Darkcell - Nightmare Document Part 2 (2013)

 

Cost: $1.00

This combines black metal and ambient, so obviously, several tracks are similar to what I would stereotypically think of as ambient black metal and are rather discordant. The purer dark ambient sections are decent, though they tend towards dreamier rather than sinister. Other times the ambient sounds seem to be mild attempts to make the music weirder or vaguely psychedelic. Personally I think it would have been interesting if some of these elements were taken to further extremes, even at the risk of going overboard. Still, the riff in "Mantis and Ants" is a lot catchier than other bands in the same vein, so it's not that bad of a find for a buck.

Sabbra Cadabra - Live

 

Cost: $1.00

This was a super interesting find, as practically no metal tribute acts make it even close to a point where releasing a factory-pressed CD would be feasible. The only other example I can even think of is the Iron Maidens.

Didn't realize it when picking this up, but the singer is Joe Donnelly, who was later the vocalist of Iron Man around the time period of the I Have Returned album. 

Recording is excellent for a self-financed live CD, the band is tight, guitar tone is great, and the Ozzy emulation is pretty decent. I was a little surprised at the setlist, since there are two Technical Ecstasy songs and the last track is "Selling My Soul," one of the then-brand new studio tracks from the Reunion live album. "Dirty Women" is kinda cool to hear but as for the others, I would personally rather heard "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," "Symptom of the Universe," or even "Sweet Leaf." I do appreciate that they're trying to incorporate some less known stuff in the set, but also a bit saddened that there's nothing from Sabotage on here, making it the only Ozzy album at the time of this recording (1998) that they didn't play anything from.

Minor Utopia - Withering in the Concrete (2012)

 

Cost: $2.00

At first I was curious what this would be like, but my expectations hit rock bottom when I saw the singer/guitarist. I don't know if his name indicates trans stuff or not, but he has a rather unfortunate Hot Topic goth appearance (for any German readers, he would look more at home in the pages of Zillo than in a good metal band).

Surprisingly, the music is not as bad as I feared, although it's not super interesting either. It's a sort of somewhat thrashy, upbeast modern metal, with occasional power metal influences in some of the galloping melodies, as well as some progressive metal touches. "Pneuma," the best song, is a decent thrasher, but unfortunately it's the only time they fully commit to thrash. There are also a couple of flirtations with more extreme metal, like on "Ethical Knockout" and "Hole in the Sky." The vocals aren't the worst I've ever heard, but they're inconsistent and often come off as whiny and amateurish. 

In a way this exceeded my expectations, since they don't deviate from metal or incorporate any outside influences. But there's nothing interesting or showing potential here to me either, so I'm unlikely to revisit it.

Sweet Family Music - A Tribute to Stryper (1996)

 

Cost: $1.00

This CD is available for trade.

 

I remember reading a few angry online reviews about this tribute that bashed it for basically being open mockery of Stryper (personally I find it far less offensive than when so many Christian metal bands like Deliverance, Bride, etc. abandoned metal). So when I saw it for a buck, my curiosity got the better of me, even though I knew it was going to be terrible. I was expecting absolutely ZERO metal here, so I guess the minuscule amount here means it somewhat exceeded my expectations?

 

1. The Abyss

Not really a cover of the Stryper intro, just sounds like a noisy industrial/extreme metal intro track.

2. Steve Hindalong - To Hell with the Devil

Rather loose interpretation as an acoustic guitar driven über-mellow parody version. Corny.

 

3. Morella's Forest - Calling On You

'90s female-fronted alternative style version. Been a long time since I heard that kind of stuff but it brings to mind what I remember The Breeders and Veruca Salt sounding like. This is such a different arrangement it could pass as an original.

 

4. Klank - The Way

I was quite surprised when this started as it seemed like it was going to be a straight up metal cover. Of course, that's not gonna happen on this type of compilation, and the vocals end up being distorted industrial vocals which are very annoying. While the band's original music seems to all be industrial/electronic stuff, there's no trace of that here instrumentally. 

 

5. Cricket - Makes Me Wanna Sing

Pop punk version. No interest in hearing it again but it translates decently for the style.

 

6. Havalina Rail Co. - Always There for You

Lounge jazz version? Nearly unrecognizable aside from the lyrics.

 

7. Dinner Mint featuring Jesse Sprinkle - All for One

Redone as a serious '90s acoustic rock ballad. Not my thing but comes off better than a lot of the earlier tracks.

 

8. Argyle Park - Lonely (Two-Timing Mix)

Electronic/industrial, also barely recognizable.

 

9. Grammatrain - More Than a Man

Modern rock version. Phone intro is probably more interesting than the music.

 

10. Combat Chuck - You Know What to Do

Jangly alternative rock version. Purposefully cheesy intro is definitely more interesting than the music.

 

11. Ghoti Hook - First Love

Speedy punk cover. The solo is actually much better than you'd expect for this style.

 

12. Echoing Green - You Won't Be Lonely

Synthpop.

 

13. The Blamed - Soldiers Under Command

Kind of punky (to be expected since it's a hardcore band covering them), but the most straightforward cover since Klank's. However, the forced screamy vocals are very irritating.

 

14. Aleixa - Makes Me Wanna ...

Industrial/electronic version with a heavy guitar backbone and (initially whispered) female vocals. Weirdly catchy and far more compositionally interesting than the Cricket cover.

 

15. Joe Christmas - (Waiting for) A Love That's Real

When this started the organ and acoustic guitar made me think it was going to be folksier than it ended up being. Mellow, acoustic indie singer/songwriter sort of stuff.

 

16. Fluffy featuring Ralph Melish- Honestly 

Definitely the weirdest track on here. Spoken-word (not sung) lyrics and guitar feedback/shredding over a background of ambient music. I know a lot of the covers are meant to be purposefully silly, but this is the only one that actually made me chuckle because of how absurd it was. Still would not listen again, though.

 

17. Marriage is Madness - Free

Purposefully amateurish/ultra lo-fi "cover." Easily the worst track on here, which is quite an accomplishment for a compilation full of stinkers.

18. (unlisted outro) 

Faux end-of-concert stage banter in a retarded British accent. 

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.