#267 Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance

I've never done a Judas Priest review before, which is one of my more large-scale oversights, when it comes to my fairly unreconcilable quest to review all of the bands. In the name of remedying this, I've decided that today is the day. The album in particular I'm going to take a look at is Screaming for Vengeance; firstly because I regard it as one of my favourite Judas Priest albums, and secondly because I found it on vinyl for £1, which is far less than one should be willing to pay for a hefty slab of enjoyable early-eighties metal.

In 1982, I think I can safely assume that there was nothing quite like Judas Priest, in a time when Iron Maiden were only huge, and not quite enormous, and there weren't yet a dozen vocalists trying to sound like Rob Halford. What's also worth bearing in mind is that the band had already released seven albums before this one. You can think what you like about the band, but you have to concede they've got more mileage than a second hand space-probe - there are very few artists indeed to whom I can appeal to their seventh studio album with any real reverence. Another thing which is worth conceding is that, for an album which is more or less half way through the band's career, Screaming for Vengeance is unapologetically solid. While we're on the subject, it's probably worth mentioning, by way of a brief aside in the same context, that Painkiller exists. Vagueness over, Screaming For Vengeance is a very solid album indeed, albeit a hugely varied one. The energetic, frantic and extremely epic sounding, in the truest sense, music which is displayed in The Hellion/Electric Eye and to an equal extent on Riding on the Wind give way to the quintessentially 1980s sound of the album's cover song, (Take These) Chains, which the band give very much the sort of slightly cheesy, absurdly catchy quasi-metal track one might enjoy whilst playing Vice City, a game which many among my generation regard not so much as a digital experience, but as a bona fide time-machine to base our image of the 1980s upon. Likewise, tracks such as Pain and Pleasure very much combine swaggering rock with a touch of industrial, particularly with regard to the drums - a sound which you can certainly hear more strongly on records like Ram it Down, which really went to town with produced, electronic drum sound, and angular Lego-brick guitar parts.

It's sometimes a wonder, considering that no two songs on the record feel particularly like they belong together, that Screaming for Vengeance is enjoyable to listen to at all. Confusingly enough, however, it is. It very, very profoundly is. I'd go as far as saying there are few albums which are more enjoyable to listen to than Screaming for Vengeance. The fact is, the album is a very nice encapsulation of what makes me very strongly enjoy the music of the eighties in general; as a friend of mine once remarked; even the pop-music was secretly metal. The direct consequences of this is that even the songs which might be a bit of a concession to the main-stream sound really enjoyable, and while nothing quite soars through the air the way Electric Eye, Screaming for Vengeance, or indeed the album artwork itself does, the entire album manages, at a bare minimum, to be extremely catchy, and well-written at that, even when what was being written was not keen eyed, sharp taloned heavy metal. Of course, one can cast the variety of the album in a much more positive light too, not as something to overcome, but something to enjoy - there is literally nothing which this doesn't offer, in just about every level of mood and persuasion, and shining through the diverse record, the solid and enjoyably tangy guitar tone and unbelievably distinct and powerful vocals of Rob Halford. The vocals dominate every track, coping well with the albums variety of musical environments, and beyond that, stamping a very pronounced Judas Priest signature on every track. The drumming is reasonable too, but as time would show, the drummer wasn't a very nice fellow. 

Ultimately, Screaming for Vengeance is a fantastic buffet of what 1982 had to offer both in terms of metal, and musically in general. It would be foolish, however, to assume that this buffet was one which was arranged with no great care - it couldn't be further from the truth - Screaming for Vengeance is enjoyably cohesive, and a rewarding listen indeed. It comes as no surprise that the album is the favourite of many of the band's fans.

Fantastic Stuff - 9/10.

Links:
Judas Priest Official Site
Judas Priest on Facebook
Judas Priest on Metal Archives

#266 Krypts - Unending Degradation

If you pay attention to record labels, you'll eventually come to know a bit about their character, and what to expect from them. There are currently a couple of record labels which I trust to consistently sign and promote good bands, and one such label is Dark Descent Records. Finnish death-metal outfit Krypts are signed to Dark Descent, and consequently, my expectations of their début album were suitably high. Did the album meet my expectations? Well, due to the constraints of how I structure my reviews, you'll have to wait until the next paragraph to find out.

I've been mentioning album artwork more than I used to recently, and I see no reason to stop now. The music may be the most important aspect of an album, but artwork is something which I hold very dear, and good artwork can really be the cherry on top of an already great cake. I've definitely got a place in my heart more specifically for painted album art, especially, as is the case with this album, I can actually see the brush-strokes and texture of the painting if I look closely. Solid artwork often raises one's spirits before one even listens to the album at all, and I can safely say that when I first listened to the album the dark, uncrowded image gave me a real excitement for the music that was to come. Sometimes the artwork and music match one another really well, and this is certainly one of those albums; within seconds, the listener is engulfed in death metal which is rugged, dark, brooding and unapologetically old-school. Like many of their peers in the young old-school-death-metal scene, Krypts carry an atmosphere of real depth and magnitude - the chords and lead sections feel massive, with the haunted, groaning lead guitar especially lending a truly bleak, unforgiving and at times malign feel to the music. It feels like a triumphant and very much active dismissal of the hundreds of identical modern death-metal bands which still saturate the genre, and it's great to see young bands coming through the ranks, fiercely reconciling heaviness with tangible atmosphere, which is something which so many slam, brutal and technical bands know nothing of. 

Unending Degradation sounds ancient, akin to the sound track of a tomb laden with cobwebs spun by spiders who had themselves died before time itself began; like the foul breath of an aeons-old ghoul raising itself from some sarcophagus in a decrepit sepulchre. The mid-to-low tempo doomy sections of the record, in particular, have a very urgent feeling accompanying them - they feel like they are narrating events of some kind, which is something that I find a lot of music forgets to do nowadays - there aren't riffs for the sake of riffs in Unending Degradation, instead there are riffs here to make the song feel like it's lyrics, and to make the song sound the way it should. The whole record feels like it's been crafted in that way, with the music and lyrics created in tandem, as opposed to vocals merely being superimposed over the top. There is an all-pervading sense of flow in the album, and while the tracks do not overlap in terms of theme, the album really feels complete, which is something that the rising old-school death metal bands have been doing very well indeed. The album is also particularly dynamic and memorable; Bands such as Binah, I find greatly enjoyable, but much harder to listen to, and indeed harder to remember. Krypts are, by contrast very memorable in terms of riff-work and the infections melodies not only help to devour the sun with their eerie darkness, but are also infectiously memorable. It also doesn't hurt that the band are very open to utilise whatever genre they see fit, with the occasional Bolt Thrower style groove or doom-metal style section - often an intro - really making the album diverge nicely from being of uniform tempo and character.

Of the old-school death metal revival bands I've discovered thus far, I'd venture to say that Krypts have been among my favourites. Unending Degradation is the sort of album I'd recommend to anyone who claims to be a fan of death-metal in general, and I can safely say it's been one of the most pleasing death-metal albums I've listened to this year so far. As I've said before, I'm only beginning to truly appreciate death-metal, and bands like Krypts are definitely helping.

I'm going to give this 9/10.

Links:
Krypts on Bandcamp
Krypts on Metal Archives

#265 Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion

Look, it's not doom metal! You can come back now, oh portion of my readership who dislike doom!

From what I've heard over the years, Celtic frost formed the day after Hellhammer split up, which is speedy work to say the least. Indeed, the bands first EP, Morbid Tales, more or less picks up from the place where Hellhammer had marked with a chalk before concluding business. I've noticed that I have been listening to the band for quite a while now without giving them any attention in terms of reviews, and because Cold Lake doesn't exist on Youtube in it's entirety, I couldn't be a contrary bastard. Thus, To Mega Therion is the album I've chosen to take a look at, as it tends to take place as the band's magnum opus.

To Mega Therion has artwork which, without much controversy, can probably be placed among the top five-percent of album artwork ever. A horned creature using Jesus as a crossbow, accompanied by top-hatted somethings is, and always will be, among the most fantastically blasphemous things which metal has conjured. We have H. R. Giger to thank for that one. Musically, To Mega Therion was an interesting specimen for 1985, with it's sort-of-thrash, proto-black metal leanings no doubt sounding very alien to anyone who hadn't experienced Hellhammer, or at least, Morbid Tales. Certainly, I can imagine being puzzled by it if I listened to it for the first time when all I listened to was thrash. To Mega Therion manages to pack more power-chords per square inch than just about any other record of it's day, and is still relatively unique in it's sheer , overt riff usage. Riffs with next to no space between the chords really stand out as something which Tom G. Warrior really makes his own, with a hurried, frantic atmosphere as they rev and rumble along, frantically and hurriedly, as if they're about to miss the last bus home. The riffs are a hefty step up from the primitive work of Hellhammer, but at the same time, continue to carry an air of simplicity with them, albeit tighter and crafted with far more care - the riffs are angular, sharp, and more dynamic than much of what came before in the bands career. Likewise the drumming carries this standard too, with an equally frantic use of double-kick which has been almost never mimicked before or since. The production itself grants the drums a pleasingly organic clatter, and Tom G. Warrior's signature guitar tone certainly speaks for itself in terms of distinctness. Celtic Frost are, at the time of To Mega Therion, best described as one of those bands who don't sound like other bands.

Influential as Celtic Frost were to black-metal, I don't tend to buy theories that they were instrumental to its existence - The records don't bring much to the table that Hellhammer, Bathory and Venom didn't. In this manner, I tend to consign Celtic Frost in my mind to somewhere between the first and second waves of black-metal, chronologically as much as stylistically. Celtic Frost just exist, as opposed to feeling like part of a particular movement. In this, I don't at all suggest that Celtic Frost are uninteresting, merely that they feel apart from the rest of the tentative extreme metal scene of To Mega Therion's day. You can tell with regards to how the album sounds - the production and musicianship is markedly more tight and polished than that of Hellhammer, and it's fairly safe to say that the band didn't revel in rawness in the way that many of their distant peers did, which is something that many of their future records would go to demonstrate, for better or for worse. One impression that To Mega Therion gives very distinctly is a feeling of scale and ambition, something which was evident in some, seedling-like stage in Hellhammer's attempts to be grandiose, and have songs with some genuinely large scale, but is really delivered in a more mature form in this record - the Timpany, French-horn and occasional female vocals really illustrates that Celtic Frost were reaching up for higher degrees of scale than the vast majority of their peers, and it is perhaps this, more so than any of the more fundamental aspects of the music, which filtered through to more recent black-metal.

Based on personal experience, To Mega Therion is an album which takes a while to get into. For quite a long time, it was a complete mystery to me why it was considered the classic which, it now seems obvious to me, that it is. My words to the casual listener on the matter would certainly be that this is not an album which you can come to appreciate properly by listening to it just once. It takes a good half-dozen listens to do its magic. When it does, however, it's strong magic indeed.

This is a 9/10.

Links:
Celtic Frost Official Site
Celtic Frost on Metal Archives