Angry Metal Guy

DC4 //Electric Ministry
Rating: 3.5/5.0 —Cock rock with balls!
Label: Metal Blade Records
Websites: myspace.com/dc4duncan
Release Dates: Out now!

I didn’t want to review this, didn’t even want to listen to it. Angry Metal Guy said I had to do it. I bitched, moaned, put it off, made excuses and so on. I didn’t like the cover or the song titles. It screamed cheesy cock rock  and I had a general feeling of dread. Yesterday I resigned myself to biting the bullet and just getting through it. Although I was pretty much right on the nail about the cock rock, much to my shock, this didn’t suck. In fact, it rocked! It seems even the mighty Steel Druhm can be wrong (like twice on eon). DC4 is a semi-supergroup composed of former members of Armored Saint (Jeff Duncan), Dio (Rowan Robertson) and Odin (Shawn Duncan). They play a metallized hard rock style that can be compared to classic era Van Halen if Dimebag Darrel was the guitarist and songwriter. Yes, I mean that. Electric Ministry is their third full length and it features a collection of straight forward, guitar-driven hard rock anthems with just enough grit and punch to satisfy the average metal monger. They effectively craft songs with big, pumping, meaty  riffs and hooks galore. Its essentially panties-on-the-head party metal with a sleazy, “good times” vibe that veers into dark, disturbing areas at times. I’ll be honest here, I actively resisted liking this and it didn’t work. I resent DC4 making me support this release! What is the world coming to? Continue reading

Annihilator // Annihilator
Rating: 2.0/5.0 – Alice ain’t well.
Label: Earache
Websites: annihilatormetal.com | myspace.com/annihilatorofficial
Release Dates: Out Now!

No metal band has managed to frustrate and baffle me as consistently as Annihilator has over their long career. Their 1989 debut album Alice in Hell was a classic in the thrash genre and showed a band brimming with talent and energy. Founder, lead songwriter and guitarist Jeff Waters was hailed as a rising star and someone to watch closely. Since then, Annihilator has struggled mightily to live up to the hype garnered by their debut and their subsequent albums have come nowhere near that level of quality. In fact, many of those albums were either complete disasters (Refresh the Demon, Remains, All for You) or near disasters (Set the World on Fire, Metal). Each time a new Annihilator release was set to drop, I would pray for greatness and a return to form but mostly get mediocrity. Now it’s 2010 and we get their thirteenth album, simply titled Annihilator, and again the goods are not delivered.

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Six Feet Under // Graveyard Classics 3
Rating: 2.5/5.0 — It’s hard to imagine how it could possibly be better…
Label: Metal Blade
Websites: sfu420.com | myspace.com/sixfeetunder
Release Dates: EU: 15/18.01.2010 | US: 01.19.2010

Six Feet Under is back with the third installment in their Graveyard Classics series, and fortunately for us, this time they’re not covering AC/DC songs. I suspect that the majority of you either know what these things are about, have heard them, or just don’t care at all so I’m not going to spend tons of time on this, but Graveyard Classics 3 is a cover record from the groove oriented death metal band Six Feet Under. Barnes and crew have, this time around, elected a bunch of their favorite tracks from before they were in bands and have warped them into death rock tracks. The result being sort of cartoonish and silly: but mildly enjoyable at the same time.

I’m not a big fan of cover records or tribute records, and I always think it’s really funny when bands cover something that was originally done with clean vocals but instead use growls (I’ve heard some pretty funny covers of Iron Maiden songs done in that way). But Six Feet Under does manage to pull off a few good covers on here and even manage to improve on one track (but that’s partially because Van Halen never had a vocalist I could stand—so of course it sounds better with growls). In my opinion the best covers are on here are Metallica‘s “The Frayed Ends of Sanity”, “Psychotherapy” from the Ramones and Prong‘s timeless classic “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck”. Sure, they’re a little silly with Barnes growling over them—but it’s the party novelty kind of approach.

This will definitely be more interesting to longtime fans of the band than to the average listener, but it does have a certain charm to it. But given that the material isn’t even original, I can’t think that I would give it much more than an “OK”. Though, I haven’t listened to these guys in year, now I think I’m going to go back and listen to their discog… I love that track “Revenge of the Zombie”.