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.