Unleashed - Victory (1995)

 

Cost: $3.00

One of metal's great tragedies is how Century Media completely castrated the majority of their extreme metal roster in the mid-'90s. The bands certainly aren't blameless either, but I never thought this was mere coincidence. I truly believe the label was nefariously pushing hard for bands to go towards more marketable, modern, and atmospheric pastures. We'll get back to that in a moment.

As for the disc itself, I was very happy to find this for $3, as it filled a longtime gap in my Swedish DM collection, and despite it having some old store stickers on the case, it was in excellent condition.

 My (non-)history with this album is a bit unusual. When the album was new, I heard the lumbering anthem "Hail the New Age" on the Identity compilation and immediately loved it. I like the song more than any individual track on the 2nd and 3rd Unleashed albums. Unfortunately, the only time I came across it back in the day was a copy for full used price which was missing its back insert. I obviously passed. As time went on it seemed like the album wasn't terribly well-regarded, so it never became a big priority to me.

The glaring problem with Victory is the opener "Victims of War," an absolutely terrible choice because of the start/stop groove metal-esque riffage. It immediately soured me on rest of the album, thinking they were going down the route Grave did on Hating Life, but thankfully, it turned out to be a one off. 

Despite "Hail the New Age," I don't like this as much overall as the first 3 albums. It's still a solid listen and there's not a particularly big step down in quality or anything, it just comes off as simpler and lacks some of the extra touches that contributed to the atmosphere of the earlier stuff. There seems to be a greater focus on faster tracks here ("Legal Rapes," "In the Name of God," "Revenge") than on Across the Open Sea (the only one I can remember off the top of my head is "Forever Goodbye"), and these are all fine. If you overlook the first track, this seems to be an album that largely escaped the Century Media curse, especially compared to the aforementioned Grave album or Asphyx's God Cries.

Overkill - Feel the Fire

 

Cost: $2.00 

Obviously, I would have bought any pressing of this album for two bucks, but I was especially pleased to see that this was the very first CD pressing on Megaforce when I looked it up on Discogs.

I never gave it much thought before, but I realize now that aside from "There's No Tomorrow," all of the stuff I personally like is concentrated on the second half of the album. Rarely see the greatness of "Kill at Command" mentioned, and while I don't think it would be my favorite song, it's certainly one of the better ones.

In my head, I often tend to severely overestimate the amount of USPM influence here. Sure, there are parts strewn across the album and there are varying amounts of traditional metal in the guitarwork, but for some reason I always think of it as having fairly pure USPM songs like Show No Mercy does. Not a nitpick at all, just a peculiar false mental association I seem to make whenever I reach for this.

Triumph CDs

The dollar Triumph discs had been languishing in the to-be-written-about pile, so a while ago I thought it was finally time to get them all covered in a (then) relatively short post. But then I kept finding another Triumph CD in the bins just as I was ready to publish it, causing me to postpone the post a few times.

Previously I had never bothered to explore Triumph's music that much. I thought "Rock & Roll Machine" (the song) was very cool, and some of the assorted Allied Forces era tracks I've heard were pleasant to listen to, but not necessarily something I'd search out...

 

 

Triumph - Allied Forces - $2.00

I'm covering these in alphabetical order, but this is actually the last CD I found out of all of these. This was the band's most commercially successful album by far, and I remember being vaguely familiar with the guitar and thunderbolt logo from the cover long before I heard any actual Triumph music. Sadly, this would be the last time they incorporate anything that can be truly called metallic in their music. The somewhat Rush sounding singles "Magic Power" and "Fight the Good Fight" got a lot of attention, but I find "Ordinary Man" to be a lot better. Still, I like everything here to some degree, aside from maybe the opening and closing tracks. I just don't find them terribly interesting. The speedy and quite heavy title track is a very worthy successor to "Rock 'N' Roll Machine" although doesn't quite surpass it.

 

Triumph - Edge of Excess - $2.00

The final Triumph studio album from 1992, sans Rik Emmett. At this point, even had he still been in the band, I doubt anything they released would have been of much interest to me. It is harder-edged and much less AOR-oriented than Surveillance, but still comes across as generic late '80s hard rock.

Triumph - Never Surrender - $2.00

As of writing this, I haven't heard Thunder Seven, but I suspect this is the last Triumph album to have anything even vaguely heavy on it. I was quite amused because I heard a lot of Dio (specifically in the cadence of the vocals) in opener "Too Much Thinking," so I looked online to see if anyone else thought so, and a lot of folks consider it to be inspired by/a ripoff of "Neon Knights" (I do hear the basic similarity they're talking about). It's weaker than the Sabbath song but still pretty good. The other standout for me was "All the Way." Title track is a letdown because it sounds like it should be a powerful song, but turns out to be quite mellow aside from the solo section. "Writing on the Wall" is another one of those Triumph songs that sounds vaugely Rush-like due to Rik Emmett's vocals.

 

Triumph - Rock 'N' Roll Machine - $1.00

Not the Rock & Roll Machine album proper, but the "international" version with 4 tracks each from the band's first 2 albums. I was expecting the title track to be the only thing to really resonate with me here, but "Street Fighter" has quite a mean, speedy main riff--it's a shame they don't really sustain the heaviness throughout the entire song. The real surprise for me was "Blinding Light Show/Moonchild," as it's a great proggy song with bursts of NWOBHM heaviness. The rest of the tracks are more like typical '70s rock songs and didn't impress me very much.

Triumph - Surveillance - $1.00  (This CD is available for trade)

Had never heard any of the later era Triumph stuff before. Some of the songs have more of a hard rock edge than I would have thought, but the rest is AOR--"Let the Light (Shine on Me)" is especially very Journey-esque--which is what I was expecting. Since I bought this as a tradable and wasn't expecting it to be a keeper, no big deal.

Bonehunter - Sexual Panic Human Machine (2017)

 

Cost: $2.00

I rarely find Hells Headbangers releases in bargain bins and this showed up at a store that seldom has any kind of extreme metal, so I think I got a little too excited for this one. It's exactly how I feel about a lot of Hells Headbangers releases--solid but not great--and it was worth what I paid, but I can't help but feel a  little disappointed. Maybe the Ghoul and Venom patches combined with all the other circumstances inflated my expectations. 

This is a black/thrash with some punkiness mixed in. The ingredients for something I should probably like more are here (the vocals remind me quite a bit of Nifelheim), and while there are some cool parts (the title track is what I wish the whole album was more like), a lot of the songs kind of settle into a formulaic rut (usually mid-tempo). I wonder if it's too much contemporary black metal influence, as while it's not quite the soulless background music a lot of modern Scandinavian BM is, it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression with me. I've only heard a little bit of their previous material, but I remember the punk influences being wilder and filthier and the music being a little better for it.

The Showdown - Temptation Come My Way (2007)

 

Cost: $1.00

This was an older find I pulled out of storage, so I don't specifically recall if I bought this solely because it was cheap, or because the band was listed at Metal Archives. I've heard none of their other material. Before this they were apparently a metalcore band, and after this, they were some kind of groove/Southern metal. Unfortunately, it looks like they had commercial aspirations with this album and severely softened, as it's mostly (somewhat) heavied up rock, like something for the Ozzfest crowd.

The opening track has a groove riff and gang "HEY!" chants which deceived me into thinking the album might be Hellyeah/Black Label Society type stuff. Already it's got quite a rockish feel. The vocals generally sound more fitting for an alternative rock band, although he tends to add a lot of Hetfield inflections. The next two songs are unfortunately more representative of what the majority of the album is like--a mix of Pillar, Nickelback, Skillet, and Alter Bridge, mixed with varying amounts of Southern rock influences, heavier groove riffs, and some occasional metallic guitarwork.

There are a few exceptions. The upbeat "We Die Young" offers riffage closer to classic metal guitarwork and moves a bit closer to something like Avenged Sevenfold than the bands I previously mentioned. The quite decent solo section is probably as metal as the album ever gets. Then the title track has Pantera-influenced groove riffing combined with the singer at his most Hetfield-ish. It's not that interesting to me personally but I can't deny it feels more inspired than the alt. rock stuff. "Forget My Name" is more uptempo and sounds like it has more of a hair band/'80s hard rock influence, which again I don't necessarily want to hear, but in context is more appealing than the alternative. Literally.

The cover of Kansas' "Carry On Wayward Son" is easily the most interesting track out of everything, though it's only a competent cover, not an especially great one. The vocal style is a major shortcoming here. For the last track "Death Finds Us Breathing," at first I wasn't sure if the clean vocalled verses were the band reverting to a more emo side of their past, or were something more Creed/Alter Bridge inspired. Considering there's a breakdown with metalcore vox, I'm guessing the former.

There are certainly metal influences here, especially in the guitarwork, but having them alone does not a satisfying listen make. This is clearly music made to appeal to the hard alternative crowd.

Metallica - Master of Puppets

 

Cost: $2.00 

I'm a little late in getting around to writing about this one, and in the meantime, I actually found another copy of Master (an earlier press; this one is a later version since it amends the fanclub info with the Metallica website in the booklet) as well as a copy of Ride the Lightning and the bootleg I already covered. And while not pristine, all of them were in pretty good condition to boot. That would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago. For 25 years, the only '80s Metallica I ever even saw in a cheapo bin was a severely water damaged copy of AJfA (my local pawn shop also had an empty Kill 'Em All case on the shelf back when they were selling CDs for $3 a pop, but someone had swiped the disc).

Another album that I don't need to bother describing in any way, so I'll just give some brief thoughts.

Much like Reign in Blood, I think this album is terribly overrated compared to more underground stuff, but I like it more than I did when I initially heard it, and I get the impression I like it more than other people might think based on my personal tastes in metal. While there are some cool ideas here, in hindsight I think they were trying a bit too hard to shake metal stereotypes and be seen as more complex and proficient musicians. It's also quite long for an 8-song thrash album-- all of the 6+ min. songs could stand to have some fat trimmed. 

1. Battery

The first time I ever heard this, I thought of it rather negatively. Mellow acoustic intro leading into fast aggressive opening track? They already did that on "Fight Fire with Fire," and it's not even as good. I can appreciate the speed and aggression now, although I've always thought the chorus vocal patterns and gang vox felt kind of wonky.

2. Master of Puppets

Great. All that middle section stuff is kind of extraneous but it doesn't really bother me either.

3. The Thing That Should Not Be

Not bad, kind of feels like a precursor to some of the stuff on the self-titled album.

4. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

Okay, though the balladish stuff isn't my favorite. I think it comes off better than "Fade to Black," at least.

5. Disposable Heroes

Always thought this was a severely underrated song--one of my favorite non-Kill 'Em All Metallica tracks.

6. Leper Messiah

I have no strong opinions on the track itself. It's not bad, it's not great, I just see it as mid-paced filler. I think it's got one of the better solos of the album, though.

7. Orion

I've been conditioned to like the middle part that they used for the credits of the Cliff 'Em All video after seeing it so much. But overall this feels like they were focused more on being progressive and less on writing killer tunes (foreshadowing the entire ...And Justice album, perhaps?). It's got enough substance where it's not as throwaway as "Anesthesia," but I'd much rather hear "Call of Ktulu."

8. Damage, Inc. 

They were good at the straightforward fast stuff, it's a shame it went severely downhill after this. This might have made a better opener than "Battery."

Probot - Probot (2004)

 

Cost: $2.00

Dave Grohl collaborating with his metal/crossover vocal idols. This is neither as consistently good as I had hoped nor as consistently bad as I feared. While I'm sure Dave liked the old material of these bands, very little here is going to scratch the classic metal itch. The less tailored-to-their-featured-vocalist tracks tend to default to Sabbath-inspired modern metal tropes which come across as lackluster. There's some decent stuff though, so not a bad find:

1. Centuries of Sin (w/ Cronos)

Not bad for modern groovier stuff, though I'm not sure how appealing I'd find it if Cronos was absent. Wouldn't sound too out of place on any post-Resurrection Venom album. When I listened through a second time, I was thinking how the fast end part is fairly similar to current Venom, but the rest of the track might even be more like a heavily modernized version of the Cronos solo stuff than anything Venom.

 

2. Red War (w/ Max Cavalera)

There's a recurring vocal effect (some sort of sample?) in a more homeboy nu-style, but the stop/start main riff and vaguely industrial feel remind me more of Chaos A.D. than anything Soulfly.

3. Shake Your Blood (w/ Lemmy) 

Here, it's quite pleasant as a simple Motörheadish track and perhaps stands out more positively than it should. The lack of a guitar solo feels weird, and I think even on the Motörhead albums from around the time this was recorded, it wouldn't be more than a middling track at best.

4. Access Babylon (w/ Mike Dean)

Not sure what people are hearing when they say this sounds like old CoC. It's very short and certainly punkier than any of the other tracks, but it feels more like Grohl trying to inject some punkiness into the default Probot songwriting style. The thick, polished sound and lack of energetic viciousness make this feel weird as "crossover." The vocals are my least favorite performance here and remind me quite a lot of Rage Against the Machine. Definitely one of my least favorite tracks.

Also should add, Alec Empire worked with Grohl on this track during the early stages of Probot, so it wasn't written with Mike Dean in mind. Alec even released his own version called "Tear It Down," which is the exact same music with different lyrics and vocals. His version sounds kind of like an Atari Teenage Riot track, which reinforces that the music is just sort of generically punky.

 

5. Silent Spring (w/ Kurt Brecht)

Probably the song where the music feels most disconnected from the singer's regular repetoire. Not a hint of DRI here, just the modern groovy stuff. Somewhat interesting to hear Kurt's vocals in this context, but otherwise not anything special.

 

6. Ice Cold Man (w/ Lee Dorrian)

Ironically, this sounds more like early Trouble than the Eric Wagner song, and I wouldn't be surprised if the intro is a direct tribute to "The Tempter." Best track on the CD by far.

 

7. The Emerald Law (w/ Wino)

Finally, some guitar soloing! Not my favorite, but Wino is a good fit and this feels a lot more lively and energetic than some of the other tracks. Fine for what it is.

 

8. Big Sky (w/ Tom G. Warrior)

No Frost here at all, just very industrialish and experimental Apollyon's Sun-type stuff. Disappointing but not that surprising given the time period. If I hadn't read the tracklist I probably would have assumed this was the Snake track at first.

 

9. Dictatosaurus (w/ Snake)

The liner notes specifically mention the first two Voivods, so of course this sounds like...mellower Angel Rat/Outer Limits style choruses coupled with Nothingface influences. Not to my taste but I have to admit this track actually sounds very much like Voivod.

 

10. My Tortured Soul (w/ Eric Wagner)

Not sure if it was a conscious decision, but that main lick is literally just Saxon's "Denim and Leather" slowed down. It feels weird in the context of fuzzed Sabbath worship but also makes it kinda awesome. Second best song on here.

11a. Sweet Dreams (w/ King Diamond) 

While not the worst performance, this has the most ill-fitting vocals. King is just not a good match with the bluesy riffs. The guitarwork and bluesiness here could have lifted the Lemmy track quite a bit, too. On a positive note, this made me genuinely curious what King Diamond style vocals would sound like in a traditional doom metal band.

11b. I Am the Warlock (hidden track; w/ Jack Black)

The vocals and lyrics aren't that serious, but this is less of a joke track than you'd think. If Black Label Society were any good, it would probably sound a bit like this.