Posts Tagged ‘record reviews’
Overlife – Between Passion and Madness – 1998
1998. I was really buying a lot of music at the time betweenwhat I was selling through my online music store and what 
I was buying for myself. A lot of the stuff I was buying for myself was from Denis Gulbey at Sentinel Steel Records. Back in the old days when you could call in and jibber jabber, Denis recommended Overlife to me. So…thanks Denis!
Overlife hails from Alicante, Spain. I built their first website (long since gone) and used to correspond with Fabricio quite a bit. What really drew me to them was Leandro’s voice. Very unique and a lot of emotion. The music itself was a little sloppy in places and even the vocals seem a bit out of key sometimes, but this album is really good overall. It’s sung completely in English but I included 2 bonus tracks in Spanish. They are good European power/prog metal with a hint of wanting to sound like Dream Theater. Their later albums sounded more like DT type prog which was a turnoff for me. So, this album it is. I still listen to it a few times a year. It’s a bright memory of a darker time in my life where the death of my father and my divorce seemed to dominate my every day life.
So if you’re into the aforementioned style of power metal, I recommend this highly.
Quiet Riot – Metal Health (1983)
Let’s just be straight here, I love this album. I have since it was released. 1983. I was 13. It was a tough year for me…I 
guess 83-85 were a little difficult. Not necessarily because of going through the typical teenage bullshit, but there were other things going on that really made those some tough years. But hey, I got through it. I spent a lot of days and nights listening to this album. I used to have this little one speaker GE boombox that I would put under my pillow at night to keep listening to music as I went to sleep and so my parents wouldn’t hear it. Not that they had a problem with QR, they just had a problem with my obsession with music. haha It was a thin cassette player so I only needed to remove my bottom pillow to make it fit and not kink my neck. Usually sometime in the middle of the night the player ended up on the floor and the second pillow was back in its proper place.
I picked this up right after hearing Metal Health on the radio. “huhuhuhuhuh, the song says bang your head.” It was catchy. I never cared for Cum On Feel The Noize. It was goofy…still is. I was never a Slade fan, but I don’t dislike them, just never really got exposed to them beyond the 2 songs that QR did, which are goofy. Beyond the goofiness of COFTN, this album is pretty great. Especially songs like Breathless, Run for Cover, Don’t Wanna Let You Go…the whole damned thing. When I pop in the CD I never skip any tracks, not even COFTN, it’s just part of the flow of the record.
In 1999 I got to see them with this lineup. They did an autograph signing earlier in the day at Mars Music and of course I went. They were all in good spirits except for Frankie Banali who seemed to have his ass on his shoulders a bit that day. I brought a few things to get signed like some odd QR EPs, a few CD covers and a few WASP CD covers. Apparently Frankie didn’t have one of the WASP CDs that I brought and asked if he could have mine. I told him no and he got a little peeved about it. “Well I’m not signing anything else.” “Fine, dude, no biggie,” and I finished out my time with the rest of the band who were gracious. Cavazo gave a head nod towards Frankie and just shook his head at him in disapproval. They had about 200 people show up to meet them which I thought was a decent showing for a concert that was getting no promotion and was at a shitty venue.
I came home after the signing to chill out for a while before the show and realized that I had 2 of the WASP CD/EPs so I brought it to the show. We got to the Riverview Theater and I swear it looked closed. This place was trying to get revitalized and they were bringing some decent bands there but it never seemed to take off for them. For this show only about about 40 people showed up…FORTY PEOPLE. I felt really bad for them. They came out and played like there were 20,000 people there. Kevin never once commented on the size of the crowd. They were awesome. After watching Cavazo play I gained a lot more respect for him as a guitarist. That guy is really friggin’ good.
After the show the band came back out to hang out with everybody. I was talking with Rudy Sarzo about his days with Whitesnake and such Frankie came up to me and said, “Hey, come here a second.” “Sorry I was such a dick earlier. I was having a bad day.” I told him it was no big deal and pulled out the spare copy of the WASP EP that I had and handed it to him. He was shocked and gave me a big sweaty hug. haha. “Until today I didn’t even know that this EP existed.” I ended up talking with him quite a bit for the time they hung out. I told him that his first 2 albums with QR were big influences on me when I was learning how to play drums. All of them were nice and Kevin seeked out every person in the room and thanked them personally for coming out. That wasn’t the asshole Kevin Dubrow that I had read about in the ‘zines, this guy was actually nice.
It was a fun day and night and I finally got to meet a band that I had loved for 16 years. The news of Kevin’s death in 2007 really brought me down. I had read just prior to that that he had gotten himself clean and sober. It was too bad that those demons continued to haunt him and that he wasn’t able to continue down that path to recovery.
RIP Kevin.
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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