" has a commercial melodic rock aspect to it that hints at the direction Saxon was to go from this point and "This Town Rocks" is so cheesy no pizza should be without it, a track that was written with live shows in mind that sounds completely lame on a studio album. Finally, "The Eagle Has Landed" tries to be for this album what "Hallowed be Thy Name" was to The Number of the Beast, but the performance sounds phoned-in and it ends up being flat and boring. It's almost as if Saxon decided they needed a big epic track to finish the album, but just couldn't be bothered enough to pull it off properly.

Power and the Glory never really scales to very great heights and in the end comes off as an album the band threw together to try and stop them from falling behind the others. It failed.

1. Power and the Glory
2. Redline
3. Warrior
4. Nightmare
5. This Town Rocks
6. Watching the Sky
7. Midas Touch
8. The Eagle Has Landed

Rating: 55%

IRON MAIDEN: The Number of the Beast

Produced by Martin Birch

Released: 1982

When Iron Maiden began work on The Number of the Beast they were on the verge of greatness. Two albums into their recording career and they were about as big as they could possibly get in their home market. A worldwide audience awaited and all Maiden needed was the album to give them. Killers was a fine album in its own right yet it lacked a true commercial appeal. Iron Maiden could have made more albums like it and still been a big band, but they had both the ambition and the talent to not only be big: they wanted to be huge. The Number of the Beast smashed onto the charts not only on both sides of the Atlantic, but everywhere, catapulting them from an emerging talent to global heavy metal superstars, and deservedly so. Maiden went on to make arguably better albums, but this one is still regarded as their certifiable classic.

The teaming of Iron Maiden with Bruce Dickinson was a stroke of genius on a number of levels and on The Number of the Beast it finally gave the band the heroic sound they had been aiming for. His soaring vocal style was a perfect fit with the band's killer twin guitar pairing and Steve Harris' penchant for epic songwriting. It's unlikely that "Hallowed be Thy Name" would have become the immortal and almost insurmountable classic that it is with anyone else singing it. One of the greatest metal songs of all time, "Hallowed be Thy Name" towers over the balance of the album like a colossus and while it remains to this day the best song Iron Maiden has ever written, The Number of the Beast is by no means bereft of great songs. "Run to the Hills" is almost gloriously over-the-top, three and a half minutes of screaming, galloping metal mayhem. "22 Acacia Avenue" contains perhaps Adrian Smith's all-time greatest lead break. "Children of the Damned" is uncharacteristically menacing and "Invaders" is pure speed metal with both owing something of a debt to early Judas Priest. "The Prisoner" and the oft-maligned "Gangland" stand out as most obviously the weakest cuts on the album. Much discussion has ensued between Maiden fans over the decades as to whether the latter should have been left off in favour of "Total Eclipse", a song recorded during the album sessions that was used as the B-side to the "Run to the Hills" single (the remastered CD version of this album now includes this track). In retrospect "Gangland" isn't really as bad as it's painted and if they weren't overshadowed by so many other great songs, both these tracks would be highlights too.

The Number of the Beast started a dynasty for Iron Maiden that would last for the rest of the decade and established a legacy that continues to this day. Without this album, heavy metal may never have attained the worldwide popularity it still enjoys 26 years later.

1. Invaders
2. Children of the Damned
3. The Prisoner
4. 22 Acacia Avenue
5. The Number of the Beast
6. Run to the Hills
7. Gangland
8. Hallowed be Thy Name

Rating: 96%

CRUCIFORM: Atavism

Produced by Cruciform

Released: 1993

When doing some research into this review, I looked at a doom metal website to see what, if anything, anyone had to say about Cruciform. Imagine my surprise when I couldn't find them even listed there! If this CD isn't doom, then I don't know anything about heavy metal.

Cruciform was one of the seminal bands on the Sydney death metal scene at the beginning of the 1990s. With 'Atavism' they became the first band to release a CD through Warhead Records, the Sydney-based metal specialist label that would issue a string of important albums throughout the decade. On this EP however, Cruciform weren't just spearheading the local death metal movement, but helping to pioneer the death-doom sound. 'Atavism' actually predates both Anathema's Serenades and My Dying Bride's influential Turn Loose the Swans by several months; had Cruciform been able to continue as a band then they may well have gone on to be regarded as highly as their English counterparts.

The EP begins with an orchestrated instrumental piece which, at three and a half minutes, is way too long and adds nothing to the recording. Perhaps if it had been part of another song, this passage could have been acceptable, but as a prologue in itself it's just pointless. Fortunately, things really pick up from here and with the first monstrous chord of "Sanctuary", 'Atavism' is on its way to becoming a lost and forgotten classic. The production isn't what it should be, leaving the vocals somewhat buried and indistinct and the overall sound something a little better than the average demo, but the material more than makes up for this. Uncluttered by the likes of strings, keyboards and female singing, each song here is no less than pure, classic doom, with enormous, massively slow riffs and abysmally deep death growls from three different vocalists. Lead guitarist Leon Kelly adds a few clean guitar melodies in the huge "Necropolis" and "Reduced to Dust" changes the pace briefly to mid-paced death metal, thereby adding a little diversity and flavour to the proceedings. But even if none of the other songs fall into the doom category (and by my reckoning they certainly do) then "I, to the Heavens Shall Lift My Eyes" surely does. It is this track alone that screams what an absolute tragedy it is that Cruciform isn't better recognised as founders of the genre. Moving at a pace so glacial it makes its six minute length seem twice as long, this track is nothing less than Doom At Its Finest.

Cruciform broke up before the world could appreciate them but they left behind them a six-track CD that any serious doom fan should have in their collection.

1. Prologue
2. Sanctuary
3. Reduced to Dust
4. Necropolis
5. Proboscis
6. I, to the Heavens Shall Lift My Eyes

Rating: 84%