Blue Cheer-What doesn’t kill you...

Rainman
2007

Every band seems to come back at some point. Some come back and stay while others come, go and then return again. Blue Cheer do deserve the term “metal pioneers” and perhaps every “legendary”. They also probably choose a very good time to release their album in over a decade. I say that because stoner rock has been very big in recent years and there is little doubt that Blue Cheer have had a huge impact on that particular sub-genre of metal. At this point the band has two original members and one sort of long time members. Although it appears that former Raven/Pentagram drummer Joe Hasselvander is listed as having played on almost half of the album. The album is mixture in styles with more than half of the songs being of the heavy, fuzzy variety and others are more blues based. The results are also a bit mixed as well, but certainly it overall leans towards the positive. The band succeeds is being fairly heavy and somewhat engaging. Yet I can’t help feeling that the production is a little too smooth and several songs sound like they could have been done around 1986 and have almost a mainstream approach. However the bulk of the material leans more towards the layered style that the band perfected before I was born. A few tracks even remind me of Virginia’s Pentagram who always stated that Blue Cheer were a huge influence on them. So maybe Blue Cheer have borrowed from those who borrowed from them. All in all I enjoyed the album and although I may have been hoping for a little more I was still satisfied enough. It’s good to see a band still chugging along some fourty years after they started.



Myspace page below
http://www.myspace.com/bluecheer

Bob-Vinyl has reviewed this as well so go check out his views.
rnrnonsense