Mensrea - Media Coil Interrupt (2008)

 

 Cost: $2.00

I was reading the liner notes at the store and  the name Cory Smoot sounded familiar, although I didn't make the Gwar connection until much later.  They're listed first in the thanks list and Sarah Jezebel Deva of Cradle of Filth fame does guest vocals on a track, so I can't say I didn't have other warning flags...

This is the kind of modern kitchen sink metal that I find to be almost no better than straight up metalcore--it mixes metalcore, melodic death metal, groove metal, and maybe some very slight hints of thrash, but of course in an uninteresting modernized vein.  It's too modern and generic to be engaging for me, and it's not even brutal or extreme enough to make much of an impression through brute force.  The vocals only come in two unfortunate flavors, a shouty aggro/HC style and a screamy -core style.  The second half of the disc seems to have a higher concentration of melodic DM influence, although that doesn't redeem the album by any means.  "March of the Malcontents" and "Memoirs" have riff ideas that might have been decent in a pure melodic DM context, but there's not even a full song of that here--everything eventually segues into something -core sounding.  Two bucks not well spent.

Vengeance - Human Sacrifice (1988)

 

Cost: $2.00

Here's the big find I mentioned in the Tourniquet post: the original pressing of the Human Sacrifice CD with unamended bandname and logo! I already have the Medusa press, and while I'm not particularly concerned with layout differences or press variations, it still felt great to find it for $2 (especially since when I attemped to order it online several years ago for $5 or so, I was sent a gospel/worship music CD instead  :-\).   Was even sealed in deteriorating shrinkwrap with ancient stickers from some long-gone religious bookstore, although since the case was pretty scuffed underneath, I'm not sure if it was actually brand new or had just been resealed.

This is easily my favorite Christian thrash album, no doubt in part to it being the most extreme major release in the category at the time (just to clarify, I don't really take Serpent Temptation into account since Incubus weren't really trying to target a specifically Christian audience).  Of course, the big reason is those insane, nearly-out-of-breath-slash-monstrous-bellowing vocals which sound totally unhinged. Never heard anything else quite like them, and I don't think even Roger himself was able to replicate them as effectively on any of their other material. Admittedly, while most of the album is solid thrash that's up to date for the time, it probably wouldn't be considered cutting edge in terms of extremity compared to what was going on in the underground--the vocals contribute most of the heavy lifting. But some nice little touches pop up here and there, like the solo run in the title track (somewhat reminiscent of the end of Possessed's "The Exorcist").  Then of course when you finally get to the end of the album, "Beheaded" is a total death/thrash rager--absolutely one of my favorite songs in the entire genre. 

So yeah, what a fantastic score! And I'm not even done with this small Christian thrash haul, as I picked up Once Dead too...

Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast

 

Cost: $2.00

Was pleasantly surprised to find a super clean copy of an old Capitol pressing in the bargain bin. Initially I thought it was my first Maiden CD (I've found their VHS tapes in cheapo racks before) that would qualify as an actual bargain bin find, but then I remembered I had picked up Brave New World for $3 at a pawn shop a few months after it was released (while I thought the album was a good comeback, scoring it was completely overshadowed by finding CD reissues of the Agent Steel and Attacker debuts in the same trip).

To be perfectly frank, over the years as I've delved deeper and deeper into heavy metal, I've gradually come to love the Iron Maiden debut more and more to the exclusion of everything else, though there are plenty of individual later songs I definitely enjoy, with "Aces High" being at the top of the Dickinson stuff.  I'm inclined to say The Number of the Beast is my favorite Bruce-era album overall--I don't know if I'd say it's necessarily better than Killers, but it's probably more consistent as a whole.  The title track and especially "Hallowed Be Thy Name" are fantastic, and "Invaders" and "Gangland" seem quite underrated in the Maiden catalogue. "Run to the Hills" used to give me serious ear fatigue from overexposure to it. It's still not a favorite of mine, but listening to this CD is the first time I've heard the studio version in full for a while, and it didn't bother me that much.  

Don't ask me to quantify it, but I feel this album has the last traces of a certain specialness Maiden had which was subsequently lost. Maybe it was the last vestiges of NWOBHM in their sound, maybe it was Clive's drumming, maybe they had to prove they could still deliver without Paul--maybe it was some of all of these.