Heavy metal covers of classical songs are a dime a dozen, and in the era of Youtube playthrough videos - where complete unknowns, often teenagers, credibly shred their way through one virtuosic metal classic after another - the market seems as unaccomodating as ever for yet another commercially released Beethoven rendition. But Exmortus approach their appreciation for classical music with an energy and showmanship that is often lost on the Yngwie clones who think it's enough to just show up and flex nuts.
Exmortus are touring early this year with a plethora of other old school-sounding young metal bands, including Enforcer, Cauldron and Warbringer.
Black Sabbath have had their fair share of rebounds over the years - need I mention their Ozzy-helmed 13 comeback being nominated for a Grammy? - but for my money none of their resurgences have been more overlooked by history than the post-RJ Dio album, Born Again.
Of all the metal bands living out that 1980's revivalist dream, 3 Inches of Blood seem to be weirdly divisive. I don't believe it's so much the fact that they choose to toil in the US power metal vein rather than the more acceptable thrash alternative... I think it's the shrill histrionics of singer Cam Pipes.
Oh, fuck off and grow a pair. How is this shit any different than what Warrel Dane was doing on those old Sanctuary albums? Then again there were plenty of people who refused to listen to Death back in the day due to Chuck's vox only to have to eat their words later, so there's no accounting for bad taste.
I've already reviewed this album over at Metal Injection, so I'll let that write up speak for itself. As I mentioned in the review, "Take Hold of the Night" was one of the highlights of Life's Blood, and I'm really on board with this retro 80's-metal movement in the US. Neo-thrash and Celtic Frost-influenced proto-black metal have been going strong for awhile now, so it's about time we cycle back even further and pick up on the trad / NWOBHM lineage. Widow is doing exactly that.
For whatever reason Scion A/V has been getting into the financing of a lot of metal-related studio recordings and music videos of late - the Melvins' The Bulls and the Bees EP being one of the most high profile - and it's to their largess that we're gifted with this new video from The Atlas Moth's An Ache for the Distance album. The Moth themselves are fortunate enough to be Profound Lore, whose every release seems to garner at least an 8.5 from Pitchfork, so we'll assume here that you're already an expert on the band and just want to peep some visuals:
Christian Mistress have catapulted right up there with Pentagram and St Vitus among the elite 70s-obsessed metal throwback bands. Possession is their second album and a quantum leap over their already-promising debut. There's a nice early 80s Metal Massacre comp vibe to "Pentagram and Crucifix" which takes me back a bit.
This comes out tomorrow so I'd better act like I'm on the ball and post it today. I think the album has probably already leaked but I haven't heard it yet because I'm a model citizen and don't want to end up like Kim Dotcom. From the sound of "Ghost Walking" I'm guessing it will be more of the same, although that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes bands deviate from their core sound and what you get is The Burning Red so be careful what you wish for.
Wow. I come back from a literal death-in-the-family weekend to this? It's almost like a cosmic set up, a profound joke only the doomed could understand. Although I have to confess that when I first heard that Metallica and Lou Reed were collaborating I never expected it to be much better than this half assed poetry slam backed with a monotonous, first draft guitar riff. For those of you that haven't been following the news, this project came together rather quickly... and it shows. Oh, does it show. This whole thing means about as much as the mannequin artwork above. Exactly nothing. The View by Lou Reed & Metallica
While it may be axiomatic that Iron Maiden are the shit today, back in 1988 they were primarily a cult band in the US: not even all US metal fans were on board. Even at the time, though, they were a smash hit in the UK, where "Can I Play With Madness" went to #3 on the British charts. Basically, the respect Maiden - and old school metal as a whole - have been getting Stateside over the past decade has been the birthright of groups like Maiden, Priest and Sabbath from time immemorial back in the UK. Maybe we're not as progressive as we like think.
Gonna wrap up the current slate of metal coverage with the last of the thrash heavyweights to release an album in 1990, Exodus. Much like Testament, Exodus had less than 18 months to simultaneously tour in support of a mid-career masterpiece - in this case Fabulous Disaster - and also pen / record a follow up... the better to underwrite yet another tour for.
Of all the thrash albums we've discussed so far, Impact is Imminent is unequivocably the most lackluster. One might be forgiven for thinking otherwise while watching the video for barnstormer "Objection Overruled", but a quick listen to the rest of the CD proves that the band pretty much shot their wad with that lone song. One further single, "The Lunatic Parade", was released to an even more tepid response before the label gave up on supporting the record altogether. Capitol Records gave them one more chance with 1992's Force of Habit - frankly an underrated and pretty convincing comeback - before public indifference and declining record sales led to the band breaking up for several years.
It's really not until you start getting to the second tier thrash bands of 1990 that the wear and tear starts to become apparent. Suicidal may have had a career year, but the rest of their not-ready-for-primetime brethren weren't faring so well. Testament was never a household name, but the previous year's Practice What You Preach found no fewer than three music videos gracing late night MTV, and the enhanced visibility garnered them a support slot on 1990's legendary Clash of the Titans tour with Slayer, Megadeth and (who else?) Suicidal Tendencies. The so called "Big Four" of thrash included Metallica and Anthrax in addition to Slayer and Megadeth, but the Clash of the Titans lineup made a pretty good case that if things were expanded to a "Big Six", ST and Testament would fill the vacant slots.
Though the band were still technically touring on the back of Practice What You Preach when the tour began, most considered the hasty follow up, Souls of Black, to be somewhat of a letdown. In hindsight it's a fine album, well executed and cleanly produced, but the lack of prep time obviously curtailed the band's ability to craft hooks with the same consistency they'd been used to.
And really that's the recurring theme of this beginning of the end for thrash: there wasn't a decline in popularity at this point - if anything 1990-1992 was a peak era for interest in thrash metal - but that popularity often resulted in rushed production schedules and a forced demand for quick product. The end result was a flurry of diminishing returns over the next few years which resulted in die hard fans tuning out, favoring instead the new trump card in extremity that the death metal bands were offering.
It should also be noted, however, that later in 1989 the influential late night MTV program "Headbanger's Ball" was cut from three hours to two; the heavier, less commercial bands were largely relegated to that third and final hour, so when it was 86'ed that left room for only a token handful of thrash videos per night... and it wasn't like true metal (as opposed to glam) was getting airplay outside the confines of "Headbanger's Ball". In an era when a lot of headbangers were farm belt kids who relied on MTV to sample new metal, that would turn out to be a fateful decision.
An important precursor(*) to later emo tropes in the metal genre, Suicidal Tendencies had been preaching to disaffected youth since their self titled debut - in more of a hardcore punk vein - in 1983, but by 1990 thrash had long since become the dominant strain in their crossover sound. Probably more than any other thrash band signed to a major label at the time, 1990's Lights... Camera... Revolution would mark the career apex of Suicidal Tendencies, a confluence of the swelling fan base the band had been building up over the years and a peak in media attention and airplay [1992's Art of Rebellion would achieve a higher Billboard placing than any previous album, but fan response to singles - save perhaps "Asleep at the Wheel" - was fairly tepid and the record was quickly forgotten by all but diehard fans].
To say that 1994's Suicidal for Life was poorly received would be an understatement. Considering the first four proper songs all had the word "fuck" in the title, it's no wonder that critics and aging fans alike considered the album juvenile and one dimensional. Suicidal Tendencies were dropped from Sony/Columbia afterward and have been self-releasing their own records to a dwindling core of die hard fans ever since. In all fairness, singer Mike Muir's recurring back problems have at times made tours few and far between, which has no doubt contributed to the band falling off the casual fan's radar.
(*) "Alone" from this same album would have made a better case for ST as an emo influence in the later genres of nu metal and metalcore, but in all honesty I have a harder time processing the self absorbed alienation in those types of tunes these days than I did when I was 16... so I stuck with one of their more inflammatory numbers, "You Can't Bring Me Down", even if the knee jerk defiance in this song isn't much more mature. Either way, the band were pretty gifted at incorporating compelling melody into their material, and Rocky George was always one of the more interesting lead guitar players in the genre.
Like Slayer, Anthrax was also attempting to rebound from a divisive album, but in their case it wasn't so much that State of Euphoria had divided fans as it was that fans almost universally considered it a mediocre follow up to their career peak, Among the Living. Unlike Slayer, however, Anthrax didn't change much, instead just taking a little more time to solidify compelling material and eschewing the occasional tongue-in-cheek lyrics of old in favor of more consistently addressing social ills this time out.
There are people who never really became big Anthrax fans until the John Bush era, but for those who are able to appreciate both lineups many would single out 1990's Persistence of Time as being either equal to or a close second with Among the Living as the peak of the band's artistic legacy. Anyway, to this day controversy reigns over who was the better singer, the embers no doubt being perpetually stoked by the revolving door at that position over the past 5+ years. John Bush has undoubtedly the better range, but it could be argued that Anthrax wrote the lion's share of their best material around Joey Belladonna's higher pitch.
Two years prior, Slayer had divided fans by following up their groundbreaking speed metal masterpiece Reign in Blood with a much slower, Sabbath-worshiping doom effort: South of Heaven. And so in 1990, they sought to bridge the gap between the old fans and the new by offering a little bit of both on that year's Seasons in the Abyss.
Titling the album after Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer, the common thread was that - much like the previous album - the members of Slayer had begun turning away from theological horrors and focusing on the hell right here on Earth, a lyrical conceit that continues to this day. Topics vary, but the most common themes are war, the corrupting influence of religion, and examinations into the minds of serial killers.
The track below, "War Ensemble", was the first cut on the album, and was obviously intended to reassure the older fans that they could still bring the thrash at a blistering pace when they wanted to. But elsewhere the cracks were filled in with more melodic, mid tempo songs, like the title cut "Seasons in the Abyss", which is catchy enough to be considered "radio friendly" if it weren't for the gore-intense lyrics. Bridging the gap, the classic "Dead Skin Mask" returns them to the languid pacing and atonal, ringing chords of South of Heaven. Altogether, Seasons in the Abyss is probably the most well-rounded of all the Slayer albums, though it's arguably only the 2nd or 3rd best.
1990 was a pivotal year for heavy metal. Thrash had already peaked, and was in the process of transitioning to death metal, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from the career peaks enjoyed by Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax and Suicidal Tendencies.
Megadeth's Rust in Peace is frequently recognized as the best metal album of 1990, and few would argue that Dave Mustaine & co. ("& co." being, of course, whatever hired hands are currently in the band) have managed to scale these heights in the 20 years since. It's interesting to note that, whereas Metallica later went through a long period of treacly counseling before emerging with the colossally misguided St. Anger, in 1990 Dave Mustaine had only recently finished a twelve step program of his own; yet Rust in Peace would emerge as the band's most focused, grounded album.
Dave Mustaine has always had a more conventional sense of thrash than his former bandmates in Metallica, so Rust isn't exactly a left field art rock opus, it doesn't dabble in prog metal, and hell, the lyrics aren't even personal enough to qualify as cathartic... basically what we have here is a relentless riff fest fueled by paranoid politics and conspiracy theory lyrics. New arrival Marty Friedman is widely considered the best of all the "hired gun" lead guitarists Mustaine has acquired over the years - to the point where many feel his departure in 1999 was the final straw for Megadeth's artistic integrity - and for good reason: Friedman's solos are some of the best ever heard in the metal genre, and it's obvious that the new competition has Mustaine feeling reinvigorated.
