Annihilator - Triple Threat (2017)

There's a point at which a long-surviving band's live products just sort of blend together, and unfortunately with Annihilator that point arrived for me after the first two, because while Triple Threat's first disc does in fact represent the new Waters/Homma phase of the band, it's got some tunes that have already been staples of the past live albums. The production is passable, although I think the vocals are a bit too loud and they are the worst to appear to any of these live offerings to date. Also, tracks like "Set the World On Fire" that were never all that great to begin with just come across as sterile on the stage here, and the band often sounds a lot simpler than they really are, especially the disparity between the clean guitars and then the ragers when the distortion kicks on. As a live experience, I guess you had to be there, because this falls flat, it sounds too clear and clean and the punch doesn't have any viciousness to it. I think the only part that comes off unfiltered from the studio recordings might be a few of the leads, but they feel squirrely compared to the chunk and bulk of the rhythm guitars, bass and drums.

The track selection does have a few new cuts to it but overall seems inconsistent and not that exciting. On the other side, as much as an acoustic album would never be something I'd ever want Annihilator to produce, they have indeed done so with the second disc of this collection. Tracks are grabbed from all over their collection, and many of them are choices that were quite mediocre to begin with, and sadly in these cases the acoustic representations don't offer much of an improvement. Whether they're getting folksy, ballady or bluesy ("Bad Child") it just seems like such a pet project that Jeff might have been curious about, but I doubt the audience really asked for. Take something like "Stonewall" which was a decent thrash album when it released on Never, Neverland, the riffs do translate over to the acoustics, but the lyrics clearly seem a little out of place. Ironically, the vocals are decent through this, and he's not afraid to flex his pipes a little which he doesn't exactly do on the thrash albums he fronts.

All told, Triple Threat has very little Threat to it other than draining your wallet. Jeff Waters has always seemed like a pretty straight-up guy, tremendous thrash guitar player and I can't blame fans if they wanna hurl some money his way for this, but I think both sides could have been improved, with a better choice of live sets/mix, and then maybe a stronger suite of songs converted into acoustics. This shit is pretty risky and rarely works out, and although there is some novelty for Annihilator not having done something like the second disc before, his acoustic parts always work best as preludes to really epic, heavier thrash tracks...a whole disc of them watered down for the campfire is a failure to launch.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Metal (2007)

I get that it's supposed to be a 'profound' title, a reaffirmation for the band that they're just playing some good old metal, and that maybe you shouldn't label it, but so deep into the career of an exceptional thrash axeman like Jeff Waters, I come to expect that he will PROGRESS, and ADVANCE his sound, plumb the depths of his playing and come up with something genius. All this dumbing down and simplifying just doesn't fit the bill for me. Not that Metal is some idiotically basic thrash record, it partially feels like a cut and paste of its predecessor, Schizo Deluxe, but it comes across like the laziest form of pent up energy, like when you're watching your 100th Battle Royale on PPV and all that excitement and drama just isn't there anymore, it becomes a more obligatory and mechanical experience with no heart behind it.

Metal might as well be any pastiche of 90s thrash trends, there are moments here like some of the tough guy vocals and snarls in "Couple Suicide" where they are just aping Pantera, the James Hetfield style vocals are also all over the place. There are also a bunch of vocal lines here in tracks like "Army of One" where they almost feel a bit rappy, maybe like a mix of Mike Patton and Mike Muir. I guess you could say that parts of this album border on nu-metal or mall-core, but it's all dumb, with laughable lyrics and a singer that still has yet to register much of a distinct personality for himself. I know I sound like a broken record, but almost ALL the highlights of this disc are when Jeff Waters plays in his clinical, technical, choppy style ("Downright Demise"); those are the only moments in which my ears perk up and the album seems to slightly stretch its fingers from the mediocre mire in which it stagnates, to grasp something much more exciting and rare. And even in these spots, he does sound like he's just self-plagiarizing from a bunch of other riffs he's already written before, these just don't have the benefit of other choice elements like a Randy Rampage or Coburn Pharr vocal line.

It's professional, it's polished, it's punch enough for the crowds who just want to hear anything heavy and 'thrash' surviving into the 'oughts. Mike Mangini brings a lot of rumbling low end and energy that the songs don't even necessarily deserve, but the chameleon vocals and lack of really memorable hooks prevent this one from ever setting in. Quality is squarely between All For You and Schizo Deluxe and that's not exactly a compliment. Shouldn't the 'mid-life' crisis return to form album have happened by this point in Annihilator's career? It seemed like they were headed in that direction some records before this but it all fizzled out and broke on the rocky beach.

Verdict: Fail [4.75/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - All For You (2004)

To paraphrase the wizened philosophers known colloquially as 'Beavis and Butt-Head', "This sucks...but it sucks in, like, a new way." I was not one to expect that Annihilator, a band steadily on the rise again, if not knocking them out of the park, to suddenly take another left turn into landfill territory, but All For You had other plans. There are numerous examples through metal history of band's dropping a singer with some edge, some bite, some character, for a much more generic and 'safe' sounding front man, Zach Stevens taking over for Savatage comes to mind, and then losing a critical dimension to their sound. That's not to say these new singers lack talent or proficiency or their own, in fact I think Dave Padden hits certain howls and pitches on this album that had me ancitipating more, but in general his performance just takes the band's potential serrated edge and smooths it down to a butter knife level of danger, one that betrays the psychotic lyrics and thematic continuation of the Alice saga that the cover promises.

This is a weird one, though, because as I hinted, there are a few passages and riffs here that really work. I realize that for some this is the nadir of the Canadians' career, but I have to give at least some credit that they are attempting some sort of fresh sound while incorporating the semi-technical thrash elements that broke them onto the scene. "Dr. Psycho" has a few in there, for example, or "Demon Dance" with that really killer opening rhythm and then the strangely hypnotic way Padden's voice is layered over the rapid fire picking progressions. This is often accompanied by more dumb, obvious lyrics and a few really awkward, angry lines where Padden just sounds like any bar singer reared on Machine Head and Pantera with his intonations, but if you could cut away all the chaff from the tasty bits, you might have a few decent tunes, though probably less than you could count on one hand. 

I've already covered the worst songs elsewhere on The One EP, the oafish title track or the acoustic ballad itself which offers little more than a passably ear-worming chorus, but there is another awful ballad here called "Holding On", at which point the whole affair just becomes embarrassing. Another offender is "The Nightmare Factory", which has a few lines on which Padden seems to be emulating Jonathan Davis of Korn or a bit of Burton's harsher lines from Fear Factory. It really just feels like his experience with the heavy genre is all taken from the Ozzfest lineup, though the end of this tune does at least have one cool riff sequence. If you cut out these four tracks completely, and then corrected some of the vocal lines, this would not be down in the dregs of the Annihilator discography. 

Mike Mangini makes another appearance behind the kid here, and I feel he's a little under-used considering the estimable talents he would then bring into Dream Theater. The production is glossy-clear and that also saps a little of the violence out of the faster parts, but Jeff's clearly still got the riffs, and All For You always works best at its most manically paced. In fact, the album really lives and dies with his playing alone, on the non-ballad tracks, and unfortunately there is just not enough of it to overcome all the shortcomings, and it is often spoiled by a vocal line here or a goofy idea there. I didn't hate this one as much as King of the Kill or Remains, but it's understandable why it is held in such low regard and just another symptom of the band's shaky, inconsistent, decades-long career. I only wish a few of the better riffs here weren't put out to pasture, but saved for the right record.

Verdict: Fail [3.75/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - The One EP (2004)

The end of the Joe Comeau tenure in Annihilator was a bit of a disappointment; I thought Jeff finally had someone who really complemented his style (and vice versa), but just a few years after Waking the Fury we had a new vocalist in Dave Padden, and a new record en route, prefaced about a month earlier by The One enhanced EP, which is obviously intended to showcase the most commercial track the band had yet released. Yes, "The One", a total cheese ballad with laughable lyrics that comes off as some alt rock 90s band trying to write a hook in the vein of famous hard rocker ballads' from the decade before that. I guess you might dub this a "Silent Lucidity" for Annihilator, and to be fair, the chorus itself is slightly catchy, showcasing Dave's smooth, radio-friendly range which might be a bit of a shock to long time fans who heard this particular track before anything else on the EP or album...

Of course, you can also hear Padden's heavier vocals on the other tracks here, most notable the full-length title track which is knuckle-dragging chug-thrash with almost no effort whatsoever in its pursuit of an idea or chorus. This is really the dregs, one of the most boring cuts in the band's history, and when Dave hits his cleans for the chorus and bridge it just doesn't stick with me. Certainly when you look back at the history of this band and some of the ragers that they open album with, this is extremely out of place, and not in a good way. The non-album track, "Weapon X", which seems to liken the band to everyone's favorite Canadian mutant, is nothing to write home about with some cheesy, cliche lyrics, but it does at least pick up the pace and makes the new vocalist growl a lot more to earn his keep. That it's still so painfully average in a 90s groove/thrash way and still the best tune on the pure audio component of the release is trouble indeed for the album ahead.

As for the live video stuff, the music on "Alison Hell" and "Never, Neverland" still comes off pretty strong in that setting, and I'd say Padden actually comes off a lot better here than the new originals. Not that he can compare with his predecessors like Rampage or Pharr, but he clearly has a trained voice that can handle the screams and the more aggressive lines. He puts a bit of his own spin on things, but only to a reasonable level and with no disrespect. So sadly for me, the enhanced content was the best part of the release. "The One" is safe enough for your grandmother, but my gods is this whole thing a bummer after the potential explosiveness that was starting to snake back into the band's sound over the prior two full-lengths. 

Verdict: Fail [3.75/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - King of the Kill (1994)

King of the Kill seems to get a little bit of a break as a pivot back to form or a redemption from the miserable Set the World on Fire, but I find such to be a bit of critical doggerel, because this album is arguably even worse an offender than its predecessor, the one difference being that Jeff Waters has taken over the vocal duties himself. His style is largely comparable to Aaron Randall, don't get me wrong, with a little Randy Rampage in there since he knows what the crowd probably wants, but the delivery is thankfully superior to the third album and at least shows us all that he is capable of expressing these musical ideas into lyrics himself, without needing some third party to flop about like a fish drowning in air. Alas, the musical content of King of the Kill is so uneven and grasping at straws that there is just no saving it from sodden mediocrity, and it ends up sucking even worse.

1994. Thrash is dead. Or it's become Far Beyond Driven. Jeff Waters is still chipping away at the dream, but instead of taking what the band did best on Alice in Hell and Never, Neverland, he's alternating those thrash licks, which he can still play quite well, with an increasing number of acoustics, ballad-like songs which are instantly forgettable, dumb lyrics, lazy song titles, and detritus that often feels like he had been writing for another, more commercial rock band and then shoved that onto an Annihilator disc to stuff out some recording contract. How do you sign this band on the strength of prior releases, get submitted this shit and then actually pay money to send it to factory? For me to even take King of the Kill remotely seriously I would need to clip off at least 8-8 lame tracks like the goofy "Bad Child", "In the Blood", or "Speed" which feels like Jeff is channeling his inner Nuno Bettencourt except it's not actually catchy like Extreme was in their prime. There are also a number of thrash riffs here which sound like he was even dumbing that particular style down to a Black Album level, but again, not nearly as good as coming up with songs as the Bay Area boys were in that era.

The album is possibly the most polished in terms of production to what they had done at the time, but that only adds to its commercial crappiness, as it lacks that glorious mix of crisp mix and songcraft as they possessed in the 1989-1990 period. The bass actually sounds pretty loud and well performed, but it's all for naught. The guitars, while obviously quite competent, are a real letdown: the thrash riffs are uniformly unmemorable, the acoustics don't enchant like "Crystal Anne" once did, and the hard rock theatrics are lamentable. If I condensed this record down to two tracks, let's say "King of the Kill" itself and something like "21", and dressed those up with better ideas, then you might have a tolerable single's worth of material, but the rest of this is uninspired, lazy dreck that seems as if a weak Jett Waters solo album that was rebranded as Annihilator because, you know, branding. Don't get me wrong; I admire Waters' ability to boldly go forth and continue after a disaster such as this, but the stain remains.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Set the World on Fire (1993)

As steep of a dive as Set the World on Fire takes from the first two Annihilator albums, I think it's important to evaluate the world that this was being released into. Thrash metal as we knew it had really dried up, most of its royalty either disbanding or altering their sound to fit into a 90s landscape that was going Grunge, hip hop, Pantera groove metal or ducking off into more extreme territories, and to give the Canadians some credit, they always maintained at least some of the thrash and speed metal of their core sound. For whatever brief flights of adaptation Jeff Waters might take his band on, he's always been the riff-first sort of guy who is an essential anchor for the style, and Set the World on Fire is still foremost a thrash metal effort. But the writing is on the wall here in many ways...

First, the cool artwork from the first two records has been replaced by a photographic eyesore which looks like a failed attempt at mimicking Dark Angel's 3rd and 4th records. Sure, the grown up Alice has some thematic consistency with Alice in Hell and Never, Neverland, but it just doesn't present itself well, and the weird light filtering effect in the background make it look like someone scratched up the cover. This was the last Annihilator album I picked up a physical copy for, and that was only when I found a dirt cheap cassette in Boston for $3, I had already listened to the album at a friend's house and found it wanting, and I doubt I listened to that tape more than once or twice. The band was on its third singer in as many albums, Aaron Randall, and while I can't tell you that his voice is technically bad, and it made some sense after the style of the first two singers, he's got even cheesier emotes when he's barking out a lot of these lyrics, and it almost sounds like some hard rock transplant from a Skid Row or Badlands cover band crossing over into thrash metal. It can get awkward, to say the least.

Worse than either of these things, though, the songwriting had really slacked off here, as for every half decent track full of Waters' thrash riffs, you've got that 90s poisoning, sometimes in small places like the chorus of "Bats in the Belfry", others more blatant like "Snake in the Grass", which starts out like a shitty hair metal ballad and then goes for a groovy hard rock/metal like Jackyl! And then, I shit you not, this is followed up with "Phoenix Rising", a better song perhaps, but another ballad that sounds like they're trying to make a "November Rain". Cuts like "Set the World on Fire", "Knight Jumps Queen", the and the titular "Set the World on Fire" might possess a few dumb groove/thrash riffs, and parts of "Brain Dance" sound like it might have fit on Alice in Hell, but even even then Annihilator manages to cock it all up with Randall's super cheesy vocal lines and lyrics that are arguably even worse.

If I legit took all the better moments from this album, kicked out the vocalist, brought back Randy Rampage and whittled it all down to a 2-3 track EP, Set the World on Fire might have been a worthwhile follow-up to Never, Neverland, but it's just so bloated with goofy ideas and weaksauce attempts to 'fit in'...I mean listen to the end of "Brain Dance" when the vocals turn into a circus with the whole 'frying pan into the fire' cliche, total dumpster fire that ruins the few good ideas in that track. The bottom line, is that whenever Annihilator dips its toes onto the beach of 90s lameness from the security of the thrashing ocean behind it, the band pretty much sucks. And I don't know that Waters got the memo in time, because this album marks a decades-long descent into mediocrity, so deep into the shadow of that awesome potential of the debut that they were no longer visible.

Verdict: Fail [4.25/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Rest in Pain - Intense Tremor EP (1993)

If you look at some of the earlier Invasion Records releases, the focus was almost entirely on local death and grind, weighted towards the local German underground, but not entirely. You had EPs from Defleshed of Sweden, Fermenting Innards, Lunatic Invasion, Finland's Infera, and this little band of unknowns, Rest in Pain, who put out only this single EP and a couple of tracks on a split before calling it a day. Right from the get-go, you can tell this is not a band to take itself seriously, with the goofy Crumbsuckers-like cover art that looks like something you'd see from a crossover or grindcore band with a dash of comedy, and I think the band also had a sort of 'dress up' look to them similar to Pungent Stench, only with top hats...at least for promo pics, a notable contrast in aesthetics.

Intense Tremor is definitely death metal, with a quirky weirdness to it not unlike a Jumpin' Jesus or The Lemming Project. It's rough and chunky, with a production level equivalent to a solid studio demo, and lots of simple bass guitar breaks poking through the churning, semi-clinical rhythm guitars. I'll admit that the band seems hard-pressed to evoke memorable riffs, and bounces back and forth before more serious, solemn chords and then peppier moments which reveal a punk or hardcore influence, but they also try to pick up the pace into some faster grooves where they start to lose the plot and sound sloppy. In some tunes like "Organ Donation for a Hungry", they are approaching the chaos of Napalm Death grind, but again the drums, while intense, feel like a mess against the riffs. The vocalist does a guttural similar to Barney Greenway, but they'll use a bit of clean vocal and some more ominous, weird growls elsewhere.

Definitely a curious one, and there are some spots here or there where they seem to be digging their heels into that surgical sort of death metal with dissonant chords and grooves, but they just never perfect it into meaningful riffing, you don't get the evil tremolo riffs you'd love from OSDM. Potential? I can't tell you if they were onto something or not, this was pretty weak. So not all of these earlier works bore much fruit for Invasion...two of their other German acts, Fermenting Innards and Lunatic Invasion would go on to create some pretty damn good material, and the label overall would jump into the more popular emergent styles like melodic death or black metal, but Rest in Pain just had a little fun grinding and moshing and (I'm assuming) dissolved somewhere soon after 1994. 

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

Sentenced - Crimson (2000)

I absolutely LOATHED Crimson when it first dropped, I thought the band had pushed a little too far into the radio zone and neutered down even some of the elements that made Down and Frozen worth hearing, but in retrospect I might have overreaction just a smidgeon. Don't get me wrong, I still think this is by far the worst Sentenced album, and there isn't a single song here I ever feel any impulse to listen through, but I no longer feel the urge to throw it out the nearest window or onto a busy street where it will be ground up by tires into its trace elements. At the very best, the material here seems like it's a bunch of scraps left over from the previous, superior works, and then made a bit moodier due to the slightly darker vocals and duller riff selection.

I mean, if there's a Sentenced album that was written at the bottom of a bottle, this should be it? I don't think the style itself differs at all from what they'd been doing in the years leading to it, but every time I am expecting a catchier vocal hook or a tasteful, memorable little lick, I just get underwhelmed at the choices. It's a little more bluesy, and Ville is smoothing out his cleaner tones against the grain of his harsh vocal style, there is no doubt, but even where they try to pick up into something worthwhile like in "No More Beating As One", they can never quite stick the chorus landing. At best, you could take a handful of the stronger tunes like "Killing Me Killing You", "My Slowing Heart", or "With Bitterness and Joy" and make passable B-sides of them for a tune off Frozen. There's also just too much softness going on here, too many parts where they go for the cleaner, banal guitars that don't even have the stronger glinting riffs like they did in the past. 

Nothing here reeks of anything resembling creativity, it's just more of the same, just meant to help open the audience up a little more, but doesn't attempt to do so with the necessary good songs. But where I used to think it was offensively boring, these days I've warmed up to the point where I consider it simply 'weak', the album in their catalog I'm guaranteed to avoid, with not a single track making it onto any career playlist. That said, if you and your girlfriend picked me up and had this blaring out of the stereo on our way to some destination, I wouldn't strangle you from the backseat. We'd all make it safely to the party...because Crimson is safe, uninspired, and unremarkable in every way.

Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]

Deathlike Silence - Saturday Night Evil (2009)

Having a band name in common with the notorious Norwegian black metal label was probably ill-advised around the time that this Finnish Goth metal act was active, not because there is some ownership of the phrase, but rather that you'd just want to avoid the comparisons or mockery they might manifest from the underground that you're still tangentially a part of. Then again, it's appropriate enough for a group using horror themes, and in facts its those themes, the cinema poster style album cover and promise of some 'grave digger metal' that drew me to check this out. Could it evoke some 'Jack the Ripper'? Burke and Hair? From Hell? In fact the group tackles a pretty wide net of horror subjects including Lovecraft ("Dagon"), and of all things includes a Mike Oldfield cover ("Midnight Shadow"), so Saturday Night Evil at least had my attention up front...

Unfortunately, it wasn't able to HOLD that attention, because while the lyrics and artwork might try to capture the Gothic horror aesthetics, it's really just another of so many bands that sound like a less ambitious Nightwish, but without the hooks that made that group famous. The main focus here is on simple chugging patterns, glazed over with atmospheric synthesizers half-reminiscent of 80s AOR, and then the vocal charms of 'Ms. Maya', because in true gentlemanly British horror fashion, all of the band members go under a creepy 'Mr.' heaing...'Mr. Gehenna', 'Mr. Catafalque', 'Mr. Lethargy', that last one an all-too apt foreshadowing of his keyboard presence. Now, mind you, none of this stuff is really all that bad if you're just in the mood for un-challenging, inoffensive Gothic rock with chorus parts that quickly fade off and over the edge the memory hole. They also shift up the speed for a few numbers that feel more like power metal lite, and in those cases they let Maya flex a little, and Lethargy will throw in some organs or some more fun keyboard tones, sort of a Halloween-garbed alternative to what groups like Battle Beast have become.

Her vocals are actually nuanced and have a nice bite to them, they just aren't configured into the most memorable sequences, but I don't mind listening to her. Another strength here is the lead guitarist, Mr. Cerberos, who injects some cool shredding into a number of the tracks that instantly elevates them beyond what they probably deserve. The tracks are split between the straight forward Gothic four-note chug patterns in moderate to slower pace, and then a few of the more upbeat songs that I mentioned, but there is just too little to get excited for. Now I've hardly been a connoisseur of this style, there were certainly a few albums I enjoyed by bands like Theater of Tragedy, Nightwish or Elis at one point in time, but I felt like it got too commonplace and an album like this is a symptom of such trendiness. The best I can say is that Deathlike Silence is professional-sounding, the singing is decent, the leads skilled, the lyrics passable, and the production is obviously very polished and presentable. It's not unpleasant...but that's the rub, this is HORROR metal, it's supposed to give me something unpleasant or unnerving...and these stock riffs, insipid chorus parts and the 'safety' of the whole thing really leaves me underwhelmed and unafraid.

Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]

http://www.deathlikesilence.com/ds/

Devastation - Violent Termination (1987)

For such a huge state, I always felt like the Texas thrash scene was rather on the small side through the 80s. Sure, there was Cowboys from Hell in 1990 which was one of the biggest albums ever, and then you had a few cool bands like Rigor Mortis, Watchtower , Gammacide, and Agony Column, but there was no California/Bay Area-level explosion; a lot of it was no doubt relegated to an underground of demo hopefuls. One other band that achieved a fairly high visibility, but then fizzled out with the genre was Devastation, who released two strong albums through Combat, and really seemed to hit with the fans of that more excessive, aggressive side of thrash metal circa Dark Angel or Morbid Saint. But before we can get to that good stuff, there was Violent Termination, an album that sounds right in line with their speed and lethality, but one so rough around the edges that most feel it should probably remain forgotten...

And I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment, I just think I've probably heard worse. This album definitely sounds like a clunker in which the band really hadn't learned to gel together yet, but there are some positives to it, like the raw, scrapyard production aesthetics that make the guitars sound like they are being played in a studio full of rusted barrels and abandoned sheet metal. The riffs themselves aren't even all that bad if you're a fan of the Slayer school of nasty speed, but they tend to get lost a little under the trash can drumming, the fat, burping bass-lines and the unfortunate vocals. To be clear, Rodney was the front man on all three of their albums, but they just don't have that explosive, splattered vibrancy that he would adopt on Signs of Life. They instead feel like dull barking, with lines that syllabically don't even match up with the riffs half the time. I can kind of hear the comparable tone in his timbre somewhere, but if anything, you'd have to give him a reward for the most improved member as the band, 3/4ths of which appear on all three of their albums.

Sometimes the amateur rawness on these old thrash albums had a lot of charm to it, like Sepultura or Sodom on their early releases, but Violent Termination is just too dull. The riff patterns are certainly identifiable as a vicious brand of thrash, but the way the vocals are slung together, and the rather awkward mix of the drums leech of them of some of that potential nastiness we love from this old shit. You can clearly hear some of those Slayer influences, or even some Celtic Frost on the grooves of "Syndrome of Terror", but a lot of the writing is bland and half-formed, the vocals a little too loud, and the guitars, which were at this point clearly the most energized and competent part of the band, just don't stick the landing on a lot of tracks. The leads are spurious and appropriately whip-like in tunes such as "Death is Calling", and I kind of like the raucous tone on the guitars, it gets me pumped up but then there is simply no payoff. The lyrics are also comparable to a lot of other bands at the time, so there's no real problem in that area.

Ultimately, though, Violent Termination winds up sounding like an overlong demo from the average thrash band which jams over in that garage on your street corner, and listens to all the right shit, but has yet to really forge its own worthwhile identity or master playing together. I don't want to be too hard on it, because we all know in hindsight that they were about to quickly meet those goals, but this one's very much skippable, even if you're in the market for some of the crudest, most 'real' thrash and speed metal from the old times.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

Ill Bill/Ghoul EP (2018)

I have not kept up with the horror rap or 'horrorcore' subgenre of hip hop since the concept was introduced to me by groups like Flatlinerz or the Gravediggaz back in the 90s, so artists like Necro or Ill Bill have been entirely off my radar, until I saw this amusing idea for a split between the latter and Creepsylvania's death/thrash champions Ghoul. It's not the sort of team up you experience every day, and the hope for me was that the two acts would integrate one another's styles and make this splattery looking collectible a memorable trip to gory excess and some streetwise badassery, but the fact is that couldn't be further from the truth...this is just two entirely different groups doing their own thing with little regard for how it matches up as a product with the other, and the result is all too lopsided and obviously not in the favor of the rapper...

Ill Bill's track (featuring 'Goretex', and really, every fucking hip hop track these days has to be a 'feature' of some sort) is basically a mix of El-P sounding lyrical flow with beats and atmosphere that sounds a lot like the Wu-Tang Clan. It starts out with a pretty cool sample, and the production also seems like it'll be decent, but after about a moment it loses its luster and the rhyming just feels repetitive. It does sort of give off a horror in tha hood vibe with the synthesizers and effects, but the lyrics don't really hone in on the subject all that much and so one wonders why nobody told him to make it a little scarier. On the other hand, Ghoul's contribution, "Splatterthrash 2: Thrash Damage", is quite an excellent and explosive tune with a lot of energy behind it, a good sense for melody and I'd run it up against any single song on their most recent album Dungeon Bastards. Gang shouts, thrashing, jerking rhythms and the tune utterly beats the rap into a bloody pulp and it's not even funny. You'd might as well thrown a Boyz II Men track on the A-side and it would have the same effect. 

Really, to make this work you'd have needed a pretty sinister sounding rap artist with a heavier cut, and maybe even some samples from Ghoul riffs or whatever. I appreciate that the two acts are friends or just mutual admirers and wanted to show their love for horror and splatter but it just feels like a gimmick. If this was a 7" with two great new Ghoul tracks I would have liked it infinitely more, but as it stands I can really only award most of the points here to the Creepsylvanians and hope that they'll toss this tune on the next full-length as a bonus track so most people can experience it in a superior environment.

Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]

http://www.creepsylvania.com/
https://illbill.bandcamp.com/

Helloween - Unarmed (2010)

I suppose I can give Helloween a little credit for holding off a quarter of a century into their career before slapping us with the lame, obligatory acoustic album, which I'm sure I've ranted on about before as a major pox within the hard rock and heavy metal scenes. To go a little further, the Germans didn't just decide to sit around and record your bland and typical 'campfire acoustic' sort or album, but to render a number of cuts throughout their career into soft rock tracks. Sure, you get the cleaner and milder guitars as expected, but there are beats, horns, and whatever the group can muster to make these heavy metal classics sound like they belonged on major lamestream radio channels in the 80s and 90s. There is always this tendency to feel like such adaptations help a band reveal its more touchy, feely, kid-friendly emotional side, but the real rub here is that Helloween has already possessed those qualities in spades, even when they were plugged in and cranked up in distorted bliss, howling and screaming along their brilliant, anthemic power metal.

So this is basically what Billy Joel, Meat Loaf or Miami Sound Machine might have sounded like recording a whole record of Helloween covers, but with Andi still singing. It just doesn't function on any appreciable level other than comedy that NOBODY ASKED FOR. The songs can't decide whether they want to really go for that lighter touch, or maintain the intensity, so you've got the drums still pounding along and very little of the mighty guitar power or momentum over them to matter. Hearing a sax solo in the center of "Dr. Stein" is goofy as all hell, or a version of "Future World" which sounds like its being performed for a Country jamboree warmup to a Christian Rock concert. Tunes like the throbby soft rock "If I Could Fly" and the folksy jig version of "Perfect Gentleman" lack all the punch required of those amazing riffs and choruses. Where they get really dramatic, like the purer piano balladry of this "Forever & One", it does seem a little more fitting as an alternate, but then "I Want Out" brings you back to the realization that this whole idea is unnecessary and unwated.

Just because you're a popular, veteran band with a bunch of record contracts doesn't mean you need to work yourself up to something like Unarmed. Just because you CAN, does not mean you SHOULD. I am not one to scoff entirely at every idea to trivialize and make heavy metal into an amusing form...if Helloween had sponsored, say, an 8-bit chip-tune covers album of their material, that might actually be awesome. But who needed this plastic pop rock castration? Find them and bring them forward, so we may stone or waterboard them or whatever torture seems appropriate that they relent. The bonus DVD with a couple videos, or the 1-2 tracks here that don't go completely belly-up in their translations just don't make up for all the rubbish you've got to rummage through to get to them. This nonsense makes Pink Bubbles Go Ape sound inspirational by comparison. Fortunately Helloween is such an excellent band on a normal basis that this doesn't really dull my perception of the band other than as some sort of unfortunate, ironic gag that didn't stick the landing.

Verdict: Fail [3.25/10]

https://www.helloween.org/

Rage - In Vain EP (1998)

The In Vain EP is part follow-up to the 1996 Lingua Mortis album, which featured the Germans playing alongside the Symphonic Orchestra Prague, and it features for my money a slightly better integration of the metal instruments and the sweeping bombast and dark overtures that come with that territory. There are actually three different editions of this one featuring three track-lists, starting with this "In Vain" orchestra version, and then usually a couple of live originals complemented by a cover tune. Personally I found this a bit foolish when you consider that you could have compressed them all down for a release that was under an hour, but I guess they were trying to push some sort of collectivity, and when you consider how prolific Rage had been through the 80s and 90s I guess such collectors might've existed.

At any rate, the vocals are still a bit disappointing here...he's better in the mix against the strings, drums and horns, but he still seems to strain a little with the longer notes, and he's doing it at higher registers here which can get a little awkward. The orchestra itself simmers, turning a lot of the subtleties of the metal originals into these harsher, Wagnerian swell-ups, and even in the calmer moments of "In Vain" itself it does sound quite lovely. Similar to Lingua Mortis, this has somewhat more of a live feeling to it and it's not your super polished studio attempt, but that actually gives it an organic feel that I quite liked. The live material on some of these EPs actually sounds half-decent, with the band having fun as it storms through "Higher than the Sky" and its cover of Metallica's "Motorbreath". That said, none of this is really a draw unto itself on such a short-form release.

I didn't even care for some of the covers like the Stones' "Paint it, Black" which I'd just heard too many times by that point in the mid-90s to really care when it wasn't the original. Ultimately this entire idea and release were drivel...from the kind of dull picture of the wolf's face which is then filtered to a different color for the various versions of the EP, and the really limited content. If you just took this version of the title track, through on the rest of the live songs and covers into one recording, I'd still find it mediocre and there is little chance in hell I'd have paid to import all the copies. It seems like a lazy way to cop a couple bucks from the band's audience which were all far better spent on the Rage studio albums or much of the rest of the burgeoning European power/heavy metal scene of the 90s. Skip it.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

http://www.rage-official.com/

Rage - My Way EP (2016)

The My Way Ep was released early in 2016 as both an advanced single for The Devil Strikes Again, and a presumed 'warmup' for Peavy's new power trio lineup with newcomers Marco Rodriguez and Vassilios Maniatopoulos. In a way it could be seen as a rebuilding of the band, not that Wagner has ever had much trouble choosing the right replacements for his roster but it can't always be easy to find that cohesion. This is one area in which I can say that the material here is a success, because the three play together seamlessly, so that it doesn't feel as if a beat had even been skipped. In particular I liked Marco's lead guitars, he's obviously not as maniacally gifted as Victor Smolki but he's got some chops and he executes his solos well so that they're often the most standout parts of the songs he's performing on. Drummer 'Lucky' is also pretty damn solid, maybe a bit more organic sounding with his rhythmic hammering than his last few predecessors.

So the lineup works, but the material on this EP leaves a lot to be desired. "My Way" is quite bland for a single, sounding a lot like the band's 90s material circa Black in Mind, but just not that memorable in terms of riff choices or chorus vocals. The first heavy guitar rhythm in the pre-verse sounds a lot like a sped up "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and I found that distracted, and while it seems like it's really going to pick up with the little acoustic segues and the more melodic chords it just doesn't ever hit a climactic point like so many of their earlier songs used to. This is also available in Spanish on the butt end of the EP, "Apuesto a Ganar", which isn't that unusual since Rage often includes non-English tracks on a lot of their short releases and bonus material, they've always cultivated a pretty international appeal. This might even sound better with the Spanish lyrics but it's just not enough to save the song from being rather average.

Rounding out the release, of course we've got to have some re-recordings of classic tracks with the new lineup. Both of these are from 1995's Black in Mind, which does make some sense since that's the sound they'd really be shooting for on The Devil Strikes Again. Neither of them really excels past the original incarnation. Perhaps they have a little more force behind them, which is easy to do when you've got the old version to compete with, but as more than a curiosity as to how the new lineup will sound in the live setting (competent, for sure), they don't have any value for me. I am well versed in the titular "Black in Mind" but "Sent by the Devil" was one I'd forgotten about, although it's not a bad tune either. For overall value this one just doesn't offer much, you can get "My Way" on the ensuing album, and unless you REALLY want to experience those re-recordings in a studio with this particular lineup, they don't offer anything too exciting beyond the knowledge that, hey, these new guys can play those old songs. It just doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me when the actual NEW track is so average.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

http://www.rage-official.com/

Six Feet Under - Nightmares of the Decomposed (2020)

Like most of you folks, I heard the first (or one of the first) singles off this record, "Zodiac", and was immediately taken aback at how poorly Chris Barnes' vocals sounded, and over such a miserable selection of riffs that shouldn't have made it past the band's own quality control despite the wealth of mediocrity they've produced since the 90s and his split with Cannibal Corpse. Now, how it got past Brian Slagel is a mystery we might never have answered, I'd like to think he stares at himself in the mirror and repeats, over and over, like a mantra 'It was only for the money...just the money." When I got around to finally listening to Nightmares of the Decomposed in its entirety, I was somewhat relieved that not all the material was quite so pathetic, at least on the riffing front. The cover art is pretty cheesy, but in a fun way it almost reminds me of something Primus might have done 25-30 years ago if they had been writing death metal instead of alterna-funk.

I think the main issue with this 17th (unbelievable!) studio effort is that we're clearly experiencing the nadir of Chris's throat-ational ability. Not like I was ever truly impressed by it, I'm more of a George Corpsegrinder guy, but clearly his presence was a huge factor on the success of those early Cannibal Corpse records and bringing a lot of fans into the genre. Here his throat sounds like it's decayed, or maybe congested from smoking too much of the good stuff that he's always been vocal about. Whether you put some kind of filter on that or not, it's quite obvious this is the worst album he's ever recorded with that particular instrument, and a huge setback. Whether it's something he can bounce back from or not we'll see, it wouldn't be the first time Six Feet Under has surprised me, like that time in 2012 when they actually wrote a really fun album called Undead.  But even when he sounds the most 'normal' here, the vox are truly lacking behind even the laziest riff selections that populate tunes like "Zodiac" and "Death Will Follow" with their humdrum groove metal and chugging.

On the other hand, tracks like the opener "Amputator" have a springy, evil old school selection of rhythm guitars which, with a better vocal performance, might have been pretty juicy. Jack Owen and Ray Suhy manage to keep it together, and it's even got an exciting lead. "Blood of the Zombie", a track which relies heavy on its creepy muting patterns, is also passable, and "Self Imposed Death Sentence" and "Dead Girls Don't Scream" also have some potential, with a few points where his vocals are almost at their usual painstakingly average. Wherever this album gets slower and groovier, it gets extremely dull, almost like they couldn't spend 10 minutes writing these fucking songs and just laid out the first patterns that came into mind. There are also a few inconsistencies with the mix on some of the songs where some sound to me a little thinner than others, and it overall lacks a level of polish to to the mix which might have smoothed out the reaction. Overall, there might be 3-4 tunes here that, with better production and entirely different vocals, could have passed for a reasonable death metal EP.

But let's be frank: since the anomalous, uncharacteristic Undead, 6FU's trajectory has been steadily downward. It took a few records to stink just like the old days, but once they dropped that Unburied EP in 2018, which was just chaff from the Undead and Unborn sessions, you could kind of tell that they back to the same old string of garbage that defined the band from around 1997-2010. Nightmares of the Decomposed feels like they were rolling down this slope and then just plummeted off a steep decline, an album worthy of trash like Warpath, Bringer of Blood and TRVE Carnage, another nail in the coffin of one of the most unshakeable, overrated musicians this genre has ever known. I think Chris himself sums it up best with the lyrics to track #8, if you'd like to do some digging yourself.

Verdict: Fail [3/10]

https://sixfeetunder.bandcamp.com/

Machine Head - The Black Procession EP (2011)

The Black Procession is a special issue 10" vinyl with three live tracks taken from the two studio albums before it, recording during their 2010 tour of the same name. One could probably forgive the scantness of its content, since like many Record Day releases, Machine Head probably just wanted to have something packaged up fresh for fans; a lot of these things are directly meant for the collectors' market, and here they chose to just sift through a couple tapes of their recent performances and make it easy. I do like how the cover artwork is consistent with The Blackening's classic, minimalist style, and two of the tracks are taken from the first of their albums I'd actually consider decent, but that's really all that I can say positive about the EP.

Though they don't sound terrible, the live mix here is a bit raw and suppressed, I felt like I was hearing it muffled through a tent at a festival...maybe if I was standing BEHIND the tent and they were on the other sides moshing it up with the crowd. You can still make out most of the instruments, but a lot of them just don't sound good. The vocals are not the best, but the backing vocals sound absolutely horrible. The leads are also kind of cheesy sounding and don't have the same impact that they do on the studio releases. Of the three tracks, "Bite the Bullet" probably comes off the most even, but since I don't like that song it's hardly some saving grace. And to be honest, the others don't do much justice to their own studio incarnations, so this is literally just some EP you'd want to file away in your record bin if you solely value its existence as a product that you can throw money at and add to another pile of similar products just to say you did.

And then when you end up having to switch houses, apartments, dorm rooms this all becomes a big fat burden to load up onto grandma's truck with all your rare wax and DJ equipment. That may or may not be true for you and your situation, but what is definitely true is this is a complete waste of time, even if it's just 17 minutes and change.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Through the Ashes of Empires (2003)

Before you've even heard a note of Through the Ashes of Empire you can already tell that some important change has been made. The title of the album is probably the best they've had, and the cover art leaves a more lasting impression with its haunting photographic effect. Perhaps some maturity has settled into this band, which had clearly not been struggling financially, but had been creatively bankrupt from the offset. After sitting through the actual content of the album, I'd concede that it's more thorough and ambitious than anything the band had released prior, with more of an ear for detail and at least some effort expended in assembling the songs together, tabulating a few more complex ideas than we'd heard from Robb Flynn across this project's backlog. All of this might seem like I'm setting up Machine Head for some glowing praise, but I assure you, I do not actually like Through the Ashes of Empire. It's not a good album, it's not even acceptable, but it's surely less shitty than the three leading up to it between 1997-2001.

Machine Head drops some of the nu metal influence (I said 'some', not all) and comes to the decision that it really misses sounding like the band it was originally created to sound like. Yes, Through the Ashes of Empires is a Pantera wannabe about 60-70% of the time. The guitar tone, and the way a lot of the riffs are structured sound like Dimebag left them on the cutting room floor during the Vulgar Display of Power sessions, with a few spare lines of other members' cocaine. Flynn's harsher vocals sound a hell of a lot like Anselmo, excepting for a different regional accent that lends a difference in natural intonation. This isn't to say that the Californians had suddenly dumped their other influences; you still get some of those childish, angry Jonathan Davis buildups, you get a lot of those ditzy little organic hip hop/Korn influences like the weird guitars in "Left Unfinished". There are some lead sequences which sound a lot like they're trying to pull a Kirk Hammett from the Black Album era, and there are still a WHOLE lot of shitty bro chorus parts which are still trying to tap into that good old All-American contemporary hard rock zeitgeist that bands like Godsmack, Creed, Silverchair, Fighters and Nickelback appeal to, or nowadays Five Finger Death Punch...

But the Pantera similarities definitely distract away from the rest, and so Through the Ashes of Empires feels like another album that was trying to be a composite of heavy music trends, playing it safe with some of the big names' inspiration entwined into the songwriting, and it just feels like they were trying to win over whatever 'metal' audience was left that looks no further than Pantera or Black Label Society when they're browsing through the record store for some new HARD SHIT. It's all dressed up pretty enough...there are lots of pinch harmonics thrown around to give the riffs a sense they have more dimension to them, or a few faster thrash parts that go more for a Cowboys From Hell vibe than Far Beyond Driven. I'd even say a few of the cooler moments on the album were some of the more unexpected, clean guitars that sadly cede to more boring groove metal riffs, or when they step outside a little further with "Elegy", which starts off with a chugging doom/sludge vibe and some more hypnotic, wasted vocals before also ruining itself. There were compulsions behind some of the ideas that end up here which were probably strong to begin with, but Robb and the boys just can't seem to stick the landing on any of them.

The lyrics are about 80% awful cliches about emotional disenfranchisement and other social issues, that like most rock is supposed to sound genuinely angry and connect with the day-to-day struggles of the mainstream rock crowd that expects little more from it, plenty of F-bombs added to create just the right blast radius of pedestrian rage. A lot of the clean chorus parts here are pretty elaborate, he was trying to stretch himself as a singer, so why then are so few of them even remotely catchy? I mean, I'll give Machine Head that this one doesn't sound so phoned-in as The More Things Change... or Supercharger, but why can't I remember a single song 15 minutes later? It's a whole lot of effort dumped into just not enough. There are single riffs on Vulgar Display of Power that are better than this entire album. There are single Vio-lence songs better than Machine Head's entire discography for that matter, but how the mighty have fallen. In the interest of fairness, I think if this had just been the album they put out after Burn My Eyes, a lot of cringe material could have been avoided, and it would seem a sensible evolution there, but that still doesn't make it an album I'd ever listen to again if I weren't committing to giving their catalog another chance.

Could it be a sign of better things to come?

Verdict: Fail [4.5/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Hellalive (2003)

Machine Head's first proper live album came about a decade into their career, more time than some superstars wait for sure, so one can't really hold their feet to the fire for wanting to get a substantial studio backlog behind them before trying to sell such a product. It features a pretty even distribution of material from the four albums they'd put out before it, but that just means almost all of it is going to be really, really bad. You've got your 'crowd pleasers' like "Old", "Ten Ton Hammer", "Take My Scars", and...okay, I'm sorry, I just can't keep a straight face while trying to type this sentence. Let's cut to the chase: Hellalive is a terrible live album, but it's terrible for its content, not AS a live album, if that makes any sense.

Technically, it's passable in most respects. The guitars and vocals are pretty level, and sound at least as good if not better than their studio counterparts on many riffs. They go for a more straightforward sound on stage, you can still make out some of the guitar effects and subtleties of the studio work but it hits much more like a blunt object. Although Robb is trying to represent the range of trite emotions he brings to the studio, he's a little dumbed down on the delivery through this set and that's actually a good thing. Apart from whisking off into some of his clean-cut jock chorus parts, he doesn't sound as laughable as he's done on a few of the albums. Then again, some of the drifty, dreamy melodic mouth breathing he does on tunes like "The Blood, The Sweat, the Tears" sounds a little dopey and it's on a part like that where you can hear more effects on the voices. The bass isn't quite as fat on stage here, so the tunes do lose a little bit of depth, but the drums make up for it with a little more fiery energy beneath them.

It's not a pure proper live set because a few songs are yanked from a second date in Germany and added here or substituted for the UK gig, but a lot of live albums do this and its all for presenting to the fans who want a more seamless listening experience and maybe cutting out a few awkward flaws. As live records go, this one does a fair representation for the band, I cannot imagine a longtime fan of Machine Head in 2003 putting this in the car stereo and feeling let down. They pound on you with a lot of their cheesy groove metal songs and leave enough space to get their emo on too. But I simply cannot reconcile with this shitty music, because I do not enjoy what I'm listening to. Is this a better experience than Supercharger, The Burning Red, or the More Things Change...? Yes. Does it bring hte pain? The siccness? If you're 11, yes. Is it worth checking out when there are literally tens of thousands of better albums and better bands across every niche of the metal spectrum? Hard no.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Supercharger (2001)

There's about a minute in the first proper song here, "Bulldozer", after the pointless and uninteresting "Declaration" intro has ended, where Machine Head breaks into what sounds like it could have been a half-tolerable thrash/hardcore riff section, and I'd love to say that it almost fooled me into thinking I might be in for a sea change from the two miserable full-length albums previous. But I gotta level with ya, I don't fucking trust this band at ALL to write anything of quality, so sure enough, within seconds, that same song unraveled into an unkempt amalgamation of Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and God Hates Us All era Slayer that reassures me that Supercharger is in no danger of breaking the stink-streak that preceded it.

I could say a couple positive things about the production. The way the guitars and vocals here are produced is a little bit more edgy and cutting than the last album, and Robb is settling into his multiple vocal stylings a little more with each album. Unfortunately, all of those stylings are really lame even by 2001 standards. His rapping has gotten a little more dextrous and sounds like an actual attempt at rap, perhaps, but then it's all about laying on the angst and the nu-metal rage, once again a mid-90s Jonathan Davis with far less personality, or a try-hard Mike Patton, and both the lyrical content and delivery feel shallow. What's worse, he's obviously going for those cliche radio rock chorus tones and patterns that feel like he's trying to get Machine Head recruited for an 'Army of One' ad on TV, like they're trying to peddle themselves as my friendly local neighborhood Godsmack, a band that I must apologize for my neck of the woods (Southern NH/Northern MA) ever producing to plague your ears. But, be real, it's not as if Flynn's goofiness is any better.

The annoying vocals would be one thing, but the vast majority of riffs here are just pathetic, yet again bouncing back and forth between a couple chords that require no imagination whatsoever, just to cling to the grooves that the fat bass tone is laying out, which sound good studio-wise, but are really just as awful once you dissect them. I'd say Supercharger is slightly more technical and dynamic than The Burning Red; you will come across a couple riffs that have a genuine energy flowing to them, and they use a lot more guitar effects like wah-wah sounds all over the place to make this sound like much more of an organized mess, but any attempt at validity is ruined by the shitty commercial radio vocals and the obnoxious pandering that this album constantly gets into. This is 'metal' by numbers, the lowest common denominator kind, trying to cash in on the audiences of emotional rock and angry wallet-chain Lollapaloser mosh. Any time any rhythmic maneuver comes close to engaging my brain, it's almost instantly shat upon by a quick morph into the tedium that I've described above.

It's very clear that Machine Head were trying to follow the Korn trajectory around the turn of the century, with a lot more soft atmospheric parts contrasting against bleaker emotional outbursts, and Robb was also trying to get a decisive, pointed delivery to his chorus parts that David of Disturbed always had ("Only the Names" is a textbook example of all this). But that's the problem, we already had those bands, and this one did absolutely nothing as well as any of them. Not that I'm asking you to listen to them instead, I could probably count the number of metal albums I enjoy on a single hand with a missing thumb, but this is just more also-ran rubbish that time will swallow up, even the fans of Machine Head's earlier output don't seem so enamored with this one, and it doesn't take a degree to understand why.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/

Machine Head - Take My Scars EP (1997)

Why does Japan get all the nice things? Alright, the adjective 'nice' is debatable when discussing any of Machine Head's garbage, but the point stands that in decades of musical obsession I've run across loads of albums and singles that are fattened up for sale over there. Granted, they pay a higher price than we do on a lot of these goods, but even for something as lowly as this EP you're getting a lot more content. Really, Take My Scars is more of a single, featuring the titular track off The More Things Change and then a B-side cover, a couple of demo tracks (oh boy!); but the Japanese edition also includes nearly a half hour of live material. Now, I couldn't tell you for the life of me who this would be for...I know the band was and likely remains within the 'Nu Metal Top 10', but was there really a huge market for copious maxi-singles from bands like Korn, Sepultura or Machine Head?

I've made my opinion on "Take My Scars" clear, it's a crappy nu-metal jam that sounds like it was strung together from the first few notes that popped up during a jam session, boring chords that do nothing other than emulate a primal hip hop groove with a little hardcore anger. That track is here in both a studio and live incarnation, and doesn't sound less awkward in either. I think the big draw on this would be the cover of Nirvana's "Negative Creep", which plays it pretty close to the original only adds a little fatter guitar tone. Robb's vocals are lower pitched than Cobain's, but he throws in a lot of wild screaming that almost make me wish he would just do that more often in his own band. In fact when listening to this it sounded a lot like another of the Seattle grunge bands, Tad, who I enjoy, covering Nirvana, and that alone makes it superior to all of Machine Head's original material here. The two demo tracks sound awful, nothing more than rougher cuts of what you hear on the radio and they don't improve anything except having that bridge to a more live atmosphere.

The five live cuts are from the band's limited two-album run at the time, and in terms of recording they do sound alright, provided you're already a fan of sub-mediocre music. It does sound a little messier, more pissed off and the hardcore parts on cuts like "Blood for Blood" sound even more hardcore and heavy in this context, so there is that to say for it. Of course if you aren't tracking down this very version of the EP then you won't hear those at all. Ultimate, Take My Scars isn't a product I'd recommend to anyone, but then again in general I wouldn't recommend any of their stuff, at least not for a big chunk of their career...let's explore further and hear if there are any diamonds in the rough.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://www.machinehead1.com/