It's not gold or silver that I am referring to here, but more an idea that I have. In an earlier post I briefly mentioned all the albums I would see in the record stores, but of course there wasn't enough money to buy all of them. So I wonder if there is some album from years ago that is just a truly great metal album that got overlooked by reviewers due to being on a small label, lack of promotion or some other reason. Every time I get an album or cd that I never heard from say 91 and earlier, I think about this. Right before I start it up, I pause a second and wonder if this is the one that will make me ask "how did this band go overlooked?". Unfortunately, the majority of the time my reaction is more "Oh, I see why I never heard of these guys before". This idea of mine is not just an excuse to keep buying old cd's and albums either, well, that's not the whole reason anyway. I suppose this notion has more to do with just a belief that some average bands get big due to luck and really good some bands get overlooked due to other circumstances maybe even beyond their control.
The most recent candidate for lost gem was Malice. I almost bid on their first album a year or so ago, but it went for far too much. Then I saw a seller I have dealt with before selling their first one on cd for a fair price so I bought a copy. Malice did two albums on Atlantic, but never really made much headway. Now here it was before me, a twenty year old recording that I had never heard before. Could it be a lost gem that people had missed? I started my car as I was heading out to the store to get milk and a few other things only my main thought was seeing if Malice could be that lost gem. I popped the disc is and focused my ears in only to hear second rate Judas Priest, my heart sank. It was well played for what it was, but it was almost a note for note imitation. In recent years I have had a similar reaction as I heard Helstar, Cats in boots, the Rods, TNT, Heavy Pettin and various other 80's metal bands for the first time. All of them had some good points, but none of them came close to being a real lost gem. There are two bands that came close to being semi-gems at least. A year or so ago I won Hawk which is the band led by Doug Marks, you know the Metal Method guitar teacher guy who always had an ad in Hit Parader. I won that and decided to bid on a cd by Swedish band 220 Volt as well. I faintly remember hearing one song by them in the mid-80's and sort of remembered it was good. The cd's came and Hawk turned out to be like a kind of watered down Dio so then I put in 220 Volt. Nothing I hadn't heard before, but it was very good for what it was. Just a solid standard metal band with a real variety of different kinds of songs. They didn't exactly sound like any one band, but I would say that it is a fair guess that they liked the Scorpions, Priest and Saxon. I play it fairly often now and I went back and bought another one of their cd's which turned out to be just as good. The other band that came close is Cardinal Sin. I actually had heard one of their demos back around 1990. They were a thrash band originally from Puerto Rico, but then they moved to Boston with the hopes of making it big in the states. They were signed to Maze records in 1991, but the label went bankrupt before they could record an album. Apparently they did another demo after that, but broke up by 1993. Just last fall I saw they had a released an album that had both of their demos plus some live tracks and rough demo tracks. The live tracks are of terrible quality, but the songs from the demos and some of the other stuff are really good. Cardinal Sin sound not unlike Testement and Exodus so it was really refreshing last year to hear an old style thrash cd. Not exactly a gem and not completely lost because I had heard some of it before, but still closer than most of the other albums I mentioned. Maybe a lot of bands were overlooked simply because they weren't anything out of the ordinary. However, I can think of a few bands that were very good, but didn't get much notice. A list of those bands would include Executioner, At War, Zoetrope, Whiplash, Cyclone, Medieval and Holocross to name a few. Whiplash did get a little notice, but not until their first drummer breifly replaced Dave Lombardo in Slayer. Since I know these great bands existed, I have to believe there are still some other great 15-20 year old albums floating around out there waiting to be heard. The problem being that I might have to wade through a sea of mediocre albums to find that one treasure. Still I do have a list of bands I want to hear and this list includes such bands as Icon, Griffin, Cloven Hoof, Jaguar, Iron Angel, Pretty Maids and more. So maybe one of those or a band I have not even thought of will turn out to be that lost treasure. Have a happy Fourth of July!
Keep going, Mark. I never really thought much about Girlschool back in the day, but I never gave them much of a try. I got really into their videos lately when I saw them on Metal Mania on VH-1 Classic, and I did a fairly nice email interview with Jackie Chambers for my book. I hunted down their two-disc hits compilation and it's quite good, all the way through.
ReplyDeleteI immediately thought of Holocross and Whiplash when I started reading this post, but you covered them. I had a 220 Volt tape once; I can't remember if I liked it or not, though! TKO was one I always wanted to hear, just for that really offensive cover with the boxing glove coming at the naked's woman's vagina. I never went after it because I figured a band that needed to be that vulgar was possibly overcompensating. You never know.
I know you didn't like them much, but I always liked Killer Dwarfs. They weren't overly special but I thought they were fun and those videos were pretty funny. They're still around, too. Rough Cutt was another band that had a chance to break from all of the advertising, and I liked them a lot.
Joe Lynn Turner and I were talking about Smashed Gladys. Talk about an example of a big label letting one slip through the cracks. Elektra gave it a nice push then abandoned it. A lot of albums and band suffer the same fate today.
For me, it's so tough keeping on top of all the developments in today's market since many of the old bands are back, plus all the new bands are subdivided into different and confusing categories...it's a bitch staying on top of it all and I know some good bands elude my radar, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to say at the end of this cycle if I've missed something important or not, since there's three times the amount of new bands now than in the 80s.
Is "a solid standard metal band with a real variety of different kinds of songs" an oxymoron?
ReplyDeleteI finally listened to Cardinal Sin (or at least some of it). It was okay, but I can completely understand why they never went anywhere. If I had heard them in the late 80s, I might have been a little more receptive with speedmetal still being fresh enough that the bands only have to be good. But now, it just sounds like second or third rate stuff at a time when I only want to hear the first rate stuff. I'm not saying I only want to hear Metallica and Slayer, because I completely agree about Executioner, At War, Medieval, etc. Those were very good bands who just weren't able to capitalize on it for whatever reason. I still remember those bands fairly well. I think if I'd heard Cardinal Sin back then, I'd only remember the name now (if that). I just don't think they're special.