Unknown Soldier

Pretty cool write up about LA punk bands. I've always found it interesting the rivalry between LA and SF in music circles, right back from the psychedelic movement of the 1960s, the punk rivalry and most notably the metal differences in the 1980s.

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

The Punk that LA Forgot: Part VII

Well, I had to get around to them eventually, so I might as well get it out of the way...




There's something not dumb about this. On the one hand, this is some catchy, kickass punk, but on the other I can tell that these people know how to read. It's nothing to do with the lyrics (I'm not really paying attention to them as usual). There's just a maturity here. Whether it's the singers who remind me more of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon than Joe Strummer or Poly Styrene or the fact that they can drop a Chuck Berry influence that both sounds like Chuck Berry and actually fits into the song there's more to X than one might expect. I've heard that X could actually play, and were choosing simplicity rather than having it forced upon them, and even I can hear that there is more going on here than the same two dimensional punk of their peers. Being a structure retard I can't put my finger on it, but I could swear that under the guise of punk rock I'm listening to an album of well-put-together songs that someone other than a strungout art school dropout might be proud to make. This must be a bit of a tightrope walk to keep from sounding too cerebral, lest you lose your punk rock edge.

Damn. Last song "The World's a Mess, It's In My Kiss" definitely gives their skill away. Near the end there is a keyboard solo that is just brilliant. It's obviously no cro-mag pounding, yet it meshes perfectly with the punk riffing going on underneath. It's about as perfect an ending to an album as I've ever heard.

Well, that was bitchin'. Gonna have to check their next album out soon. Possibly tomorrow. Or I might just touch myself instead. I haven't decided.

__________________

The Batlord

You know, I always thought that at least the metal circles were kind of linked in the eighties. I mean, I never heard about a real rivalry between bands like Slayer, Dark Angel, Hirax, etc and Exodus, Testament, Death Angel, etc.

__________________

The Batlord

Helloween: Pink Bubbles Go Ape

After Jugulator I'm kind of interested in listening to some of those metal albums that have bad reputations for style reasons rather than just pure quality reasons. I've heard this and Helloween's next album, Chameleon, maligned many times over the years, but I've never gotten around to listening to them for myself. I hope it's all just small minded genre nazis bitching, cause I love Helloween and I'd be crushed if there were only two good Michael Kiske albums.




The intro is already just a bit too far into goofy territory. There we go. That's some nice ass kicking.

I've just listened to the whole thing and have started it again. If there's something wrong with this album is that it just doesn't seem as good as the previous two. There are plenty of decent songs but the best songs on here just aren't as good as "Futureworld" or "I Want Out". I don't know if the band was beginning to run out of steam or whether they were just having a hard time following up the Keeper of the Seven Keys albums. I have the feeling that this album is gonna be a grower, but it'll probably never replace Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II as my favorite Helloween album.

__________________

Unknown Soldier

I was actually referring to the LA glam scene and the SF thrash scene rivalry.

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Gavin B.

Besides the charismatic front couple of Exene and John Doe; X's guitarist Billy Zoom was a master of rockabilly guitar and played with the talented L.A. roots music group, the Alligators, long before joining X. You can hear h a lot more of Zoom's rockabilly style of playing on X's roots music influenced second album, Wild Gift.

Billy Zoom was in his 40s when he joined X and began playing guitar professionally in the mid-1960s in various soul music and country and western bands in the Midwest before he landed in L.A. and formed the Alligators.

The members of X were far and away the most gifted musicians associated with the L.A.'s early punk scene.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

The Batlord

Ah. Well, I don't know that their differences had so much to do with location, and more to do with the thrash guys wanting to stick the glamsters heads on spikes. I remember a thrash documentary I saw a few years ago where Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel, Death, Strapping Young Lad) was sort of half joking that they were pissed at the "poseurs" because they would steal their girlfriends, and then the thrash dudes would go and wail on a few.

I was vaguely aware of this. And I'm definitely looking forward to listening to their second album at some point. I can definitely hear that they were building to something. They play good punk, but the best moments on Los Angeles are definitely the ones where they stretch out and go weird.

__________________

The Batlord

Exhorder: Slaughter In the Vatican

I generally don't like to use this thread to talk about random metal since I've listened to so much of it over the years that reviewing another thrash/death/black metal band just doesn't interest me unless I can somehow make it interesting. But fuck it. I love thrash metal and I'm gonna do at least a few thrash metal reviews at some point, and I'm now in a thrash mood.




Exhorder are mainly famous for being the band that thrash snobs say Pantera ripped off. Considering that this album was released eight days before Cowboys from Hell I find that a rather dubious charge. Seriously. Eight days. Thrash metal fans are idiots.*

I guess you could say that this band has a sort of proto-groove metal sound that is vaguely Pantera-y, but other than that this band sounds absolutely nothing like them. This is straight-up, brutal, knuckle-dragging death thrash in the vein of Demolition Hammer or Devastation. No more, no less. The only thing that sets this band apart from the masses of such bands in the late eighties/early nineties are the groovy riffs. Exhorder have some truly badass breakdown riffs that are brutal as child abuse. Such moments rely on a heaviness that is generally absent or at least underused in fast/loud rules style thrash metal. At times it actually reminds me of nineties hardcore such as Sick of It All or Madball.

Most of the song titles on this album are generic thrash song titles but "Anal Lust" is rather intriguing and I just have to look the lyrics up. This song is rather amusingly misogynistic. "Amusingly" because it is so over-the-top offensive and moronic that you can't take it seriously. Just take a gander at this poetry...

Gotta love lyrics that make Cannibal Corpse look like Bob Dylan.

This is probably one of the most intense, brutal thrash records I've ever heard. It really goes for the nuts and tears them off with serrated mandibles. It never gets too complex, it just crushes your brain into submission with the subtlety of baseball bat anesthesia. These guys just have an innate instinct for knowing just how to make the head bang that can't be taught. Sure everything is just a bit samey and the vocals are kinda shit, but the breakdowns add enough variety that I never get bored and I'm too far gone down the path of thrash metal to care about bad vocals. Besides, it's thrash. You want diversity, go listen to the Velvet Underground. Whenever I'm in the mood for the most brutal thrash metal possible it's gonna be Devastation's Idolatry, Morbid Saint's Spectrum of Death, and this album. Fuck the hell yeah!



*After this review I found out that this band and Phil Anselmo are all from New Orleans, so it's highly possible that Exhorder influenced Pantera, but calling it "ripping off" is ludicrous. You might as well say that Cryptopsy ripped off Death.

__________________

The Batlord

Exhorder: The Law

Since Exhorder only have one more album I figured that I'd finish them off. I hear that this is more of a groove metal album so here's hoping that it's a natural progression and not an attempt to cash in on Pantera's success.




Nah this still sounds like Exhorder. This is some nasty death/thrash, just with a heavier emphasis on groove. I'm not entirely thrilled with the production though. With this kind of sound they need a little more bottom end than this. Musically though I don't yet have anything to gripe over. Groove metal generally loses me because the heaviness usually comes at the expense of energy, but this album has no such problem. The sheer energy on display really makes this a tour-de-force of pure snarling viciousness. Badass.

Dude, a cover of "Into the Void". Covers usually are pretty hit-or-miss, but I'm hoping a band with a focus on heaviness will do it justice and not just make some lame thrash version of it.

Thankfully it's a pretty straight cover that goes by at the same tempo as the original. You could say that this cover is kind of redundant, but since it's "Into the Void" you'd have to really screw it up for it not to still rule, and this cover certainly does, although Exhorder's vocalist can't hold a candle to Ozzy on his own song. To be fair I'm sure that Ozzy would completely cock "I Am the Cross".

Exhorder have a serious talent for not filling their albums with filler. Both of their albums have been amazing from beginning to end. I don't yet know which one I prefer, but they are both classic fucking albums. They aren't exactly the most diverse or creative band on Earth, but I still would like to see what they would've done given a third album. Hopefully I would at least have a third Exhorder album to punish my ears with. These dudes are definitely criminally underrated.

P.S. "I Am the Cross" is one of the most headbang worthy thrash metal songs I've ever heard. True story.

__________________

The Batlord

Protector: Misanthropy EP

Moderator cut: image removed
I know what I said about not doing a bunch of random thrash metal bands that I just happen not to have listened to yet, but I'm still in the mood for some brutal thrash and there are still random thrash metal bands that I just happen to have not listened to yet. I remember listening to some album by this band a while back and thinking that it was cool. They seem to have a number of albums rather than the usual one or two common to death/thrash, so I'm gonna see what happens when one of these bands (possibly) evolves.
Moderator cut: image removed


Oh hell yeah. Subtlety is as foreign to this band as any other band of their ilk. This was released in eighty-seven so it was a few years older than a lot of other brutal thrash metal bands and it shows. This seems like the halfway point between the aforereviewed Necrovore and Morbid Saint. High energy, high savagery and as far as I can tell low song writing. But who the fuck cares?

Those blasbeats are almost pushing this into death metal. Not quite though, since the guitar screams Kreator, not to mention the vocals (not surprising considering they were from Germany and this was released a year after Pleasure to Kill).

This EP isn't really noteworthy for any kind of innovation, but the sheer energy with which it is played makes it a minor gem that has pleased me these last...twenty-two minutes and forty-six seconds. Recommended for people who aren't Trollheart.

__________________