RECORDS

RECORDS

CHIRP OF THE BLUEBIRD

SLAYER

Reign in Blood

(DefJam/Geffen)

The first question that comes to mind is: Why? Why does this band bother to make new albums? Especially when they’re not a whole lot different from their old ones ...

Don’t get me wrong. I do like Slayer; I’ve got all their albums and I give a lot of time to each new one when it comes out. But it always comes back to this idea I seem to have that there’s never any real difference between each new one and the one that came before it. They do get faster every time, but that’s about it.

The biggest improvement on each new Slayer album is the production. This hasn’t changed; Reign In Blood has better sound than Hell Awaits, which has a better sound than Haunting The Chapel, which has a . .. Anyway, I think you get the picture.

Rick Rubin (of rap fame) did a damn fine job producing Slayer here, bringing out the best of their sound without diluting their energy or eliciting anything wimpy. (And, no, they don’t cover any Run-DMC numbers, thank you very much; although Tom Araya rapping “Kings Of Rock” might prove to be mighty interesting, boys and girls). Rubin’s most noticeable improvement is what seems to be a heavier, rounder bottom sound here than on previous records. As I said, Reign In Blood is the best sound Slayer’s yet recorded.

According to some bangers I know, though, this might not be such a good thing. Such insults as “wimpy,” “overproduced” and “Journey album” were tossed about by these folks, who quite possibly bought this record only because they wore out their copy of Hell Awaits. (The reader is invited to take the phrase “wore out” either literally or figuratively, as it works either way, if one gets my meaning).

As far as this record actually being any of those things, though, I don’t hear it. Reign In Blood is almost pure hardcore. If it weren’t for the dopey Satan lyrics and the band’s past work, I would hesitate to call it a heavy metal album.

In fact, when Slayer played the Ritz in New York recently, there were as many skinheads who came to see them as there were headbangers. In all honesty, the skins could’ve very well have been there for Agnostic Front, who were second on the bill. Whomever they came to see, though, they didn’t leave when Slayer came on.

An opinion: Slayer’s music seems to actually be dance music, in its own bizarre way. They are one of the absolute greatest bands to slam, mosh, and stagedive to, and Reign In Blood is no exception. In fact, it’s possibly the best one for that purpose, being that it is the fastest one yet. It’s just that I’m not sure about its intended purpose. Nor am I sure what Slayer is trying to accomplish. I’ve talked to them, I’ve interviewed them, and I’ve listened very hard to this record, and I’m more confused now than before. They do things like following a song called “Altar Of Sacrifice” with another that’s entitled “Jesus Saves.”

something about the oral fixation currently plaguing the thrash-metal counterculture, then this correspondent certainly doesn’t know what does. I prefer Fates Both of these records have sleeves which depict obese monsters with their mouths wide open, and if that doesn’t say Warning’s creature myself—kind of a big blue toad masquerading as a cafe; slimy, sure, but almost jolly-looking, though I suppose that’s part of the trap. Possessed’s beast (off their “new monster LP” the sticker says, except I first read that as “new Monster LP,” as if that was the name of the record) is too technological for my tastes—metallic, purple, all that stuff, with door-hinge jaws and a cargrate mouth and ye olde pentagrams on his forehead. One could infer from their respective record covers that Fates Warning (with no apostrophe in the “fates,” implying thereby action rather than, er, possession) draw on the past, and that Possessed draw on the future. And one would not be too incredibly off-base.

I’m relatively certain that they don’t take the Satan stuff seriously (and neither should you, boys and girls), but they do seem to be trying to make some kind of statement. But what that precisely is, I’m not sure. (Slayer fun fact #667: Tom Araya finds room on practically every song this band has ever written to sing something along the lines of “Hail, Satan,” yet he still considers himself to be a Catholic).

Anyway, the bottom line here is that Slayer is never a waste of time or money, as long as the record buyer knows what he or she is getting. In other words, if you like Slayer, buy this record. If you don’t, it probably won’t make you change your mind.

Paul “Doctor X” Nanna

POSSESSED

Beyond The Gates

(Combat)

FATES WARNING

Awaken The Guardian

(Metal Blade/Enigma)

Except that, in the dynamic world of heavy metal, these time-period distinctions don’t mean a whole lot. Fates Warning’s press kit talks about ’em “traveling through new hemispheres,” but the way they accomplish this is through the mega-futuristic realm of ancient mythology and classical symphonies, tales of Brave Ulysses dancing with banshees through Valhalla and battling Vikings on Mount Olympus, true space-cadet material, in concept album/ rock opera form like they’re reading a book whose storyline you wouldn’t be able to follow if they strapped you to a guillotine. I will note that this has been done before, and even before I heard the parts of “Guardian” that could pass for Kansas and all those “na-na-naaaa-na-na-na” ’s in “Prelude To Ruin” that bring to mind some Journey song, I was telling myself that back in the days before Metallica made classical music cool again, we used to have a word for this trash: Pretentious.

That said, I ought to add that I sort of like this record. Musically, parts of it strike me as pretty wonderful—I hear “Children Of The Grave” (groovy Black Sabbath song, youngster) in “The Sorcerers,” but then I also hear “Children Of The Grave” in “Call Me” by Blondie, and many people call me crazee. John Arch, Fates Warning’s vocalizer, has a swell aria/aviary post-Plant/Geddy sing-song, and he doesn’t screech much, which is considerate of him. (But then, the press kit calls Fates Warning “sensitive to the needs of others,” so I guess good manners are just one of their gimmicks.) And Steve Zimmerman’s drums crack into one of the most amazing nonRubin/Laswell-produced sounds this side of Kenny Aranoff, but that doesn’t stop the rest of the music from getting real tedious after awhile, and if I had to pay for the album I’m sure I wouldn’t say complimentary things about any of it.

Possessed’s promo sheet says they’ve got “a dark, driving sound that’s unique in death metal,” but that’s ridiculous—all death metal is dark and driving, guys! And that’s the rub: If I’d never heard Slayer or Venom, I’m sure Beyond The Gates would blow me away, but I have, and it doesn’t. There’s the same locomotive aura to the stuff, the same idiotsavant musicianship, the same frilly intros here and there, the same codified solos.

I appreciate how “The Beasts Of The Apocalypse” and “March To Die” swing to-and-fro, I welcome the slow sections of “Phantasm,” I enjoy the cymbalwork in “No Will To Live,” but I’ve got a feeling those are just the moments when my attention wandered from changing diapers or eating Grape Nut Flakes back to the record. “Restless Dead” even prompts thoughts of Celtic Frost’s nukerock, but so what? I have very little in common with the people who make this music, and maybe I’m jaded. I just put on Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and it jams.

Chuck Eddy

THE MEATMEN

Rock ’n’ Roll Juggernaut

(Caroline Records)

The “Meat-Crimes” continue and, in case you didn’t already know, there’s a whole Meatmen litany preceeding this “radical glycol-based blackgroove.”

Their first EP, Blood Sausage, laid the foundation: the caustic lambasting and general crucifixion of all tactfully spoken of in a solemn whisper or held very close to heart. What topics might these be, you ask? Well, gander at titles like “Glad I’m Not A Girl or “One Down Tree To Go” ... the latter being an exultantly gleeful ditty about one particularly dead Beatle, if you get my drift. Sausage was followed by an EP called Crippled Children Suck, w/ the title track being what some might refer to as a tasteless indictment of parents whose chemical abuse spawned their children’s deformity. This was quickly followed by the renowned We’re The Meatmen And You Suck album and the band’s first leap into musical and technical advancements w/ “Dutch Hercules.” To make the discography complete, there was also an errant track— “Meatmen Stomp”—on the Process Of Elimination compilation and last year’s highly successful War Of The Superbikes LP on Homestead Records (P.O. 570, Rockville Center, N.Y. 11571).

With historical titles like these, you can probably guess there ain’t nothing sacred to this merry troupe of “Men.” Nothing at all. But what’s more important about these “Five bees in the bonnet of the human race” is that they can rock out w/ the best of them: Judas Priest, Nazareth, Maiden and so on. Heck ... they can even out-do the best of flamenco or the oompah-pah of the hottest rumbling polka units—and they do! They go so far as to compete w/rappers and funksters from time to time. Yep, dey can do it cuz dey is a universally versatile bunch.

While most comedy-oriented bands lose their impact after a couple of spins, these future Las Vegas showroom musos go way beyond novelty status. OK, maybe they’re not an everyday affair, but they’re still worth chucking on the picnic: player every other day or so. And considering that they competently spank the hell out of their instruments (and everybody), you can’t begrudge them. It’s high time you grabbed hold of this rock ’n’ roll juggernaut now, before they become really, really big.

P.S.: While you're at it, send ’em three bucks and get their equally hilarious promo flexi-disk, that has actual commercials for the new record (Meatmerchandise, P.O. 25305, Washington, D.C. 20007).

Peter Davis

SKREWDRIVER

Blood And Honour

(Rock-o-Rama import)

So it was around Christmas ’84, see, and I’m on leave in London from the Signal Corps in Germany, and Martina steps into this second-hand place vicinity Portobello Road searching for quaint British threads, and she asks the lady how come all those skinhead boys down at the tube station at midnight in their Doc Marten boots and Ben Sherman staprests and close-cropped barbercuts are always acting so tough, and if they’re really as dangerous as they seem. "Don’t worry about them,” the storekeep assures me, mate. “They’re just a little ’ard 'cause they 'aven’t got any ’air.”

Nowadays these little heavy metal labels in the United States keep sending me new records by G.B.H. and Discharge and the Exploited, and I've never been one to judge music on its moral appropriateness, but I can’t help but be bugged and perplexed a bit. Oi was ludicrous the first time around, even compared to other Brit youth tribes, and that’s saying a lot. Here was a subculture, rooted in styles ripped off from black Rastas, that got its kicks starting race riots. All those National Front links didn't make skinheadism much more endearing, even if, like me, you heard The Good, The Bad And The 4 Skins and the Anti-Nowhere League’s We Are The League as a merrily pubworthy kind of dressed-down prole football-rock, a la Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noize.” What little good oi did sure doesn’t justify a revival, especially in a country where it never existed in the first place.

Skrewdriver was an oi band back before there was oi—sharing the Chiswick label with bands like Motorhead and the Count Bishops (neither of which sounded very different from them) back in 1977, they made R&B-based punk-rock with a puritan working-class attitude that directly conflicted with the radical politics of the Sex Pistols and Clash, with song titles like “You’re So Dumb’’ and “Anti-Social” and “Better Off Crazy,” plus Who and Stones covers. (They also earned a reputation as fascists, but that had less to do with their music than it did with interviews and such.) Now they’re making a comeback, and their new album (available from Kaiserstrasse 119, 5040 Bruhl, W. Germany, 02232-22584) suggests they’re aiming for the metalhead troops—there’s slower tempos, geologic chording, Gothic lettering and a viking with a bloody axe on the LP cover; all the crossover clues you’d expect.

“The Jewel In The Sea” rolls out of the barrel with a simple-but-hardy “Back In Black” riff, “Poland” starts like “Sweet Jane,” “Searching” has a ska/bluebeat root that could have placed it on the Clash’s BOC-producer Sandy Pedarlman-produced Give ’Em Enough Rope, “Open Up Your Eyes” is a soulish ballad thing, “I Know What I Want” is maybe Foreigner-meets-Bob Seger System, and it’s all real infective in a sleazy music-hall singalong sort of way. Also, none of it is terribly offensive—lotsa rah-rah patriotism, lotsa keep on keepin’ on, that’s about it.

Cockney-tongued Ian Stuart is trying to make a rightist anti-apathy statement when he snarls that “the enemies of this country are marching on our streets” and that you “gotta keep fightin’/gotta walk tall ... gotta hold on when your land’s at stake,” but he could be rallying Sandinistas, real fine by me. “When The Storm Breaks” says “Democracy will stand the test of time,” and I hope it does, “Prisoner Of Peace” is about a prisoner of Marxism I’d like to know more about, and "Poland” celebrates a solidarity I can certainly get behind.

Blood And Honour won’t make me shave my head, but it’s get-off-yer-buttand-do-something-important stuff that bruises. How many albums in your collection have sleeves that give thanks to a tattoo parlor, anyway?

Chuck Eddy