A band in transition can be a daunting prospect for fans — the results can just as easily be disastrous as transcendent. In Part One of this three-part Metalmorphoses feature, the Last Rites staff began a list of bands who faced change head-on and overcame the potential for failure and the albums with which they did so. Read on for Part Two…
CRO-MAGS – BEST WISHES
Most of the metal crew I hung out with back in the 80’s were D’n’D nerds with an unhealthy obsession with death and the occult. The music, the lyrics, the imagery — most everything was firmly rooted in fantasy. That essentially got flipped onto its head with an album like Best Wishes, which hit the metal bins in the late 80’s because of its alluring crossover appeal. Metal fans were already privy to a number of albums that borrowed from punk rock’s flourishing hardcore offshoot, but none of them delivered the megaton energy and “fuck-you-lookin-at” sensibilities quite like the Cro-Mags. And while this record marked a sizable shift for the band that hooked us with its even more brazen metallic crunch and Douglas Holland’s glassy-bright leads, the stance was still unquestionably rooted in the white-knuckled, “street justice” mindset of the band’s fiery focal point, bassist/vocalist Harley Flanagan.
Thinking back to my first exposure to Best Wishes, I can still clearly recall how strongly that gruesomely unfuckwithable cover art drew me in. But the true hook was how well the band managed to balance their bruising delivery with the surprisingly peaceful Krishna message brought to light by previous vocalist, John Joseph Bloodclot. Insanely infectious riffs strengthened by what still stands today as one of the most burly bass performances this side of Mt. Lemmy gave messages about spirituality and tender love a toughness that would’ve sounded featherweight in the hands of any other band with half the Cro-Mags might. Of course, it also helped that a lot of the “positive message” was delivered from the standpoint of someone not just turning their back on something like “the Demoniac,” but killing it, fighting it and fucking CRUSHING it.
So yes, Best Wishes marked a much more metallic shift from the band’s curb-stomping, urban debut, but it didn’t lose an ounce of its vitality or venom. It also opened a lot of metal fans’ eyes to a slew of other like-minded hardcore bands unafraid of delivering their punch with a metallic edge: Crumbsuckers, Leeway, Raw Deal/Killing Time, Agnostic Front and Sick of It All, to name a handful that managed to fight to the top. And a true testament to the sheer asskickery of an album like Best Wishes — it still sounds just as solid today as it did over two decades ago. Simply a bonafide, bruising classic. [CAPTAIN]
ANTHRAX – SOUND OF WHITE NOISE
Say what you will about Anthrax not deserving to be a part of the Big Four. For all I care you can replace them with Exodus, Testament, Overkill, or whoever-the-fuck, and it won’t change the fact that Anthrax made plenty of noise in the thrash genre in the 80’s and early 90’s. Considering their quality catalog up to and including the album featured in this piece, they deserve the credit they’ve been given and then some. Sure the rap-isms turned some heads the opposite way, but even after a couple of suspect musical endeavors in the eyes of some, the longtime faithful such as myself didn’t show nearly as much concern about those odd choices as we did when we’d heard Joey Belladonna was no longer fronting the band.
Changing their sound just slightly on the instrumental side of things during this switch in vocalists, forsaking some of their thrashiness and moving into even more melodic, groove-laden territory than in years past, it was former Armored Saint great John Bush’s gravelly, melodious and diverse approach that made this shift in singers a huge success. While he may not have the high-end wailing range Joey was known for, his low-end and mid-range work, not to mention his superb ear for melody, are absolutely outstanding on White Noise. The infectious hit – and one of their own this time – “Only” and lumbering, moody “Black Lodge” are great examples of the contagious performance unleashed by Bush, and on more aggressive cuts like “Room for One More”, “This is Not an Exit” and the energetic “Burst”, you can simply feel the passion behind the man’s voice.
All in all, a change in vocalists at that point in their career seemed a hell of a lot riskier than the change from Turbin to Belladonna was in the early days, but goddamn if Anthrax didn’t release one of their finer albums in Sound of White Noise, an album I can comfortably hoist up with their best work, and just one more reason why they’re considered among the Big Four. [JON EARDLEY]
BEHEMOTH – PANDEMONIC INCANTATIONS
Every band goes through transitions. For some, various members become interested in new sounds and their songwriting purposefully changes. For most bands, however, the change occurs much more naturally. If there’s one thing that metalheads love arguing over, it’s usually questions like: “Which album is this band X’s overall best,” or “Don’t you think it would have been better if band Y had kept playing this type of metal?” If you’re the type of person who hates these types of discussions, I truly feel sorry for you if Behemoth happens to be the topic of a nearby conversation.
It’s almost impossible to pinpoint a specific phase in Behemoth’s history that defines the band’s main transition from black metal to death metal, primarily, because three of the band’s albums (Satanica, Thelema.6 and Zos Kia Cultus) can all be considered “Blackened Death Metal.” The songwriting from that period (1999-2002) has actually become something many of today’s bands enjoy replicating. Demigod obviously marked a new era for Behemoth in 2004, where almost all inklings of the band’s earliest phases had been…well…phased out. It’s almost impossible to believe that the same person who was responsible for the vocals, guitar and bass on “Sventevith Storming Near The Baltic” was the same person behind “Slaves Shall Serve” about ten years later.
So how the hell did Nergal, the mastermind behind Behemoth, get here? While Satanica was the first album that contained a good amount of death metal elements, it still sounds relatively similar to all of the albums that followed. And The Forests Dream Eternally, Sventevith, Grom and the less-popular yet vitally important Bewitching the Pomerania EP, on the other hand, all have a similar feel to them as well.
While Pandemonic Incantations has about as much death metal as Evangelion has black metal, it’s the one album that sits rather weirdly atop the rest of Behemoth’s increasingly massive discography. Unfortunately, Pandemonic Incantations falls into the same trap that many other “transition” albums do, in that it’s only really listened to by die hard fans of the band. Regardless of the musical elements contained within all of these albums (this isn’t supposed to be a review, you know), I will tell you why it’s a shame that band’s like Behemoth constantly have their songwriting broken up, analyzed and argued over until rage ensues.
For starters, transitional albums tend to be completely ignored when people choose one era of any band’s discography over the other(s). The main reason being that if you are choosing a side between musical period’s as vast as Behemoth’s, you probably aren’t going to like an album containing a mixture of these elements. The bottom line is this: Behemoth’s songs were practically all written by one man. The more one listens to every phase of Nergal’s work, the more it will blend together. When I listen to And The Forests Dream Eternally (which was released in 1993 and is arguably much more developed than any other black metal album was during that time period), it sounds like Behemoth. When I listen to Demigod, it sounds like Behemoth. That’s the unique thing about band’s who keep have one primary songwriter for so long…the music changes, but traces of that person are perfectly intertwined throughout every song, regardless of what type of song it is. And that’s the very reason why Pandemonic Incantations is just as important to Behemoth’s repertoire as any other album, and it should be listened to with the same intent.
If you’ve ignored a specific phase of this band for whatever reason, now is the time to do some serious exploring. Regardless of how Behemoth’s next album will sound, I’m sure it will be just as crushing as Adam “Nergal” Darski’s victory over leukemia. [KONRAD KANTOR]
