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Witchfinder General’s - Death Penalty is, to me, the perfect post-Sabbath Doom/NWOBHM/rock lp. I doubt it’s any great revelation to most of you to hear this album praised, but if it is, I suggest you check it out immediately. Every song is a lean and streamlined power hit. With detuned, massive riffs, a GREAT drum sound (especially for ‘82), awesome musicianship all around, and soulful clear vocals. Lyrics are basically about one of two things:

1. Sex, Drugs (& Beer), Rock N Roll
2. Hunting witches in Medieval times

The combination of the powerful riffs and the hooks from the sung vocals is matched by few in their time - Maiden, Diamond Head (early), Angel Witch - but WFG have a much more pronounced Ozzy-era Sabbath influence mixed in with the classic NWOBHM sound. After a brief acoustic intro on Invisible Hate, the album opens up with a riff steeped in Iommi and Page’s style, a perfect balance of simplicity and flashiness. It’s got a feel good peace and love message, and ends with some pro-Beer statements before leading into the speed rock of Free Country, which extols the virtues of pretty much every drug except heroin (which it advises you steer clear of). If parents were pissed by Sweet Leaf and Snow Blind, they must have been mortified by this album. Of course if your mom ever saw the cover to this, which has a possible witch (topless), being killed by a priest and Witch Finders, she’d probably flip out on you. I mean maybe your mom wouldn’t care, but if she didn’t you probably wouldn’t be listening to music designed to piss off parents anyway.

My favorite jam on this one though is without a doubt the song named after the band, Witchfinder General. The opening riff is so dominating you have no choice but to give your full attention, much like the personality of the character found within it. The clear and well sung vocals are almost a little off-putting if you’re a stranger to the band’s sound, but they gel well and anyone who doesn’t mind a little singing will enjoy them for sure. The song actually details the troubles between the populace of a town and the local witch finder, changing voices in different sections, which is kind of cool I guess. In the end the Witchfinder General wins. The song probably has some parallels with modern authority figures but I really doubt a band that sang the line “Mushroom tea, a toke of weed/Amphetamine is real good speed” really thought it through that much.

This comes on Black, Clear, Red, and Blue. I’m not sure how many of each were made but 500+ would be a safe bet. I’m showing the vinyl instead of the sleeve because it’s not really SFW.

Metal Monday vol. 32: Metallica No Life Til Leather

There’s a new Metallica lp out this week. After sampling it, I’ve determined it sounds like Megadeth in their commercial heyday (’92-’95). Progressive pseudo thrash for the elderly and stupid. I mean at least they’re trying to be edgy again, but how edgy can these codgers really be at this point? You think Hammet even remembers doing session guitar on Septic Death songs? I don’t believe the line about this shit not being constructed in pro-tools either. Let’s face it these dudes haven’t pieced a song together before entering a studio with the tape rolling, since 2 decades ago.

Ah, their heyday though, what a triumph; and with the humblest of beginnings, covering unknown British bands at club shows in Nor Cal. When they had finally scraped together some tunes, the virtually unrecognizable early ‘Tallica lineup of Hetfield, Ulrich, Mustaine (lead guitar), and McGovney (bass) laid down the relatively legendary “No Life Til Leather” cassette. Basically NLTL is a mini album of NWOBHM emulation done as close to the real thing as possible, right down to Hetfield doing his best to imitate Sean Harris of Diamond Head’s sung vocal style. The vocal attack is endearingly shitty, almost as much so as Ulrich’s drumming, which we all know has improved marginally since this release, but only just. Actually, I’m sorry to say the only one with any kind of mastery of his role in the band seems to be, future Megadeth man Mustaine. At least his notorious attitude was justified. His guitar’s louder in the mix too. Can’t say I’m surprised.

No Life Til Leather doesn’t really mean much now as anything besides a footnote in a career, but it’s still way cooler to hear teenage Hetfield warble his way through Motorbreath than have to listen to most of this nu-autotuned-”heyyy-yeaaa” shit from this decade. You should know that anyway but w/e.

So what’s the story about Dave Mustaine and his dogs?

Feeling hazy and anemic today, and there’s something fucked up on my eyelid. Perfect to make today’s Metal Monday focused on Dream Death’s “Journey Into Mystery” lp. In my world, this is the best lp on New Renaissance records no contest, except for the licensed Bathory and Sepultura records they did. Oh Anne Boylan, you really fucking struck gold on this one.

Dream Death are probably one of the first bands to owe a serious debt to Celtic Frost in the USA, or for that matter anywhere I guess. This lp pretty much sounds like it could have come right from Tom Warrior, except that the vocals take a little more of a Slayer style bark/shout. The guitars are a gloriously treble-less grind, oozing riff after riff onto the doomy landscape of the music. Each song is a mini-epic the shortest running about 4 and a half minutes. Honestly there’s really nothing else I feel this record owes itself to nearly as much as To Megatherion. “Elder Race” is an absolute crushing steam-roller slow-mo track veers into explicit reptoid-lore a hundred times more insane than Axegrinder’s Rise Of The Serpent Men. Other tracks are about zombies, blood rituals, and other generally evil subjects. The album definitely sticks to a specific influence and formula, but still has enough touches that let is rise up as its own entity. Also of course, in the New Ren tradition, it has some great budget metal artwork. Observe: 

Going to steal an idea from Colin Tappe here and play the “My month in Records” game. Here’s all the “metal” (used loosely) that I bought during July (give or take a day or two). With links to applicable current auctions. Of course most was bought in stores.

Saint Vitus - s/t lp  -  Saint Vitus - Hallow’s Victim lp  -  Saint Vitus - Walking Dead E.P.

Metal monday vol. 29:   Phase one of Saint Vitus’ career (1979-1985) will probably always be overshadowed by their second phase, the Scott “Wino” Weinrich lps (1986-1990) as he’s become something like the godfather of doom-metal and stoner-rock in his aged state. But for me the band’s original lineup has something all their own, and is worth spending just as much time and money on.

Saint Vitus began originally under the name Tyrant with the following lineup: Scott Reagers - Vocals, Dave Chandler - Guitar, Mark Adams - Bass, Armando Acosta - Drums. It’s somewhat significant that they were (I assume) named after a 70’s era Judas Priest song because I think at this point in their career Saint Vitus/Tyrant owe as much of their sound to them as they do to Black Sabbath. The only known recording under the Tyrant name is a rehearsal tape from 1979 and after that the group was silent release-wise until 1984, well after the Saint Vitus name change. Saint Vitus’ s/t lp is actually kind of weird because it’s a metal/rock album released on, at the time, one of the world’s biggest punk/hardcore labels: Greg Ginn’s SST. Of course it was released in 1984, the same year that Black Flag started stretching out their songs, and Husker Du and the Minutemen released 2XLP concept albums, so maybe it wasn’t that weird. Either way this record set up the template that their Walking Dead 12″ E.P. and Hallows Victim lp would basically follow to a T the next year.

Scott Reager’s vocals immediately stand out from the rush of thick and hazy riffing. He has a soulful, clear, mid-range delivery that instantly brings to mind the vocals of Sean Harris the vocalist on Diamond Head’s classic Lightning to the Nations lp. It’s also not far off say, Zeeb Parkes of Witchfinder General. In other words it’s a clean singing style, but you’re not going to hear Halford or Dickenson style high-notes. Some people are bothered by this unabashedly classic metal style of singing, but I think it makes a great contrast for the rough and raw music it accompanies.

Where Saint Vitus is probably most known for their later period of lumbering, slow motion tracks like Born Too Late, I Bleed Black, and their insanely down-tempo take on Black Flag’s Thirsty and Miserable, Reagers era Vitus actually plays at a pretty fast clip, again betraying their Judas Priest influence. What makes them unique is that they’re obviously influenced by the fledgling punk movement of the time, and that they’re obviously a self taught band. They break as many classic rock rules as they follow. On the song Saint Vitus, they pile on hardcore type back-up shouts for the chorus. On the title track of Hallow’s Victim, Armando Acosta utilizes a mix of straight ahead punk drumming, and the kind of choppy, broken up beats that Fear drummer Spit Stix was known to employ.

The level of wah-wah abuse realized on these recordings by guitarist Dave Chandler is completely over the top, unhinged, and psychotic. When he goes into one of these fits it’s a total deconstruction of the typical “metal solo” where precision and masturbatory skill tend to be the order of the day. Instead you get sheets of phase shifting noise and washes of fuzz as his fingers grate against the frets and strings. It sounds like a man at war with his instrument. I might even go so far as to argue that Chandler could give Greg Ginn a run for his money, at least as far as sheer brutality goes.

On the whole then, these Reagers era Vitus records play like punked out classic rock, but as played by a band that were rockers first, and let punk sounds seep into their delivery, as opposed to the other way around (which I would say is more common).

Be sure to watch out for bootlegs of all of this stuff as unscrupulous jerks from Europe continue to exploit the Saint Vitus back catalog. Easy to tell an original press of their first lp because it has embossed letters. Beyond that look for blurry and dull looking sleeves, and be wary of sealed copies.

PS. I got a bunch of good auctions ending tonight, please check them out.

Metal Monday is back, and I want to make up for neglecting it lately.  This entire post stems from the fact that I’m selling an extra copy of the first Vio-lence lp “Eternal Nightmare”. Don’t be mad  I’m mentioning my own ebay auction here, I’ve been posting yours for 8 months! So, for some reason that I can’t figure out, Eternal Nightmare is now routinely selling for over $50. Who’s to say whether my copy will or not, but nevertheless, it’s a regular occurance. To me this reeks of ignorance on the part of the new crop of thrash-rockers taking the underground by storm, no doubt having been converted into metal maniacs by bands like Municiple Waste, Toxic Holocaust, and Merciless Death (uhhh, the new one not the old one), and maybe not totally aware of the many thrash classics that beat Vio-lence at their own game.

Vio-lence grew out of the fertile bay area scene in the mid-80’s, there’s a rehearsal demo from ‘86, but I believe their first real release is a promo recording that came free with some metal rag at the time for subscribers in ‘88. This had a couple of songs which were later recorded for their first proper lp Eternal Nightmare on Mechanic records which was a distributed imprint of MCA. So yes, in essence Vio-lence was on a major label. I can only imagine the look of horror on the faces of the A&R dept when they heard the finished recording for this album. I’m sure these geniuses thought they were going to get another Master of Puppets, or at least Peace Sells But Who’s Buying. Oh boy were they wrong. Now I can sort of  understand why you would want to bank on Vio-lence. There are definitely heavy riffs, and the songs work a variety of tempos that keep it from becoming the soundtrack to a narcoleptic episode. In addition the actual playing and exectution from the guitars is tight and some would even say technical. The drumming… well it’s lazy but so is Lars Ulrich. By far the most offensive aspect of Eternal Nightmare is the vocals of one Sean Killian, which I think are best described as yelping. Oh, how they yelp! They’re sort of falsetto, frequently off-time, and sometimes completely non-sensical, but ALWAYS yelping. They’re actually worse than the afformentioned ‘88 promo tape on Eternal Nightmare, which is something that I would say is unusual.Yet still, the love for Vio-lence persists to this day.

People wear shirts, bands do covers, and their guitarist Rob Flynn continues to look like a total buffoon in Machine Head. Rather than berating the folks who have turned this pile of stink into an in demand record (after all I’m selling it to make money), I’ve listed below 5 records that mine the same tech-thrash territory as Vio-lence, but with FAR better results, and of course, much better vocals.

1. Dark Angel - Leave Scars — There are 2 things I know. a) This has one of the 10 worst album covers ever. b) This is one of the greatest thrash albums ever recorded. Peep my previous write-up. Lost Classic status.
2. Forced Entry - Uncertain Future — Basically if you improved all the things that suck about Vio-lence you’d get this lp. Percise as hell, much harder vocals, some progressive mosh parts, and a killer drummer who is ready to go DEEP in the pocket. Sleeper hit.
3. Holy Terror - Mind Wars — I’ve made a post about Terror and Submission on here in the past, and that’s a great album. A really inventive combination of neo-classical Mercyful Fate style elements and heavy mid-period Kreator style thrash. Mind Wars ups the ante a lot. It’s a lot thrashier, but also more progressive. All the songs are extremely dense, and the vocals are top notch. The dude can sing or scream and sound convincing doing either one. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this phase of Holy Terror featured one of the guitarists from Agent Steele (the classic power metal band). Really does sound like a war in your mind.
4. Death Row - Raging Steel — Okay this is my only German pick, which maybe isn’t fair but feel free to argue. This is definitely their finest hour. Like a cleaned up early Kreator with lots of lyrics about fantasy and battle. Some campy but good neo-classical interludes, and awesomely retarded sleeve art. Lots of crunch and good production. Much better than their first lp, a little goofy, but a lot of fun. Btw anyone got the first lp w/ banned sleeve for trade?
5. Forbidden - Forbidden Evil — I have a special place in my heart for Forbidden. I picked the lp up on a whim once and played it a lot for a few months. This is the band Paul Bostaph (who later replaced Dave Lombardo in Slayer for about 10 years) got his start. For that reason the drumming is sickly detailed, and the guitars aren’t far behind. This one mixes a bit of Helloween power thrash with a lot of Exodus and Hell Awaits era Slayer. Rob Flynn of Violence actually did a little time in this band too. WELCOME TO THE CHURCH OF LIES.

 

Onslaught - Power From Hell is in some ways pretty advanced for 1985. This is the foundation that a lot of later Crust Metal and Death Metal were built upon. Released on Pusmort/Children of the Revolution originally, Power From Hell takes  a relatively extreme crossover style up for its time. There’s a good deal of COC, Discharge, and GBH in the mix here, but with heavy doses of Venom, early Slayer, Bathory, and Sodom. Onslaught were a UK band, and their influence on subsequent groups from the country, like Bolt Thrower, Hell Bastard, and Axegrinder is plainly evident, although the lyrical content, which is mainly of the demons/Satan/evil/Hell variety is totally different. I guess the main thing is that Onslaught were a little more ragged than your average Deathrash band of the day. Harder vocals, more chugging mosh riffs, and still a discernible musical connection to punk.

Of course a big reason this was snatched up by punk rockers is that it was on a punk label and had the Pushead endorsement which might have been a little more worthwhile before he was doing Cocobat CDs and weird action figures. I’d imagine for some people who picked this up, it was the first time they heard real down and dirty underground metal, and thus served as an adequate point of entry. Actually it’s worth mentioning that a lot of songs just rip off Venom and then add some chugging skank riffs to pad things out. Take for instance “DEATH METAL” not to be confused with Possessed’s song of the same name, and having very little in common sonically with the genre that subsequently took the same name. This one is basically a retread of Venom’s “Black Metal” (also very unlike what we call Black Metal now), right down to the the speed-rockin’ verse, and the ascending chorus with the repeated shouting of the song title. The reality of it is that early Venom really is only a degree or two off the first couple GBH lps anyway, which really must have primed this for punk consumption.

As you may have noticed this is a pressing on green vinyl out of an unknown number (probably a few hundred) and that combined with the Pushead label makes it fairly desirable.

…oh and 1 day left on these: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZtrem_two

Metal Mon. #26 is here.

Today I’ve got some tasty cross-over in the form of Sacrilege B.C.’s - Party With God. They’re still only my 2nd favorite Sacrilege, but this is a pretty awesome album ala Money Talks era-Cryptic Slaughter and Thrash Zone era DRI, with some Reign in Blood influence mixed in as well. A nice middle ground between hardcore and 80’s metal. Most of the songs are 2 or 3 minutes, so you won’t find any sort of Master Of Puppets epics on here, just full on thrashing, and speed. Party With God might be one of the Bay Area’s best kept secrets. It’s held in the highest regard by any metalhead past or present that you meet from there but it failed in making a sizable impact outside of that area. Maybe this was partly because it was on a punk label (Alchemy), which is also well known for doing Poison Idea’s ”War All The Time” (congrats too Cooch for just getting a test press), The Melvins “Gluey Porch Treatments”, RKL’s “Rock ‘N Roll Nightmare”, Neurosis’  Pain Of Mind, and lesser known gems like Parnoia’s “Many Faces” lp.

There’s not a whole lot to distinguish Sacrilege from the pack I guess, they’re strictly a genre band, but if you love the sound of a scooped Jackson guitar being abused by 16th note tremelo-picked riffs that cascade on top of eachother, Party With God has the cheap thrills you desire in spades; there’s plenty of stupidly nonsensical solos and dive bombs drenched in chorus too.  The predictably typical lyrics are shouted in a good monotone (no singing!), about the usual stuff - the devil, nuclear war, comic books. If you’re looking for a band that took thrashing to new heights, try a little record called Leave Scars, but if you’re cool with predictable, but endeeringly scrappy USA thrash here it is.

It’s the 25th Metal Monday which is sort of a milestonish number. The first real “Metal” song I consciously remember hearing was Metallica’s “Creeping Death”on the playground in the 5th grade. It was on the walkman of a fellow student who of course, had borrowed it from an older sibling. I remember being positively frightened and enthralled by it. This was for sure, the only song I’d ever heard with a backing chorus of voices chanting “Die…Die…Die…” over and over. It was menacing and heavy and strange from all the echoing. As a 20-something I eventually came back to the song when Ride The Lightning became the number one choice to play on repeat for computer lab all-nighters. I’m not sure how the other students took this, but they probably just kept listening to Dark Side of The Moon and The String Cheese Incident on their headphones.

Music For Nations of course had a deal with Megaforce to issue Creeping Death as a 12″ single in Europe adorned with cover art of an ominous fantasy landscape in greens and blues which was painted on the back of hundreds of denim jackets in the state of New Jersey alone. The 12″ was issued of a few different collectible colors, 3 of which I’ve linked here, which are fairly tough to find. The b-side of course is the original Garage Days Re-Visited E.P. with the fairly well known covers of Am I Evil (Diamondhead) and Blitzkrieg (by the band of the same name),  both middle school favorites of some of my friends.

Technically I should be listing this on a metal designated day, but somehow there’s never any copies for sale on Mondays, and I think a case can be made that Repulsion’s “Horrified” is basically an accidental hardcore record anyway. Repulsion were a band of metal heads in the wrong time and the wrong damn place - early 80’s Flint Michigan.  I really can’t think of a worse place to be in the USA then. These guys were born and bred metal heads, but they had punk and Hardcore sympathies so while they were following the progression of bands like Slayer, Possessed, Death, and Celtic Frost, they were also catching onto the extreme sounds of Discharge, Siege, C.O.C., NYC Mayhem,  and D.R.I., as well as the tasteless shock punk of G.G. Allin. Repulsion were ahead of their time because they could make the connection between something like Siege and something like Possessed. That the brutality and delivery were different, but still similar, and related to each other.

When they recorded their Horrified lp it was actually supposed to a be a demo called, Slaughter Of The Innocent. The idea was they would produce the best possible sounding demo they could with their entire current set list, and then use the recording to secure a record deal. Apparently tension ran high with the band and the studio engineer who not surprisingly, found their punk metal hybrid to be trash, and gave very little attention to detail during the session, but in the end I think that may help make this recording what it is (godly). The 2 guitars are panned hard right and hard left, the vocals are shouted hoarse and without any echo or sign of overdubbing, the drums are a blasting racket, and the bass… whata bass sound. Apparently there was some screw up when they were recording forcing the band to record a second track of bass over top of the other one which was too faint on most of the tracks, so it was decided it would be run direct into the board through a fuzz pedal. Easy on the ears it’s not. Saturated, blown out, and fucked up it certainly is, and it helps to cement the entire thing as a distorted “shit-fi” whirlwind of a recording. The style of recording alone sounds more hardcore than basically any of the bands Repulsion was influenced by. It’s abrasive even by today’s standards. The songs themselves are possibly the fastest recorded up to that point in time in metal, and are stripped to the bone for maximum speed potential. Only 3 even break the 2 minute mark and there’s not a high note or attempt at singing in sight. Repulsion may not have intended to be, but for all intents and purposes they were as hardcore as anyone else in 1985, or now.

Sadly, and not surprisingly this demo wasn’t exactly a hit with any labels. The band say they sent it everywhere, hoping to get some money to record what they saw as a proper album, and at best they were told, send a copy of the next demo. No one got it because they were all looking for another Slayer. The band dejected, depressed, and out of steam, fizzled later in the year. But like the zombies that adorned the very flyers they were billed on, Repulsion was soon exhumed from their own coffin… well kind of. Less than a year later Napalm Death had recorded their debut lp, and it became a novelty success in the UK. John Peel loved it, parents hated it, kids had to have it, and everyone was asking “where did you come up with this shit”. Pretty much the whole band credited Repulsion as one of their main influences and suddenly people were busy tracking down copies of their demos (some of which were issued under their previous name Genocide). When Carcass exploded onto the fledgling grind-core scene soon after there was no stopping things. Soon Carcass front man Jeff Walker had his own imprint subsidiary on Earache (who released Napalm Death and Carcass’ albums), and his first project was basically remixing the Slaughter of the Innocent demo and releasing it as the 18 song Horrified lp. Retribution. It was strictly for the diehard, but finally the planet had caught up to where Repulsion had been, and grind-core mania was on.So this is that original pressing released in ‘89 that I’ve linked. Since then its been issued a few different times. Most recently with a bonus lp containing most of the band’s other demos on Southern Lord that’s worth every cent if you’re unfamiliar.