Posts Tagged ‘album review’
Satan “Atom By Atom” Album Review (2015)
Satan have returned again with a new offering for 2015 on Listenable Records entitled “Atom By Atom” and it’s everything you’d expect after 2013’s Life Sentence.
This album rolls hard from beginning to end and proves once again that the guitar duo of Steve Ramsey and Russ Tippins is damn near untouchable. Brian Ross’ vocals are on point and his patented high wails are ever prominent in all the right places. After their Richmond, VA show in 2013, my friend asked Brian how he’s maintained his voice so well since “Court In the Act”. Brian simply replied with, “It’s my job.” And he still does it well.
“Atom By Atom” features 10 tracks and one thing I’ve noticed is that this album seems a bit darker lyrically than their last album and even “Court In the Act”.
Let’s go track by track:
- Farewell Evolution – The album opens with Brian’s falsetto, and lyrically tackles the lack of critical thinking in modern society.
- Fallen Saviour – “Some still believed that he’d return to save them”. I think you can figure out the rest of the sentiment here. I love the guitar solos in this one.
- Ruination – This is one of my favorites on the album so far. The combination of the riffs and rhythm section matched with Ross’ descending vocal pattern just makes for a clean song.
- The Devil’s Infantry – Sean Taylor and Graeme English open this one with a marching pattern. Lyrically what you’d think based on the title. It all works so perfectly. The breakdown/transition mid-song is killer.
- Atom By Atom – The opening riff on this gives me chills. “Out to get you, atom by atom.” You can hear Russ’ distinctive vocals in that part and it just sounds wonderful. The solos are both crushing as well.
- In Contempt – What Satan album would be complete with a song dealing with judgement? No worries here. You got it and shan’t be disappointed!
- My Own God – Brian lays it out in this one with, “I am my own God, I made myself, broke the mold, life is what I make it, I will not be told.”
- Ahriman – Lyrically dealing with Zoroastrianism, of which I am not too familiar. Great song though. Love the backing vocals in the chorus.
- Bound In Enmity – This is a total fist pumper. Riffs and licks for days.
- The Fall of Persephone – Final track on the record. A bit of a slow roller and took a few extra listens to warm up to completely. English has some great bass licks that really stand out. This one clocks in at almost 7 minutes and has several parts. The dueling guitar solos are perfect.
I really cannot praise this album enough. It’s everything I expected and more and I can’t wait to get a physical copy in my hands and especially can’t wait to catch them live again. If I could give only one critical opinion about this album, it would be in the drum production, mainly the snare. On much of the album it’s just a bit too bright but really doesn’t detract from Sean’s solid playing or from the album itself.
Long live Satan and thanks to Listenable Records for letting me review this!
10/10!
Satan are:
Brian Ross
Russ Tippins
Steve Ramsey
Graeme English
Sean Taylor
l-r: English, Taylor, Tippins, Ramsey, Ross
Satan – Life Sentence Album Review
Growing up in a house where I had parents who weren’t so keen on me listening to heavy metal, I had to be careful of what I brought 
home to listen to. Certainly a band called Satan wasn’t going to do me any favors with mom, no matter that the band wasn’t “satanic” at all. I believe I had an unmarked dubbed tape version for years which got me through my teens.
Satan’s full length debut, Court in the Act, came out in 1983 and it didn’t grace my ears probably until about 1984 or 1985 after Metal Blade Records picked the album up for USA distribution. To be straightforwardly honest, Court in the Act is probably my favorite NWOBHM release ever, Iron Maiden’s back catalog notwithstanding. The album was perfect, mainly because of the clean vocal stylings of Brian Ross. Easily one of my favorite singers of all time. After Brian left, they followed up with 2 other releases, Into the Future and Suspended Sentence, and to be honest I thought they were terrible. Looking back, it was the new vocalist that killed it for me.
Court has remained in steady rotation for the last 25+ years and will continue to be. A year or so ago new came out that Satan was reuniting with the original lineup to record a new album. To say I was hesitant about hearing a new album by a band that hadn’t done anything in almost 30 years is an understatement. Typically reunion albums suck.
Satan’s 2013 release entitled Life Sentence, however, does not suck. Not in the least. To be truthful, this album is pretty stellar. I finally picked it up last week and have listened to it at least 4 times.
Ross’ vocals sound great and not over-produced or “fixed”. The album as a whole has a very raw sound. Very natural and a perfect followup to Court. Sure, Brian’s no spring chicken now and hitting those sweet high notes like he used to do isn’t really possible, but it doesn’t detract to a great vocal performance on Life Sentence.
The whole album just sounds like Satan should. Clean, powerful, melodic. True NWOBHM. The songs are catchy and memorable. I am 
quite pleasantly surprised as to how good the album is. Time to Die, Twenty Twenty Five, Tears of Blood and Another Universe are the standout tracks for me. If I had to pick a least favorite, it would be the title track, Life Sentence. Not a bad song by any means, but just didn’t grab my ear like the rest of the album.
That being said, if you’re even a minor fan of Court in the Act, get Life Sentence ASAP. You shall not be disappointed.
9/10
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!
Rapeman – Two Nuns and a Pack Mule
In 1992 I went to visit Kelz at JMU during his junior year there. I drove my sweet 82 Trans Am up there. It was a total blast, at least what I remember of it. 
Actually, there are only a few memories of that weekend in tact in my brain. We drank a lot of beer, mostly at some bar called JM’s. We played the video bowling game there and seemed to get better the more we drank. We went to some guy’s house and listened to Dwight Yoakam. I met some girl named Ursula. I was extremely hungover that Saturday morning. Somewhere there’s a photo of me dead on his couch in so much pain. But the main thing I do remember from that weekend was the music I was introduced to…Foetus, Rapeman, Iron Prostate and Motorpsycho (USA band) and even Motorhead to a lesser degree. I was also introduced to the Spawn comic book that weekend. That was a great series fro about 50 issues. But more on the other bands some other time, today is about the Rapeman album. I liked it the 2-3 times I listened to it while up at JMU that weekend and never bothered much with it again.
Flash forward to July 4, 2009. Jason McMaster and I rode down to San Antonio to check out a legendary record store called Hog Wild Records. The place has been there since the 70s and I always like seeing the independent shops that are still around, even if they are making it by the skin of their teeth. It is a cool shop and I dropped $60 easily in there. One of the things I picked up was Rapeman’s Two Nuns and a Pack Mule CD used for $5 in mint condition. I hadn’t thought about that album in years and had to buy it. I was hoping I’d still like it. There have been a few purchases of “back in the day” albums that I loved then and don’t care for now. Fortunately for me, this one still sits well in my listening palette. I’ve spun it at least 10 times since last weekend and I like it more and more each time I hear it.
I’ve seen it classified as post-hardcore. To me it sounds like a live Foetus album in some ways. A little frantic yet controlled…and without the digital samples. The guy’s voice even resembles Thirwell’s in places. The version I am posting has the BUDD EP include as well.
The Metal Files 
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