Rebellion: A Tribute to Queensrÿche (2000)

Cost: $1.00

Yes, as a Dwell Records tribute the bar isn't set that high to begin with, but what's with the especially awful layout?  It looks like something a gothic or industrial band would use.

 

This is a bit unusual for a Dwell metal tribute as the only extreme band here is Darkside, who do a doom/death version of "Someone Else?"  The other bands all pretty much do straight up covers, so I'm not going to bother doing a track-by-track review.  This is also one of the later Dwell tributes where the band lineup is pretty obscure--aside from Darkside I only knew Ion Vein and Shadowkeep.  Tracklist slightly favors Mindcrime I with 4 songs, but covers everything up to Promised Land with the exception of Rage for Order (which gets no coverage).  Moot point anyway since all I truly care about from Queensrÿche is the debut EP...

Dollar-bin finds

These are all from an early 2013 trip (didn't keep track of the exact date).

Geoff Tate - Geoff Tate
I picked this up (obviously) for the Queensrÿche associations, and yes, I was sort of expecting Queensrÿche-lite.  Also keep in mind, apart from the first EP (which I find excellent, but not exemplary), I don't find the notion of Queensrÿche to be terribly exciting.  Listening revealed it's very far removed from Queensrÿche.  I'm not going to crucify this album, but it may as well not exist, because it holds no meaning for me one way or the other.  Let me stress that there's no metal on here.  A few songs are darker in tone, but there's nothing even remotely heavy here by metal standards.  It's rock/pop with widely varying influences from electronic/trance to jazz--very mellow and inoffensive stuff.  The variety of sounds here don't automatically translate into progressive music, so apart from the total ballads, it's not that comparable to Queensrÿche's more mellow material.  Executed well but not in my realm of interest.

Lord Belial - Unholy Crusade
This is the first album by the band I've ever found, and I'm surprised it took so long.  Was even more surprised that this was the original No Fashion version, not the Metal Blade press.

Sceptic - Pathetic Being
Melodic technical death metal with (mostly) raspy vocals, though it wasn't as technical as I expected.  There's a very strong melodic death metal uncurrent here, and they don't really go full out into the realms of jazz influences or extremely freeform song structures.  Much of the riffing is quite reminiscent of later Death material.  The cover of Nocturnus' "Arctic Crypt" is at the respectable-quality-but-doesn't-even-compare-to-the-original level, and I feel the same way about it as I do for the whole album: lukewarm. 

Silent Civilian - Rebirth of the Temple
This didn't look like anything I would want, but I happened to look inside and noticed a Testament shirt on one of the band members (as it turns out, the guy from Spineshank), so I felt compelled to get it.  Standard metalcore.

Metal Meltdown compilation (1989)

Cost: $2.00

Rather than being a true compilation, this is a Pure Metal label budget sampler.  There are no full songs on here--each track has samples of a couple of songs interspersed with spoken word interview stuff.  The interviews (which are just the artists' answers) are mostly boring--just talk about who the bands are hoping to reach, how they're doing it, heavy metal imagery, and secular acceptance.  Nothing deep there.  Some of the inclusions are kind of surprising for a label called "Pure Metal":

Whitecross - I thought their earlier stuff was heavier than this.  The first song ("Because of Jesus") sounds like a Christian version of Ratt, and the second one is a ballad.

Scarlet Red - Female fronted glammy stuff.  Not all that heavy.

Tempest - Knew of them but never heard them.  Again, much lighter than I was expecting.  Point of interest: the interviewee thinks Mötley Crüe are trash.

Bride - The only worthwhile stuff out of the 5 USA-based bands on here.  Their tracks are from the "Live to Die" album.

One Bad Pig - Referred to by the narrator as "thrash punk."  Well, maybe there's some of that in the second song.  The first track is the silly genre mashup stuff they're known for, reminding me of something like Green Jelly with '80s gang choruses.  Not very interesting.

Jerusalem - I previously only knew these guys for their late '70s/early '80s hard rock stuff, but the late '80s material is much heavier than I expected.

Leviticus - Material from the "Setting Fire to the Earth" album (which is okay melodic metal, but I prefer their first 2 albums far more) and some Björn Stigsson solo material.

Lightforce - Easily the best band on here, which is no surprise, since "Mystical Thieves" was the best Pure Metal release.  I think Steve Rowe's interview here is the best one, too.

Rosanna's Raiders - As the name implies, female-fronted.  The material here is from their first album and I usually see that classified as hard rock, although I think it really straddles the fence between hard rock and melodic metal.