The Metal Underground

The Metal Underground

Tom Nordlie

Yeow! I haven’t yet gotten hold of their debut album Vivid, but I caught NYC’s Living Color at a club last weekend and they were astounding. Real heavy, real funky, unpredictable (they encored with the Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”), with chops, chops and more chops acquired from years of avant-jazz work and Lord knows what else. Living Colour have every mark of Big Success on ’em and could well kick the door in for other heavy-duty black rock ’n’ roll bands, an idea for which time seems poised.

Speaking of New York, they must show Addams Family reruns on too many channels up there ’cuz year after year, the Lurch-rock keeps a-comin’. I didn’t like the Honeymoon Killers’ Turn Me On (Buy Our, P.O. Box 363 Vauxhall, N.J. 07088) the first time through; thought it was too Cramped. But after a few more spins, the HKs’ approach to damp throbbing things proved itself to be considerably more head-splitting and widely-varied, with the only serious Cramps swipe being “Fingerlickin’.” This is a band and these are songs built around the almighty hardjerkin’ riff, an’ they got a mess of 'em here, cornin' down like wooden stakes on “Dolly w/A Dick” and “You Thrill Me,” bubblin’ up your leg on the surf-salivator “Octopussy,” or just collapsing inward on themselves as on “Das Dum Fuck,” which starts out somewhere in the middle of Pagey’s trademark “Dazed And Confused” violin-bow bit and then messes into this dirty pseudo-Wagnerian demolition opera. You can’t make out the lyrics 90% of the time; echo, wah-wah and feedback haunt the deserted streets of every song and “Choppin’ Mall” sounds like the Thamesmen (y’know, Spinal Tap) doing “Gimme Some Money” and the Yardbirds on heroin at the same time. It just don’t get much better than this after sunrise.

Vinnie Moore— Time Odyssey (Squawk/Polygram): Y’know what this whole neo-classical fusion thing is, don’t you? It’s bloated 70s “progressive rock” filtered through an ’80s radioprogramming sense—all the wanking in one-third the time. Vinnie “go” yes, go real fast, and once in awhile—“Morning Star,” “Beyond The Door”—he coughs up a theme in which his playing works without distracting. But c’mon pal, loosen up! Every note, every bend, every skeedleedldeedldeedleedW££££££££££££££££££££££ ascending triplet riff cribbed’ from Professor Malmsteen’s physics text sounds so friggin’ polite and planned out I started throwing banana peels at my speakers hoping to make Vin slip up and go WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE at an unexpected juncture. Lock ’im in a room for 10 years with nothing but a copy of “Bo Diddley” and we’ll see.

But for every highly-touted schmoo, there’s a dozen solid pickers like Rob Thorne and Glen Cruciani of Connecticut’s Sacred Oath who go unrecognized. The Oath’s (or can I call ’em the Sac?) debut LP, A Crystal Vision (Mercenary) gives the pair plenty of room to run dazzling, yet tastily-phrased harmony and call-and-response lines over ground staked out somewhere between Iron Maiden (especially Side 1) and Metallica. Solid riffcrafting throughout, but sometimes the words get too silly (not one, but two "ominous low-harmonized spoken-word overdubs”), and vocalist Thorne sounds real thin (maybe he’d prefer ethereal) when he hits those Halford-range notes. Production might fix that, but then again he sounds better when he’s yelling anyway.

MX Machine—Manic Panic (Restless): Too much of this is undifferentiated skatethrash (okay, they don’t actually sing about skateboarding, but it sure sounds like they do), but three tunes rule—a cover of Motorhead’s “Stay Clean,” “No Glam Fags” and “Fuck The Neighbors,” a nice sign-off salute for when the cops pull up at your party for the fourth time— “this road we take/lt is our destiny/lt leads right to your back door/Come out and smell our pee.” Stow the serious ideas about “S.D.I.” and “This Is No Drill,” dudes, stay stupid!

I really dug the old Bitch stuff like Be My Slave, because vocalist Betsy Bitch (it must have been hell going through childhood with that name) sounded like Pat Benatar singing all the stuff about bitin’ and beatin’ an’ ’brithmetic that I figured Pat really wanted to sing but couldn’t. But stymied by the PMRC, and such Bitch have changed their name to Betsy. Their music, too. On their “New Direction” LP Betsy (Metal Blade), the band’s own compositions are fairly sold heavy AOR-rock, but they oughta lose ooze-writer Bruce Turgon (Lou Gramm’s collaborator!) and his cohorts. Betsy’s voice sounds pretty strong, though, and while this one didn’t harden my arteries (heh) like before, they might loft a radio hit, given a little more time to readjust. If so, I wanna hear it with “Live For The Whip” on Two-fer Tuesday.

Led Zepplein—Fillmore West 1969 (Jester Productions—check your bootleg source): You hear so much about theway Led Zep “jelled” immediately on their first rehearsal, so it’s interesting to hear really early live Zep (this is April 27, 1969), when their improvisational tendencies weren’t as, er, refined. A good two-thirds of this double LP sounds like Jimmy was making the whole thing up on the spot— endless guitar/vocal duels«nd blues riffage. The band would sound way more organized in only a few months (see the 1969 BBC Broadcast), but Jesus, Robert Plant wails like the Last Banshee On Earth. Alright, so his delivery’s a little stiff and he can’t remember the words to “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” but when Percy digs into the screechy bits you can hear the very fabric of space torn asunder (which of course is the minimum standard of quality for any Led Zeppelin record). Includes many strange covers—Spirit’s “Fresh Garbage,” “I’m A Man,” “Here We Go ’Round The Mulberry Bush,” a few off Zep I and an instrumental jam. Not the best early live set, but dripping with historical/hysterical value. Too bad Robert didn’t get to keep that upper range.

Soul-Asylum—Hang Time (Twintone/A&M,): Half the people I talk to think this LP is not good because it doesn’t sound totally unfamiliar (ie. “original”), but me and the other half think Hang Time's exhilarating Zep /

Husker/Aero/Replacements riff-mulch and ragged harmonies are the best thing since sliced bread mold. Singer/guitarist/ instrumentalist/writer Davie Pirner (do they call this guy “the general?”) has the songwriting chops to take this band to the big leagues.

Operating on a more obvious version of the same principle, Youth Of Today’s We’re Not In This Alone (Caroline Records, 5 Crosby St. NY, NY 10013) sounds like the band assumed it’d be the only, or at least the first positive vegetarian hardcore record you’d ever hear. But it’s revved up so far that the usual collection of “think for yourself the way I say to” messages come across as well-revived, if not quite fresh. Like barker Ray 2 Day say no “s,” please on the opening “Flame Still Burns,” “We’ve heard it all before/And we’re ready for some more.” Alright!

Remember when the Bloom County comic strip had that contest to find a real band to make a Billy And The Boingers record? I never got around to submitting my entry (“Boingin', Boozin’, Bimbos And Beelzebub (That’s What I Like)”), but Mucky Pup did, and they won. So as if there could be a greater pinnacle in life, the ‘Pup has released Can’t You Take A Joke? (Torrid/Restless), which leans toward the Anthrax/S.O.D. axis but delivers plenty high-octane obnoxiosity and still occasionally shows brains, like on “A.I.D.S.,” a cynical but nonjudgmental look at a victim’s reaction— “How and why could this happen to me?!!!” You better believe that’s the first thing I’d be saying, too. Really chunky arrangements with some scratch effects and power-slam tempo changes. If the Beastie Boys where real men, they’d sound like this.

Mekong Delta—The Music Of Erich Zann (Steamhammer/SPV U.S.A. P.O. Box 152 Bellmore NY, 11710): Woooooooooooo, mystery! Mekong Delta is made up of dudes from other big German thrash bands, who are using pseudonyms to avoid contractual hassles. This is their second LP, a concept album of sorts (based on the ol’ reliable H.P. Lovecraft story), but the concept never gets fleshed out. There’s a lot of bitching about greed and the Reagan administration on Side 1 and then this cheesy Maiden-esque things about “Prophecy” and “Through the old window, overdimensional gate/ Zann gave his life at the final deluge” on Side 2.1 don’t get it either, but the music is great for the most part, really crunchy, kinetic, complex without being self-indulgent, with one number, “Interludium (Begging For Mercy),” that sounds kinda like flamenco horror-movie music and another one, “Epilogue,” featuring neat semi-operatic vocals a la Queen or the Police. Mekong Delta doesn’t really sound like anyone else (at least not for more than 15 seconds at a stretch) and while Erich Zann isn’t indispensable, it’s more original and well thought-out than 90% of the new metal I’ve been hearing. Definitely a bad to watch, whoever they are.

Well, that wraps it up for this month. As always, I’m eager to review anything oppressive, whether it’s your demo tape or the great lost Hendrix/Velvet Underground collaboration LP. Send ’em to Tom Nordlie, 5013 N.W. 16th PI. Gainesville, FL. 32605. See ya!