Time to get back to your recommendations and requests, metal pickers! This one comes from Cicatrice, our newest expert on metal, and is in fact the only full album from a band who are now broken up, but who apparently put Chicago on the Thrash Metal map.
Act of God --- Znowhite --- 1988 (Roadracer)
Recommended by Cicatrice
Three things intrigue me about this band. One, the name. I like the sort of bastardisation of the old fairytale, makes it darker, you know? Although Snow White is a pretty dark story in the first place, but then, what would you expect from the Brothers Grimm? Of course, this was before ol’ Walt got his syrupy hands on it and made it all family friendly! But I digress. The second point of interest is that there’s a female singer, and that’s fairly rare in metal as a genre, never mind Thrash Metal. Thirdly, it’s their only album so it’s either going to be really good or really bad. Well, only one way to find out!
Interesting, almost neoclassical/progressive intro on guitar to “To the last breath”, then it bursts into life on riffing guitars and pounding drums with a rapid-fire vocal delivery from Nicole Lee, which at first put me off but it’s settling down now and it’s not bad. Bit too punky for my tastes though: very fast and sharp. Good guitar work from Ian Tafoya, though nothing as yet marks him out as a great guitarist or differentiates his playing from a thousand other thrash metal axemen. Not a bad start though, and the backing vocals in the chanted chorus are good. I would prefer if the song would maintain one tempo though; it goes from sort of mid-paced rocking to breakneck and back again. Bit off-putting. Oh there’s a very nice bit of shredding from Tafoya. Like it.
“Baptised by fire” starts off fast again, with a sort of shouted vocal from Nicole. She kind of reminds me of Siouxsie Sioux or Hazel O’Connor, not that I know many punk female vocalists. But this definitely sounds more on the punk end of the scale than metal. Still, at least I can clearly hear what she’s singing, which is more than I can often say for Tom Araya, for example. Meh, this is pretty basic. Bit too fast and frantic for me to take anything from it, though again cool solo.
Ok, well “Pure blood” slows down the tempo for once, with a heavy, grinding marching style … that then speeds up shortly after the track opens. Oh well. We’re only three tracks in but I can confidently predict I will not like the rest of this album, unless there’s a drastic change coming down the line, which I doubt. It’s too raw and too much on the border between metal and punk for me. Don’t enjoy that sort of thing. Mind you, we’re finally getting some sort of melody in “War machine”, and I sort of think I like this one. Puts me in mind of Tank or bits of Motorhead at times. “Thunderdome” has an into sample from, well, “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” and with its opening lines
”Two men enter/ One man leaves” I guess it’s based on the Mel Gibson movie, the third in the Mad Max trilogy and in my opinion very much the weakest. The track isn’t much better.
Shouted vocals and a fast guitar beat: it takes more than that to make a song for me. Next! That’s “Rest in peace”, which starts off with a sprinkly keyboard intro, sort of like a musical box maybe, and no doubt will shortly kick into … and there it goes. This is getting boring. What’s on telly? Ah be serious Troll! Okay, okay. Hey, that’s a half-decent melody there. Maybe we can begin to hope. Mind you, it’s still too fast for me (yeah yeah, I know! Go drink some cocoa, old man! Ain’t they gonna miss ya at the retirement home?) but a really nice smooth solo there near the end.
Big impressive drum intro to “Diseased bigotry” and it’s not half bad (never got that phrase: if something is not half bad then surely the other half IS bad? Not half!) but I don’t see myself revisiting this album again, sorry. “A soldier’s creed” has a more discernible rhythm and melody (yes yes, the M word again!) and rocks along nicely without screaming off the rails. Good guitar riff too. I suppose it should be noted that Scott Schafer IS the rhythm section here, playing both bass and drums. Impressive. I’m somewhat concerned that the closer is almost nine and a half minutes long though.
“Something wicked this way comes” (cool title) starts off with a very ominous, dark bass and acoustic guitar line, very sparse and minimal then a slow, chugging, Dioesque riff makes a really nice change and also conveys the sense of paranoia and claustrophobia engendered by Bradbury’s masterpiece of dark horror/fantasy. There are no vocals for nearly three minutes and thankfully when they do come in they’re discernible and relatively restrained. Also thankfully the slow, crunching tempo remains, as it really suits the song. Yeah, this is the best track on it by a country mile. Almost saves the album, but there’s just too much other what I would consider sub-par, derivative material going before it for me to give it a pass.
Oh, and of course they couldn’t resist flooring it for the last minute or so.
TRACKLISTING
1. To the last breath
2. Baptised by fire
3. Pure blood
4. War machine
5. Thunderdome
6. Rest in peace
7. Diseased bigotry
8. A soldier’s creed
9. Something wicked this way comes
Yeah I didn’t like this at all. I can understand how people would, in you’re into that sort of thing but for me it’s just too fast and punkish. Pity, cos I was expecting big things from this album (not sure why) but it’s let me down badly. On we go to the next then.