Sahara

If you're looking for the ultimate, trademark Corroseum-obscure-reference, these guys could be the Malaysian answer to Ambush! ...but there was a good chance none of us would ever had known because who in their right mind would ever take a chance on a record with THAT sleeve, right?? Even if it's far from the trickiest one to locate and the price tends to be relatively low as far as Malaysian rock records go. Well thank your lucky pentagrams my mind is seldom in the right place, coz I eventually decided to check out a few clips for shits'n'giggles and... I did not giggle. But I nearly shat myself after hearing the mindblowing, must-hear title track! That is if you enjoy super-exotic Black Sabbath-rip-offs from the far east 80's. OK, so the lead riff isn't a complete carbon-copy of "Iron Man", but there's similarities for sure. The chorus is mindbendingly unique in all the best, dischordant and exotic of ways and would make this track the crown jewel of that bootleg compilation of Olde Obsküre Asian Doom Metal that someone really need to make happen some day.

There's more goodies to explore here. While the opening "Hati Masih Terbuka" is exactly the kind of power-ballad standard you'd expect within such a sleeve,
we're dragged down into the murky Hawkwind'oid Heavy Metal depths with the evocative, rumbling steamroller "Hamba Seni". It's a half-way disaster waiting to happen, with plenty of guitar harmonies not entirely in tune all of the time and a rhythm section constantly on the verge of falling down the stairs and it's absolutely - perfect. At the end of side A, perfectly snug in straight after the aforementioned title track masterpiece we get blasted with some bona-fide, proud Heavy Metal bliss. "Alam Dan Semangat" sounds like the coolest, most epic track off some old & dusty NWOBHM/FWOSHM-demo and we ALL love that kinda' shit, don't we?

"Dunia Ciptaan Tuhan" that opens side B follows in similar footsteps. It's once again very European Demo-Metal of the catchiest brand and all feels good and well but of course we're just dancing blindly at the edge of the abyss because here comes The Dip: 2 power ballad standards with one absolutely atrocious slow-dance pukefest stuck inbetween them follows, after which "Fikir Lah Sendiri" does its best to wrap up and save the album and it manages fairly well. It's a really charming, uptempo, almost folksy rocker and it has grown on me with every listen (yeah, Ambush man!) but as usual you're pining for just one more really heavy tune to have made the album Perfect.

As is ever so often the case of these curios, it's another really cool 5-song mini from this country, though to be fair, this time with an 'aquired taste' warning sticker attached to it.