Posts Tagged ‘cd review’
Karion – Iron Shadows CD/DVD Review
There’s no secret that Texas had a legendary metal scene in the early-to-late 80s with the likes of Watchtower, Militia, Wyzard, Syrus, SA Slayer, Juggernaut, Sentinel, Obliveon Knight, Assalant, Helstar, Pantera, Rotting Corpse, Gammacide and a ton of others.
Another band that deserves mention and praise from that era is Karion which featured Art Villarreal (SA Slayer), Chris Cronk (SA Slayer), Pete Perez (Riot, Reverend, Spastic Ink) and Frank Ferreira (Helstar).
Starting sometime last year, Art and friend Bob “Dog” Catlin (Juggernaut, SA Slayer) began the process of cleaning up some Karion demos and the result is the 2-disc set entitled Iron Shadows.
Disc 1 contains 6 tracks which I believe are compiled from their 84 and 87 demos, although not all of the songs from the 87 demos are on the CD. Karion brings that great style of progressive power thrash that was well-known in south central Texas at the time. Good clean higher ranged vocals, solid guitar riffs and killer solos, great bass work and fine power drumming made this disc a valuable addition to your collection of true 80s metal, especially for the fans of Texas metal.
Disc 2 of a live DVD of a 1986 Karion show filmed from the balcony of the Villa Fontana. The audio/video quality is much better than I expected and shows that the band had a really good fan base at the time. Their performance is solid and makes me wish even more that I had lived in the area at the time.
One interesting thing that I found while doing a little extra reading about Karion is that vocalist Chris Cronk recorded 2 different demos with Fates Warning in 86 and 87. I haven’t listened to them yet but a quick search will lead you to a download of those.
I can’t recommend this set of discs enough. It’s been kicking my ass for a week now. I recommend that you pick it up from Rockadrome Records in San Antonio. Keep it local!
Wild Dogs – Reign of Terror
I really can’t remember how I happened upon this band. I do know that I owned their early era vinyl stuff for quite a long time when Matt 
McCourt was singing for them. I never really liked that stuff that much except for the song Evil In Me. Not to mention Deen Castronovo’s drumming on that stuff was pretty good. But overall those first 2 are a bit average. Not bad, but not great.
And then came Reign of Terror. Holy crap! From beginning to end this album is great. Sure, some of it gets a little tedious in the lyrics department, but the music overshadows it by a mile. Deen is all over this on the drums and Jeff Mark’s guitar work is stellar. Another thing that helped this album a lot was the addition of a new singer, Michael Furlong. He always reminded me a little bit of J.D. Kimball of Omen. Sort of raspy, but clear.
My top picks on this album would be Call of the Dar, Siberian Vacation and Streets of Berlin. As stated earlier, there’s not a bad track on here and I never skip any of it.
A reissued version came out a few years ago with bonus tracks but I have yet to hear them.
Deathwish – Demon Preacher – 1988
Here’s an old one and a tad bit obscure. I remember first buying this on tape when it came out. I saw an ad in a magazine and 
thought the cover looked cool. Remember back in the old days when you had a good chance of picking a good band by their album covers? Not so much these days.
Deathwish hailed from England. While this isn’t a great thrash album by any stretch of the imagination, it’s worth giving a listen to once a year or so. I picked it up on CD a few years after its release and got it in a cutout bin for maybe $5. What an investment it was! A few days ago I sold my copy on eBay for $65!
Solstice – Solstice (1992)
This is one that I picked up around the time it debuted mainly because of the label it was on. Century Media Records 
was putting out some cool stuff like Iced Earth at the time so I thought I’d give this a shot. Glad I did. It’s a good cross between death and thrash metal without getting too over the top. I guess they featured members of Cannibal Corpse, Demolition Hammer, Disincarnate, Divine Empire, Hateplow, Hellwitch, Malevolent Creation, Resurrection; none of which I have ever cared about in the least.
I really liked the drummer on this release. Some really good footwork.
Overall this isn’t the greatest band to come from that Florida death/thrash scene but this album is certainly worth a listen. It’s been out of print for quite some time.
Rex Inferi – Like A Hurricane (1985)
Here’s another rarity out of the collection. I picked this up about 2 years ago from Sentinel Steel. Limited to only 500 
copies on CD, I had to pick it up after hearing a few tracks from YouTube. This is great early Italian power metal and highly recommended if you liked the NWOBHM stuff. The first 4 tracks feature one singer and the last tracks feature the replacement singer. I definitely prefer the first guy. They remind me a bit of Tokyo Blade (Night of the Blade era). I highly recommend this download.
Tracks:
| 1. | Angel Of Might | 03:48 | |
| 2. | Ghost Horse | 05:05 | |
| 3. | Flight To The Sky | 05:38 | |
| 4. | Like A Hurricane | 04:25 | |
| 5. | Welcome To The Slaughter | 03:21 | |
| 6. | Back From War | 05:46 | |
| 7. | Murder In Time | 05:54 | |
| Total playing time | 37:56 | ||
