Menza - Life After Deth (2001)

Cost: Part of a CD lot I picked up years ago, probably worked out to less than $1

 

The main problem(s) with this CD are obvious just by reading the liner notes--Menza plays everything on the album except for some guitar solos, and also co-produces and co-mixes.  For better (no) or for worse (yes) he's in complete control.  But the band he came from weren't exactly great at self-editing and musical governance in their later years, so why would Nick Menza himself be?

 

It's surprising how amateurish many parts of the disc are, especially the awful vocals--they show little control or sense of melody.  There's also a definite lack of songwriting cohesion or focus in general.  Some tracks come across as an extremely lo-fi version of the later Megadeth material with Menza, others are more standard rock tracks.  And oddly, for a drummer's solo album, the drumming is...well, not very noteworthy.  Some have said it sounds like a drum machine (I agree), and the drumming is pretty far forward in the mix, but the playing itself doesn't seem very impressive or inspired.

The only part of the CD I liked was the short Middle Eastern flavored instrumental hidden at the end of the last track (which is incidentally better than most Nile material).

Well of Souls - Volume Novena (1994) and Jail Steak (1997)

Well of Souls - Volume Novena

Cost: $1.00

Got this one mostly because of the cover and band name, and I was expecting it to either be psychedelic/doomy or funk ala Mind Funk/Last Crack/Infectious Grooves.  Most of the songs are a combination of two things--first, there's a psychedelic/groovy element through most of the songs, although it comes off more like heavy alternative rock than even something like say, newer Trouble. The band is also fond of using effects, vocal distortion, and rhythmic patterns which give things an industrial flavor.

"Dr. Doompuss" is more like what I expected the band to be--just a short funky song with parts that brought Voivod to mind.  The best track on here is their cover of Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine," where they ditch the jangly guitars of the original and make it very percussion-heavy and dark. Very ambient sounding with all the spacey sound effects.

Well of Souls - Jail Steak

Cost: $1.00

Found this a few years after getting the first CD.  Groovier and less dark than Volume Novena, and "This is Why" even has rap vocals.  No redeeming factors here.

I was pretty surprised this band is listed at metal-archives in the first place, but whoever tagged them as heavy/power metal needs a lobotomy, pronto.  (UPDATE: They've sensibly been removed from the site)

Eclipse - Lunacy (1995)

Eclipse - Lunacy

Cost: $2.00

Date: 2005

Picked this one up as an ambiguous-looking indie. The cover art and last song ("Mr. Turtle") didn't seem metal at all, so it was ultimately the band photo collage (all longhairs, and one member is wearing a leather jacket in almost every pic) that prompted me to take a chance.  I remember not being initially impressed and putting the CD aside.  Fast foward a couple of years, and I notice the CD is being touted online as rare indie thrash.  Was I remembering the music incorrectly?

Nope, just unscrupulous sellers trying to generate interest in the disc.

There's a lot of heavy metal technique and tone in the guitar playing, but that doesn't translate into a metal album.  Initially the CD shifts between heavy alternative rock (with funky influences interwoven into the riffs) and melancholic hard rock (2 songs on the album are clean guitar-driven ballads).  Then we get to the Sabbathy "Solitude," a modern/groove metal song with a main riff reminiscent of "Children of the Grave."  "Hideaway" (with its harmonized guitars) and "Hall of the Dancer" (with its galloping main riff) definitely exhibit metal guitarwork, but the vocals and flat, mid-tempo drumming (which I suspect is a drum machine) pull things away from being total metal.  So yeah, not particularly musically satisfying for me.

Don't be fooled.  Obscure?  Seems like it.  But it's not a metal indie release, thrash or otherwise.

Guitars That Rule the World compilation (1992)

Cost: $1.00

1. Reb Beach - "Black Magic"

2. Richie Sambora - "Mr. Sambo"

3. Yngwie Malmsteen - "Leviathan"

4. Paul Gilbert - "I Understand Completely"

5. Elliot Easton - "Walk on Walden"

6. Zakk Wylde - "Farm Fiddlin'"

7. Nuno Bettencourt - "Bumble Bee (Crash Landing)"

8. Alex Skolnick - "Filet of Soul"

9. Richie Kotzen - "Chype Fluxx"

10. Albert Collins - "Blues for Stevie"

11. Dicket Betts & Warren Haynes - "Willie and Poor Bob"

12. Reeves Gabrels - "Why Do I Feel Like I'm Bleeding?"

13. Earl Slick - "Surfer Junkie Dude"

Several years ago I was searching YouTube for live versions of Slayer's "Black Magic."  I happened to come across Reb Beach's song, and thought it was very cool, but had no idea who he was.  It was a little shocking to find out he was the guitarist for WINGER (!!!!) of all bands, and I was kind of disappointed because I didn't know where I could get an audio version of the song (I was expecting I'd have to buy something with Winger-related material on it). 

Problem solved.

"Black Magic" does end up being the best song on here, but there really isn't that much competition.   The Yngwie track isn't particularly exciting.  The Paul Gilbert and Richie Kotzen tracks are somewhat interesting just due to the skill displayed, and the Elliot Easton (guitarist from The Cars) track is a nice folksy atmospheric tune, but it's all downhill after track 1 for me.

Vital - No Redemption (1996)

Cost: Don't remember, probably a buck

This is going to be a quick warning rather than a real review (plus, I've had this disc for so long I can't remember where I even got it).  I've seen this CD labeled as metal a few places online (seemingly by unscrupulous sellers trying to get rid of it), but it's actually post-grunge hard rock.  I don't fault the band; this is just one of those cases where the band name, album cover, songtitles, and band photos (all of 'em are longhairs) are ambiguous enough where the disc could have been any number of things on the rock spectrum. 

Honestly, I do prefer the music here to almost any of the metalcore and Pantera-influenced crap that I've covered (and will unfortunately no doubt cover in the future), but calling this a metal album is a ridiculous stretch.

Black Sheep - Sacrifice (1999)

Cost: Around $2

"Love's Not Enuff?"  "Someone Like U?"  "Love Warrior?"  "Which Side R/U On?"  It's hard to be optimistic when 3 songs sound like Prince song titles and the only grammatically correct one has "love" in it.  Yet, the disc itself has a "100% American Metal" disclaimer...

I can't recall for sure if I'd heard of the band before, but I had a vague notion of reading about them in some article or forum post about '80s metal bands with black members.  For some reason Sound Barrier came to mind when I saw this disc, and sure enough, frontman Willie Basse did do a project with one of the Sound Barrier guys, so I'm thinking I did read about them somewhere before.  Black Sheep previously released an '85 LP with a young and uncredited Paul Gilbert playing guitar on some of the tracks.

Half of the mini-CD songs dabble in more commercial, rock-based stuff--not all that interesting for me--but the others pleasantly surprised me and delivered real heavy metal. The two best tracks are re-recordings of tunes originally on that '85 album.  "Love's Not Enuff" and "Love Warrior" musically remind me of uptempo stuff from Dio/Martin era Sabbath.  I read a YouTube comment on one of the '85 songs mentioning that there was a Paul Stanley vibe to the vocals, which I can very much hear.

As for the two other tracks, the slower "Someone Like U" kills the energy of the opener and shows a more standard rock influence.  "Which Side Are R/U On," while heavy, is also unfortunately overly groovy and modern. Still, the two good tracks make this far better than I was expecting.

I should add as a personal point of interest that while researching the band for this post, I noticed Willie Basse played bass on the Ozz No Prisoners album (which often makes those internet "worst/silliest rock album cover" lists largely due to the rather, uh, flamboyant pose of the singer).

Farewell from the Gallows - Luck of the Draw (2012)

Cost: $1.00

There was little doubt this was going to be -core of some type (yes, yes, say what you want about dressing and expressing yourself however you want, but gauged ears and hipster looking members generally aren't a good sign if you're wanting to hear actual heavy metal), but I spent the buck as a precaution.  I was ultimately pissed off because the word "metal" is part of the band's facebook link...That helped push me towards buying this, especially since it was an indie release with no label info and no thanks list, but it was clearly false advertising.

I suppose this is best labeled as some type of post-hardcore--I hesitate to even call this metalcore.  They follow the typical formula of contrasting extreme and mellow material (both musically and vocally), but the disc is only EP-length, and they go a bit overboard with the clean vocalled melodic sections. I found nothing particularly compelling or interesting about the -core sections either.