s/t
(Love, Peace, God)
Line-up:
The Knight (git), Rick Royal (bs),
Sharee L. Amour (dr), Delord (voc, git, keys)
format: LP
year: 1988
country:
USA
label:
Cherry Love Prod.
#:
12 27 23
info:
Insert w/ lyrics.
style: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock
Side A:
- Nafarious Times
- The Beautiful Dream
- You're Mine So Fine
- The Kingdom
Side B:
- An Early Frost Of Blue
- Speak Of The Devil
- Won't I Ever See The Light
((CLICK PICS FOR HI-RES SCANS))
Here's
another one of those records that any Metal collector would pass by while
flippin' through the record crates. At least I know I did a few times
until I got the chance to listen to it. I erroneously took them for some
sleazy goth band, and when seeing the pic on the innersleave, some gothic
sleaze band (the reanimated corpses of ADAM & THE ANTS?!). Well, opening
track "Nafarious Times" gave me a well-deserved bitch-slap for being so
prejudice. What we have here is a very intriguing mix of classic US-metal
a la SAVATAGE boosted by some slightly off-the-wall chords and harmonies
like those on QUEENSRYCHE's "Rage For Order" album, with some rather dark
and tasteful keyboard licks (man, I can't belive I just wrote that..)
which for once adds rather than subtracts heaviness. Then they turn completely
around with "The Beautiful Dream". What the hells is this??? A song so
slow and timid it barely qualifies as a ballad! It lingers on into ambient
nothingness for little over 6 minutes, and when the infernal anti-ruckus
of flutes and waterfalls finally end, you get pushed into Hairy-Hardrock-land
by "You're Mine So Fine", sounding pretty much like the lunchbowl leftovers
from G'N'R's pet poodle Fluffy. Then comes their theme-song and if anything
should be representative of a band's sound it's their theme-song, right?
Right. It is. It's fucking brilliant. A bloody massive, Heavy Metal hardrocker,
quite conventional until the bridge comes along with it's haunting chants
and creepy lines like "The Spiders - keep crawling - inside you
- to kill you...". A really smart and well constructed song.
Will this positive trail continue on side B one wonders? No, ofcourse
not. "An Early Frost Of Blue" must be the loooooooooongest piece
of music ever written. A ten minute super-slow ballad going absolutely,
positively nowhere. It reminds me of this South Park-episode when
Stan's grandfather forces him to listen to Enya in order to convince him
(Stan) to help him (gramps') to commit suicide. I keep repeating poor
Stan's words "please stop... please STOP...", but noone's
listening. Then (surprise, surprise...) they charge headfirst right into
Power Metal-style - in style - with a real neckbreaker named "Speak
Of The Devil", nicking more than a few ideas from J Priest's "Steeler"
on the way. Definitely the most metallic 4 minutes on the album - effective,
but songwise nothing exceptional. This skitzophrenic mess of an album
ends with a 12 minute epic starting in the same dreary schmallad-manner,
but get more metallic after 5 or 6 minutes, then just lingers on with
standard metal riffing and neverending solos, goes into some classic egypto-ploitation
piece and then, finally, ends. How to wrap it up, then? Well... an ugly,
smacked up "Rage For Order" played by L.A. hippie-trash on a
coctail of downers and industrial-strength lysergics, mascara smeared
all the way down on their worn-out JUDAS PRIEST "Turbo" tour
t-shirts. There goes my appetite....
It's hard to estimate the exact level of rareness of a record like this.
I found absolutely zilch when googling on various combinations of the
bandname, artist names and label - no wantlist, tradelist, saleslists
or indexes what so ever. If this is due to obscurity or lack of interest
I don't know, but in conclusion this would mean that if you should ever
come across it, it won't necessarily cost you a fortune (yet), so grab
it if you get the chance. The handful of metallic parts just about saves
it from the "for-completists-only"-dustbin.