Forgotten Gems: Children-Hard Times Hanging at the End of the World

Kemado
2009

If you saw this CD sitting in discount bin would you give it a chance? Judging by the band's name and the album's art work it would be hard to pull the trigger right? It's certainly a vague looking affair. Even looking at some of the song titles would prove to be little help. "Advanced Mind Control"? "Nuclear Bummer"? "H.T.H.A.T.E.O.T.W" (or Hard Times Hangin...)? "Time Is The Living"? This could be anything. Given the fact that it was in the metal section, possible by mistake, it could have good or it could have ended up being a miserable failure. Since it was only a dollar, and I was feeling rather adventurous that day, I gave it a shot. The moment I put it in my CD player I knew I had stumbled upon something wonderful and unique. For all intensive purposes this is a mixture of stoner metal, thrash, psychedelic rock, prog. metal and NWOBHM. Imagine taking apart Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, The Sword and early Anthrax and then putting them back together into a modern metal band that utilizes psychedelic and progressive elements in their sound. The music is catchy as hell and moves like crazy between Judas Priest like twin guitars, progressive rock movements, stoner metal and thrash (especially in the vocals!). It isn't an album you can easily explain to someone and yet it's an album that you can easily get into! There are songs that are only two minutes or so in length ( "Hard Times Hangin...") and then there are tracks that are over 9 minutes long ("Time Is The Living" being one) so the album offers quite a bit to the adventures listener. If I had passed this album up because of the band's name (Children? Really?) or odd album art I would have missed out on a great new metal act. Since you can pick this one for dirt cheap online (Amazon has new copies of it for under $1.00!) how can you go wrong?