Stripe

So the most common prejudice towards old Malay Metal vinyls goes something like "oh there's just 80-90% ballads and maybe one or 2 real Metal songs if you're lucky", and that might hold true for some releases but in reality the majority of them have a little bit more to offer than that. I'm sorry to say this release belongs in the first infamous category though. The fact that I'm still writing about it in this part of the site should however tickle your curiosity some.

While the explosion of the Malay HM scene ignited about a year earlier, 1987 was the year that we first saw a reasonable amount of classic/soon-to-be-famous (locally at least) bands release their debut albums and within this exclusive group, STRIPE was one of the most obscure. Unfortunately they only had 2 songs to their name and when the opportunity arose to release an album, the label assigned the usual in-house filthmongers to fill up the remaining part of the album with the usual schmallad gunk. In this case the distinction between the band's own 2 tracks and the schlager fillers are unusually distinct, even when they try going in a 'melodic rock'-direction on a few occasions. The musical difference is so strong this time that the garbage is a lot easier to ignore than usual. Therefore, we can easily fool ourselves into considering it a single rather than an LP.

The fact that the opening track "Kuasa" is also the heaviest, most raw Malay HM tune to date(!) also helps. Only the meanest Rusty Blade tracks would come close to this at the time and it's the mean, angry and raspy vocals that's about 42% the magic here. A fast, pounding semi-Power A-side hit with HUGE balls that strangely enough reminds me of a lot of old obscure Russian Metal - could be that perfect raw vox + Power-combo perhaps? 8 label-vomits later, the B-side closer "Sejarah" once again proves the quality and could've/would've-been-level of Stripe with Force! A true galloping Epic Metal pearl in the Dark Quarterer-vein which only crime would be that it's about 2 or 3 minutes too short.

The original tape was incidently first released with the B-side track "Kuasa" as the official title, with different cover art, but was changed and reissued shortly after as the version you see above. This should be the only vinyl version though and unfortunately it belongs in the most rare of the already quite rare Malay vinyl bracket so don't expect to run into it anytime soon. Their follow-up from 5 years later (see our Mal/Sin Metal vinyl special) wasn't half bad and might be marginally less difficult to locate, but only one of those tracks would be on par with this killer 'debut single'.