ANGEL WITCH - FRONTAL ASSAULT / HAWAII - LOUD WILD... / NEW YORK - CARRY THE..

$

89

- 5  LP (Vinyl) Bunch

ANGEL WITCH - FRONTAL ASSAULT -  is "arrogant" already from the cover, in line with the classic iconography of the British combo.

It starts with the great title track, which does not disappoint the expectations and shows a band very united and aggressive. The riffing is dark and dramatic and vocals will fall well in the gloomy atmosphere. The song flows nicely, even on well-set arrangements and the solo work is well in line with the melody of the song. Turning a "Dream World" we notice that the combo focuses on issues of melodic thickness more sophisticated, emphasizing a harmony riffing which goes brilliantly with warm, enveloping vocals (especially in the refrain of easily impact).

And here you will notice more stylistic turn of the group compared to the previous production: less dark riffs and more space for harmony. "Rendezvous With The Blade", on the contrary, riffing stands out a more vigorous, robust supported by an effective drumming. The sound of the piece reflects the abundance of clichés debut album, especially of the interplay of dark tones and appealing rhythmic ride. With "Religion: Born Again" the band slows down the rhythm, concentrating their efforts on a kind of mid tempo where the sound always tough and strong impact helps to give more "color" a melodic line is always hovering between theatricality and darkness.

A small introduction to keyboards, soft, almost dreamy, introduces us to the following "Straight from hell", which now kicks off with a well-riffing among the most "sensible" and other more rocky impact. The refrain burst then in his power, pointing to a particularly sharp vocals in acute (and here we must give credit to a singer with good vocal charisma). "She Don't Lie" puts on display, again, the melodic mood of the band, emphasizing a certain propensity for a combo of heavy rock tones almost pompous, deployed along a pleasantly riffing that becomes brilliant in the melancholy refrain. The next song, "Take to the wind" is another episode energetic riffs played over and direct impact, while the rhythm section, pressing, acts as a drag factor of the rest of the instruments.

Interesting does the solo approach, which gives further strength to the basic structure of the track. The disc is coming to an end and the penultimate song, "Something Wrong", the combo leaves kicks his vein through a melodic riffing suffered, decadent romantic and, finally, majestic and rhythmic. Perhaps it is in this episode you will notice the most decisive turning point of the combo style that is so typical harmonic foundation of the group to inject new impetus to creativity. That was a good or bad it is not know with certainty. Personally, I can glimpse a maturity of approach evident that, though sacrificing (unfortunately) some key features of the sound of Angel Witch, it stands out of other valuable. The final track, however, go back to hammering the ears with a decidedly heavy riffing, as the dark Angel Witch can offer, supported by a precise and effective drumming. In this case report is the only one who succeeds in sound to compact the base of the piece.

To conclude this "Frontal Assault", although not a hard shift, those that shine like jewels in the heavy metal firmament, is a hard honest, genuine and demonstration of the great talents of a group, Angel Witch, who has shaped a particular kind of Heavy Metal. Let us remember, then, even after this beautiful and unforgettable "Angel Witch". Dave Tantum was a GREAT singer.

HAWAII - LOUD WILD AND HEAVY ~ Yeah, the finest music export from these Pacific Isles did a lot to attract enormous tourist crowds in the mid-80s with their rowdy hymns. For one thing their explosive debut did a lot to launch and establish the speed/thrash hegemony that reigned supreme throughout the decade, and although our friends here never fully embraced those more aggressive ways of expression on subsequent recordings, tourism/hospitality entrepreneurs we're talking about after all, they did leave their trace on the 80s US scene.

It's debatable whether said trace was going to be that tangible if it wasn't for the presence of one Marty Friedman; yes, the renowned guitar maestro who honed his weapon in two earlier incarnations of the band, Vixen and Aloha (but of course!), before he teamed up with the bass player Joey Galisa (R.I.P.) and the vocalist Gary St. Pierre (also Vicious Rumours at the same time) for the creation of the mentioned debut under the new moniker.

For the EP reviewed here St. Pierre was no longer available as his engagements with Vicious Rumours were becoming bigger, but not to worry so much as Friedman brought along Eddie Day, a singer he knew from his brief stint with the heavy metal formation Deuce, to participate in this recording which had to be the band's actual initiation into the speed/thrash metal roster they helped shape so handsomely with their first instalment?

Yes, but no; well, by "no" I mean that this is by no means a full-fledged speed/thrash offering. The four compositions featured are split between the friendlier heavy metal aesthetics and the more belligerent speedy explosions the former side reflected in the catchy sing-along hymn "Bad Boys of Metal" and the memorable, but ultimately cheesy "Escape the Night", an anthem the guys had a strange fascination with as it was featured on a Vixen demo initially, and on the Hawaii debut afterwards where expectedly it was an interesting ballad. The boisterous title-track, a rowdy speed/thrash metal delight at its early best; and by "Rhapsody in Black", a gorgeous 7-min instrumental rhapsody matching same year's Metallica's "The Call of Chtullu" every bit of the way, even surpassing it largely thanks to Friedman's extraordinary fretwork which knows no rest, constantly switching times and tempos to a nearly operatic effect indeed.

With the two sides taking turns on a track-by-track basis, the listener may get slightly disoriented as both mellow welcoming and aggressive, fast-paced histrionics will pass him by in equal measure the guys intent on keeping a larger audience hooked to the proceedings. Well, with four numbers closing on just above 20-min one can only do that much although the mid-80s fanbase was hardly the most picky one out there, and was ready to devour everything that had the label "metal" on it, not caring about any further stylistic segmentations. Day skilfully handles all nuances screaming and shouting his way on the more brutal, and singing in a more attached, more passionate manner on the laid-back material. Back to Friedman again, the man only unleashes his genius to the fullest on the mentioned instrumental, but this perfectly suffice to enrapture the audience who listened in wonder at the dazzling, not very predictable rifforama the latter prompting the more sagacious, more business-savvy side of it (hello, Mike Varney!) to start plotting the spawning of the lucrative Shrapnel odyssey.                               

"The Natives are Restless", but not so much our friends here who seriously softened for this last installment elaborating on the hard'n heavy side of the EP, producing a pretty mediocre hesitation between the glammy feats of Motley Crue and the likes, and the more classic-fixated ones of Iron Maiden and Accept. Not a dignified epitaph at all, it saw both Friedman and Day criminally misused, especially the former whose several stylish guitar pyrotechnics sounded severely irrelevant on the fairly undemanding background. Under the circumstances, the Hawaiian tourism/hospitality bureau had no choice but to terminate their contract as they no longer attracted the tourists in draws.

Friedman didn't spend much time free-floating as the Shrapnel empire was already operating on full-throttle, and Varney wasted no time recruiting him for his cause. He teamed him up with another up-and-coming guitar wizard, Jason Becker (ex-David Lee Roth), for the foundation of Cacophony, a collaboration that didn?t last very long, but at least steadfastly held to the (un)compromising virtuoso-prone speed metal idea. With Megadeth Friedman took part in some of metal's finest moments not to mention his regular contribution under his own name lasting up to the present day. No more tourist traps envisaged in the near future although one would do no harm looking around for the odd forgotten shrapnel that may lie hidden here? Or there.

NEW YORK - CARRY THE TORCH ~ The EP format seems custom-made for heavy metal; most bands have only one or two-at most three-really good songs in their repertoire, the rest are just fast-forward-fodder; and almost every heavy metal genre and subgenre gets long in the tooth at more than thirty-some minutes. So New York chose the right way to introduce themselves to listeners: five songs, a little over twenty minutes of music; all killer, no filler right?

Well, not really. It's hard to know from this temporal distance who the biggest influences were on New York (thus named even though they come from decidedly the non-New York South Carolina), but if forced to guess, I'd put most of my money on Motley Crue: vocalist Jimmy Enos, here credited as J* does a poor man's Vince Neil on most these tracks. While that's not specifically a bad thing, he possesses neither the range nor the intensity to stand out in any crowd of 80's heavy metal singers; he's serviceable, but that's about it. I'd put the rest of my money on Riot as the other main influence; these dudes sound like they spun Fire Down Under more than a time or two; the songs have just enough crunch and shredding to keep them from being silly "hard rockers."

Carry the Torch is an unabashedly "metal" record; but therein lies the problem: this is also very much a "commercial" metal record. '84 had already seen the birth of speed metal, thrash, black metal, and glam (referring here to groups like the above mentioned Motley Crue) and rocking the middle path is not the worst choice, but neither does it mean this record is anything other than a historical footnote to the growing audial schism between heavy metal and extreme metal. The guitars are sharp and have a nice bite: for the most part they wouldn't be out of place on a coeval Dokken or Cinderella record. The riffs are competent, I guess workman-like is the most fitting descriptor, but almost all bounce with mid-80's glamwagon abandon; the cock-rock swagger shows through in "Let It Roll" and "Nobody Like You," and it's easy to think these could've made their way onto FM radio. Rikk Hanz shines on the kit, bashing away like Tommy Lee on Shout at the Devil, mostly power and slam-bang simplicity.

Except for the opening track of side 2. "Nite Flyer," takes the slow and hard "China White," road, feedback and echoing drum giving way to a slicing Heavy Load riff and some killer chugging verses. The solos scream and dive through rock-solid rhythms, and the lyrics and vocals are the best here, lacking both shameless come-ons and hackneyed partying platitudes. This is also the only song that holds up to repeated listens thirty years later: file this then in the "If Only" cabinet of heavy metal history.

New York was just one of hundreds (or thousands?) of 80's metal bands that came and saw and didn't conquer. Carry the Torch is interesting for a couple of spins, and better than some of the other far-more-lauded obscurities of the same time period. But it's also worse than most of the more well-known records in this same, rather benign style released around the same time by far bigger bands: Breaking the Chains, Shout at the Devil, Steel the Light, etc. Thirty years has buried this EP in deep obscurity.

DIGGER - STRONGER THAN EVER ~ After three heavy metal releases, the German legend "Grave Digger" decided to cut off the first word of their name and recorded a record with a more commercial attempt to gain success in North America and make more money. While the band wrote the music for the album, their record label hired two American songwriters for the lyrics to help the band improve intellectually. In the end, the concept didn't work and the band failed to hit the charts. The fans saw the record as treason and so the band had pretty much lost everything. Internal problems were the third cause that finally led the band to split up and they only reunited six years later under their initial name to play heavy metal music without any compromises. Until today the band and the fans feel ashamed for "Stronger Than Ever" which is the only record that was never officially re-released and that is eventually quite hard to find. The band members cited the recording of this album as their biggest mistake but that they had learned a lot from that time.

An objective view on this infamous record reveals that the album isn't all that commercial, artificial and soft as many people might believe. In fact, there are many fast paced tracks on the record that could have fit on the previous War Games record like the sweating head banger "Lay it on" or the unexpected thrash metal hammer "Shadows of the past" that surprises with a psychedelic middle part while the rest of the song is the heaviest material the band had ever written to that point.

On the other side, most of the more rock orientated tracks still sound quite edgy and heavy because of the singer's rough and aggressive vocals like in the opener "Stand up and rock". Even though the guitars are less present in the track and the keyboards quite dominant in the simply and catchy chorus, the song still breathes the vibe and style of Grave Digger and is not a radical change of style.

The more commercial tracks like the title song "Stronger Than Ever" eventually sound a lot like commercial rock music of that time that is still greater than any artificial modern pop music. The said title track reminds me a lot of the works of David Bowie, Robert Palmer or Billy Idol of that time. I would go as far and say that those tracks showed a new and diversified musical side of the band and sounded rather interesting and appealing but I must admit that I like the mentioned musicians and the popular rock music of the seventies and eighties. On the other side, there are still melodic rock guitar solos in the tracks that are clearly influenced by the band's roots. Those songs are not entirely mass compatible and should not have offended the fans that much. I would also like to mention the experiment "Moonriders" that varies from epic metal passages over psychedelic pop passages to slight country influences and is a mixture of styles that I have never heard before. It's probably the most interesting track on the entire record.

In the end, the only embarrassing thing about this release is its horrible cover artwork. The music itself is diversified and varies from danceable soft rock over hard rock and heavy metal to psychedelic thrash metal music. The band is catchier and sounds fresher than ever before and this could have been a start for a glorious era. I don't know what the label and the promoters did wrong in the end but they missed a big chance to make this record successful. It's not about the music because there is a lot of potential in here for many different genres and their fans. I was pleasantly surprised to discover an unexpected gem in here with only a couple of weak tracks, a rather weak production and a stupid cover why the rest is nearly excellent. If you have the chance to get the original vinyl version or the booklet pressing, don't hesitate and purchase this unknown and underrated gem if you like any kind of rock music and melodic heavy metal.

If you forget Gravedigger - there are still some heavy numbers on this LP.

MOTHER'S FINEST - ONE MOTHER TO ANOTHER! ~ This rare entry is from Atlanta's hard soul pioneers, Mother's Finest. After enjoying moderate success in the 70's as the most powerful multicultural hard rock act on the concert circuit, the band found themselves at a crossroads as musical climates changed in the early 80's. With the failure of 1981's "Iron Age" release and their subsequent ousting from Atlantic Records, the band reconstructed its sound with a decidedly more R&B slant. Soon Epic Records came calling & before the end of 1983, "One Mother To Another" was released. The album was met with indifference almost from the onset, while also suffering from distribution glitches that would essentially derail the band by the middle of 1984. Members went on to work with Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet, The Outlaws as well as enjoying some success as solo artists. 1989 would see the band regrouping and over the next two decades, they've enjoying moderate success despite an inability to establish a solid musical identity.