Unknown Soldier

Album
I started the previous year’s listings with what I call bargain-basement grassroots metal courtesy of Manilla Road and this year yet again, it’s another American metal band from the bargain bin who were dishing out the type of metal that they wanted! The band were California based Cirith Ungol who were named of course after the infamous mountain pass in Middle-Earth, which of course was the home of Shelob and for any unanointed out there who didn’t know that, then you should really go and read some Tolkien! Now unlike Manilla Road who operated as a trio, Cirith Ungol were more designed along the lines of a say a prog band with five represented artists and principal amongst these artists was guitarist, synth player and general song writer Greg Lindstrom, who really had an ear for a tune. Cirith Ungol much like the aforementioned Manilla Road, had their musical influences as much in progressive rock as they did with what could now be called traditional hard rock and heavy metal. The band quite simply melded their musical influences together in the most practical way possible and towed the fantasy sword and sorcery metal line for what it was worth. Cirith Ungol on Frost and Fire produced one of those early underground metal sounding records, that would be influential on the soon to be extreme metal scene but the band usually garnered some really bad reviews, which were surely fuelled up by the band’s fondness to meander with their music and the atrocious sounding vocals of Tim Baker, in fact one review I once saw called them one of the worst bands in the history of metal! Nevertheless the band are usually seen as laying down the sound for the soon to arrive extreme metal scene and the bleaker sounds of bands like Celtic Frost, which is all quite strange really as their debut displays a largely uptempo and melodic sound, but I guess the vocal content could be deemed as being extremely bleak sounding. Album opener and title track “Frost and Fire” cuts right to the chase and sounds like a mini “2112” not that Rush fans would be all that impressed with my comparison! The album also contains pop sensibilities on songs like “What Does it Take” with its heavy melodic synth and there is the crunchy melodic hard rock of “Edge of a Knife” two songs mostly built around melody. But the best on the album comes in its b-movie sounding epics like “I’m Alive” “A Little Fire” the groovy sounding “Better Off Dead” and the 6 minute instrumental album closer “Maybe That’s Why”. Finally if this list were purely objective then Frost and Fire probably wouldn’t have made the ‘Top 20’ in terms of quality, as albums by the likes of Viva, Dark Star, Holocaust, Thin Lizzy and the Rods all probably had better claims here, but as this list is also very subjective meaning that personal taste counts, I’d sooner listen to Frost and Fire over those five albums on most days and the album much like those cult b-movies is a must for those that like this type of thing!

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