Archive for the ‘instrumental music’ Category
John Macey – Eclipse (1981)
As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had this album given to me when I was about 15 (1985) or so. I listened to it quite often back then and always enjoyed the quirky, funky instrumentals on here. A friend of mine recently converted my vinyl to digital format and I am putting it up on here for your listening pleasure.
This album came out in 1981 and sounds very mid-70s. Macey is a very competent player as are all of the 
members in the band. It was released on 51 West Records which was a sub of CBS. There’s some good funky, jazz/fusion, 70s shred in parts of this that some of it sounds like it should be background music in a 70s car chase movie. Until today, I don’t think I have listened to this album in about 20 years and it still sounds great to my ears.
Tracks:
- Eclipse
- Skyblue Dream
- Peter Pan
- Bent Metal
- F Hole Fantasy
- Star Piece
Serpent Throne
White Summer*Black Winter
I like a lot of instrumental bands but I’ve always found it difficult to find quality instrumental rock bands that didn’t write their stuff to sound like they were writing around having a singer. Philadelphia’s Serpent Throne satisfies my instrumental craving perfectly.
I met the two guitarists, Demian Fenton and Don Argott, at the premier for the movie Last Days Here during the SxSW 2011 Film and Music Festival. You can read my review of their movie here. They are the guys behind the production/direction of the movie and in talking with Demian after the flick, he mentioned that he was in a band and I had forgotten about it until a few days after seeing the movie as I was wrapped up in a lot of SxSW activities.
Since then I have been spinning their stuff practically non-stop. Metal has a lot of sub-genres and these guys would typically be classified in the stoner rock and doom categories. To call them Black Sabbath worship is too easy. Pretty much all metal bands worship Sabbath whether they know it or not. Serpent Throne take it to a bit of a different level in my opinion. They use lots great dual guitar harmonies that are reminiscent of Thin Lizzy in places. I hear hints of Trouble (S/T LP era) in there as well, intended or not. There are some cool hints of 70s Scorpions as well as Uriah Heep and Wishbone Ash. Maybe some Cactus too. It’s a nice blend of great rock and metal without sounding like they are just ripping off all of the classic bands.
I think it’s pretty tough for an instrumental band of this genre to continue to write stuff and keep it interesting and Serpent Throne has done that
The Battle of Old Crow
with all 3 of their albums: Ride Satan Ride (2007), The Battle of Old Crow (2009) and White Summer*Black Winter (2010). I highly recommend picking up all of their stuff. Battle of Old Crow and White Summer*Black Winter are available for download from Amazon and iTunes. I had to buy the CD for Ride Satan Ride and convert it to MP3 myself as it’s not available for legal download.
Hopefully I’ll catch these guys live sometime, even if it means heading to Philly for it. Would be cool to have them hit Austin for a show sometime. I think they’d do well here, especially if they were in on a SxSW gig. So, nice work, guys! Hope all good things come out of Last Days Here as well.
The Metal Files 
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