Chris Poland-Return to Metalopolis, 1990

This ten track all instrumental album from former Megadeth guitarist Chris Poland has a little bit of an odd story behind it. This album came out on Enigma records in late 1990. I remember reading an interview from spring of 1991 with Chris Poland. He said that around late 1989/early 1990 he was working on material with his brother who was a drummer. He had some rough instrumentals recorded and out of the blue he was contacted by Enigma records. He played his tapes for them and they offered him a contract. He had been planning on this music being songs with vocals, but had not hired a vocalist yet. He explained this to Enigma, but they said they wanted the music as an all instrumental album. Even though this wasn't his original artistic vision, it was a chance to release his music on a major label so of course he took it. He played all guitars and bass while his brother played drums. So what's the album like? Well, like I said it more like music in song structure rather than the normal guitar instrumentals that are on that type of album. It's certainly a blending of styles as I would say it's a mix of classic, speed and progressive metal. It doesn't sound much like Megadeth, but there are lots of pace changes, different tones and plenty of finger bending riffs. The music is closer to what he would later do in Damn the machine than it is to Megadeth. Still it's less jazzy and more metal than Damn the machine. I originally had this on cassette and wore out my tape because I played it so much. I picked it up on CD about ten year ago. It's a fairly unique album that stays active, draws you in and keeps going along. It is in print and runs about $11-13 new.

***On Sunday my supervisor at work passed away very unexpectedly. I don't know how much I will be writing this week because I need to go the viewing, the funeral and things at work will be extra busy this week. Right now I am still kind of in shock because it was so sudden and she was such a nice person and a great worker.