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REVIEW: W.A.S.P. – K.F.D. (1997, domestic and Japanese versions)

FLAMING TURDS

“Flaming Turds” artwork courtesy of SARCA at CAUGHT ME GAMING.  Thanks Sarca!

We continue with the WEEK OF FLAMING TURDS!  We’re looking at a collection of malodorous music.  Strike a match, you’ll need it for these stinkers!  This one smells like something went bad in that fridge….

W.A.S.P. – Kill.Fuck.Die (1997 Castle, 1997 Victor Japanese import)

W.A.S.P. sure started to suck in the 1990’s. 1995’s Still Not Black Enough was alright: It got the job done in putting new W.A.S.P. music on the shelves, though it was hard to find in stores.  Then Marilyn Manson came along, the new king of shock rock, and Blackie Lawless said “Hey!  I did that first!  I need to take back my throne.”  Caking on the makeup, he reconnected with erstwhile lead guitarist Chris Holmes.  Rather than playing to their collective strengths, the pair instead wrote and recorded an album of industrial rock that came off as a desperate attempt to be relevant.   The oh-so edgy album title Kill.Fuck.Die. had to be abbreviated to K.F.D.  The album packaging was clever in concept but crap in delivery.  A blurry picture of a fridge opens to reveal another blurry picture body parts and meat.  On the inside, yet another blurry picture of a pig carcass.  Go, 90’s!

Because this writer is a fucking OCD idiot, he owns both the domestic and Japanese versions of K.F.D.  This means I have all the different bonus tracks.  You get to read a one-stop review including all the tracks.  Good for you!

“K.F.D” sounds as if the band were playing in a shoe box full of stuffing.  W.A.S.P. are muffled, robbing them of the guitar excitement we’re used to.  Blackie’s voice is distant because…90’s.  As usual Stet Howland’s drumming is way too busy.  Fortunately the song has hooks, but who wants to run around singing “Kill!  Fuck!  Die!”?  Not this guy.  Sorry Blackie, but even as an angry young man I thought this was lame.

Skip the boring and monotonous “Take the Addiction”.  Do the same for “My Tortured Eyes”, a slow distorted drag of a song.  These tunes are necessary listening only for diehard Blackie fans who need to buy everything he burps and farts.  There are a couple good songs next, though the titles are pretty doltish:  “Killahead” and “Kill Your Pretty Face”.   The first is fast metal, but of course still with this annoying “industrial” production.  (I use the quotation marks because it’s really not industrial music per se…there are no interesting samples or loops to keep things moving.)  The second is a slow burn, that drags for a while before we finally get to the chorus, which is a good one at least.  Good enough to consider it a decent song.  “Fetus” is a waste of time, just a minute of screaming and noise.  It blends into “Little Death”, just noise trying to sound like Trent Reznor.  Wisely, the Japanese edited these two off, and included their own bonus track “Tokyo’s On Fire” in this spot.  Maybe “Little Death” could have been a good song if it wasn’t compressed and distorted into nonsense.  Thankfully they stuck to a rock production with “Tokyo’s On Fire”.  That does make it sound odd sitting in the middle of the album.  Suddenly, the music sounds alive, not strangled!  “Tokyo’s On Fire” sounds like W.A.S.P., not Marilyn-Trent Lawless!

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Another dumb title, “U”, masks an OK song.  The lyrics are pretty are pretty half-baked.  “U fuckin’ suck!” sings Blackie.  No wonder they didn’t include a lyric sheet in this baby.  Anger is a great emotion to express in rock music.  Get it out!  But “Kill yourself for me,” doesn’t cut it for lyrics.  Shock without purpose.  A molotov cocktail without a revolution.  It’s just shrapnel, nothing more.  “Wicked Love” is better, thankfully, with a good chorus and melody, but again the compressed guitars just underwhelm.  It would have been nice if Blackie had let the guitars sound like, you know, guitars.  The album closes out on “The Horror” which is way too long, and takes forever to go anywhere.  A good solid five minutes could have been trimmed from this coma-inducer.  It ends powerfully, but it’s basically just a reprise of “K.F.D.”.  So, if you consider “K.F.D.” and “The Horror” to be one song in two parts, and do the same for “Fetus” and “Little Death”, then…holy shit, Blackie only came up with nine new songs for this album, including the Japanese bonus track!

The aforementioned domestic CD packaging has two significant flaws.  One is that the cardboard fridge is hinged on a perforation, which usually tears after opening it too many times.   The other is that it is unfortunately not worth opening.  Keep the fridge closed, fans.

2/5 stars

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REVIEW: Crash Karma – Crash Karma (2010)

CRASH KARMA – Crash Karma (2010 E1 Entertainment)

I wrote a review for this album back in 2010, not so glowing.  For me, the album just sat there.  Even though Crash Karma are made up of members of some of my favourite Canadian bands from the 90’s wave of alterna-hard rock, nothing happened.  I did the review, gave it a middling review and forgot about it.

About six months later, I’ll be damned if the whole thing didn’t just suddenly “click” with me. Rethinking my position, I had to re-write my review.  I think Crash Karma works best after a few listens.

Crash Karma consist of Edwin (ex-I Mother Earth) on lead vocals, guitarist Mike Turner (ex-Our Lady Peace), drummer Jeff Burrows (The Tea Party), and someone named Amir Epstein on bass.  They combine some of the best elements of the bands that spawned them. At first I saw a another faceless post-grunge band rocking past their prime, but now I’m getting it a little more. To the contrary, it sounds like these guys have some ideas to get off their chests. Wracked with Mike Turner’s angular guitar riffage and some mature and pensive lyrics by Edwin, this album rocks. Edwin is singing better than he has in years, pushing the voice to the limits we remember from the heady I Mother Earth prime. Turner is rocking much harder than Our Lady Peace, and much more straightforwardly. Burrows, freed of The Tea Party’s exotic leanings, lays down hard fast fills, recorded expertly by Turner. The result is a collection of songs that combines some of the best elements from the original bands, mixed in with some latter-day Rush.  (Edwin is a veteran of Alex Lifeson’s Victor album.)

Best songs include IME-like “Like A Wave” (the opener), “Awake”, and the furious “Fight”. Another track I begrundingly like is “Lost”, a slow one that sounds a bit too close to Edwin’s solo hit “Alive”. The melodies and vibe are suspiciously alike. However there is no filler on this album. It works better as an album, a single piece, than individual songs. Rather than make a road CD with your favourites on it, this one works as a front-to-back listen.

I still don’t like the cover.  The punk dude makes it look like I’m buying something from fucking Simple Plan or Theory Of a Dead Man.  It’s not like the guys’ faces are all that recognizable, even in Canada. It’s a shame because this album just disappeared. I never heard the tracks on the radio and back in the early 90’s, these guys were the kings of radio. I rarely saw it in the stores, I never saw ads for these guys on tour. It seems that this album will appeal to dudes from the post grunge era, not so much for younger kids.  They did release a second album in 2013, called Rock Musique Deluxe (co-produced by Terry Brown) — but I have not heard it yet.  (Send me a copy, E1, and I’ll be happy to review it!)

Crash Karma:  great musicianship, great songs, very good album.   Check it out.

3.5/5 stars
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REVIEW: Ace Frehley – “Cherokee Boogie” (1996)

A little bonus review, part 5.5 in my series of Ace Frehley reviews!  Just a single track today.  Missed the last installment?  Click here!

ACE FREHLEY – – “Cherokee Boogie” (1996 Attic)

From Guitars That Rule the World, Vol 2: Smell the Fuzz – The Superstar Guitar Album!

I was a big fan of the first installment of the Guitars That Rule the World.  It had a really eclectic and diverse list of guitarists, including Zakk Wylde (doing chicken-pickin’ for the first time on record), Albert Collins, Richie Sambora, Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, and many others.  This volume (with a stupid cumbersome title) is geared more towards alternative artists such as Billy Corgan, J. Yuenger, and Kim Thayil.  There’s also John Christ of Danzig, Alex Lifeson, and Robert Fripp.  Hell even Billy Sheehan has a track, and he’s a bassist!  (But, you can already get the Lifeson and Sheehan tracks on albums by their side projects Victor and Niacin.)

CHEROKEE BOOGIE_0002To me this album is only worth buying for the brand new Ace Frehley track.  It’s an instrumental called “Cherokee Boogie”, and while it doesn’t boast too many particularly strong catchy melodies it is still the Ace.  Ace’s soloing is (as always) note perfect for the song.  The riff is quintessential Ace, thick and chunky, albeit not one of his best.  It’s still nice to hear his distinct Les Paul squeal on a new track.  I especially love when the song gets fast and thrashy just past the halfway mark.  At this point Ace is burning rubber, and it’s a real rush.

I’m not familiar with the backing musicians on this recording.  They are Saul Zonana (bass) and Phil Richford (drums).  They get the job done without getting in Ace’s way.

I would say that “Cherokee Boogie” would have made a strong instrumental interlude on any of Ace’s post-Kiss solo albums.  It’s 4:00 of solid rock guitar.

3.5/5 stars

Very poor audio on this

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Ignored Albums of the 1990’s: I liked ’em them…LeBrain’s List Part 6

Thanks for checking out my 88 underrated albums from the 1990’s that I believe deserved a second look.  There were a few albums that, had I written that series of articles in the 1990’s, would have made the list.  Today, they just don’t cut it.

Here’s a selection of albums that I felt were under-appreciated at that time.   Today, these very rarely get any play in my house.  The shine obviously wore off the apple.

Once again, this is alphabetical.

BIG WRECK – In Loving Memory Of…  (T-Rev teased me about it…it’s half decent, but only half)
BUSH – The Science of Things (good song: “The Chemicals Between Us”)
JERRY CANTRELL – Boggy Depot (Alice In Lite Chains)
CINDERELLA – Still Climbing (Never even upgraded to CD from cassette)
ALICE COOPER – A Fistful of Alice (Dunno…never play this anymore!  Good song: “Is Anyone Home?”)
EDWIN – Another Spin Around The Sun (Good song:  “Alive”. The rest? Suckiness.)
GEEZER – Black Science (only decent, certainly not great)
IOMMI – Iommi (too modern sounding, has some great tracks, but not enough)
MEGADETH – Cryptic Writings (T-Rev and I were into this big time! I can’t play it anymore)
METHODS OF MAYHEM – Methods of Mayhem (I fucking bought this one!)

MR. BIG – Hey Man (“Take Cover” is a good song…the rest I can barely remember)
ALDO NOVA – Blood On The Bricks (I’ll review this at a later date, just doesn’t cut it anymore)
NUNO (Bettencourt) – Schizophonic (One customer will never forgive me for recommending this)
SCORPIONS – Pure Instinct (pure lite-rock)
TWO – Voyeurs (sorry Rob, this just wasn’t a good idea)
STEVE VAI – Fire Garden (perhaps it’s just too dense for me)
VAN HALEN – 3 (no comment…)
VARGA – Prototype (I was trying to get into industrial metal. I grew out of it!)
VICTOR – Victor (Bought because it was Alex Lifeson, therefore my civic duty)