When this 1987 EP came out, every Metallifan immediately rushed to the store to pick it up, because it was the first release from the band since the death of bassist and mastermind Cliff Burton. It was also proof that the band could go on after the loss of their best member, because many people expected them to fall into a heavy alcoholic daze and jump off a bridge. But the band, in some kind of denial tactic, quickly auditioned a million bassists (and bass players), chose Jason Newsted, and rushed into a homemade studio to record this five-track EP of covers as a sort of proof of concept.

One thing you’ll remember if you bought this thing back in the fall of ‘87 is that it was called the $5.98 EP if you bought the tape, and the $9.98 EP if you were a CD freak, which almost nobody was back in ‘87. This was probably to prevent record stores from slapping a regular price on it and soaking the profit. (See also the SST Blasting Concept compilations.) I DID have a CD player and this was probably my 4th or 5th CD purchase ever. Another difference I found is that on the original pressing of the CD, the bands covered are not listed on each song, so I had to borrow someone’s tape during study hall and write down the info. Oh, and old skool fans will know that the “re-re” part of the title is because the first Garage Days was a tiny collection of covers thrown on the backside of the Creeping Death EP import, which were later added to (and then later deleted from) pressings of Kill ‘Em All.

That didn’t matter much anyway, because none of us knew the names of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and hardcore punk bands that were chosen to cover on the EP. Most of us had heard of The Misfits, or at least seen the t-shirt, but Budgie? Diamond Head? Killing Joke? Holocaust? They sounded interesting, but these weren’t albums you’d find in a Musicland in the middle of Indiana, so we had to trust that they’d be cool.

Going into the fast drum beat that leads of “Helpless,” you can tell this is going to be much more raw and less experimental and lofty than the previous Master of Puppets. Metallica manages to take the original Diamondhead version of the song and put their own mark on it, with thick rhythm guitar, fast leads that are almost a throwback to their first album, and bass. Yes, bass! Those of us who were plugged in at the time already knew newkid from his own band, Flotsam and Jetsam, and remember that he could really fucking play the 4-string. Pick up a copy of their first album and put on the song “Metalshock” and he is all over the place and totally up front with his bass sound. He’s all over Garage Days, and that made everyone happy that while he was no Cliff, there would still be mighty bass on future Metallica albums. (This was before the original three members thought it would be funny to totally mute the bass in every further album, making future fans think that Jason could not play at all.)

“The Small Hours” starts with a quiet and creepy guitar bit that sounds almost like horror movie music, and then slowly gets heavier and creeps onward before the group launches into full-on metal mode. It’s a very effective display of their musical ability, and makes you wonder what the original Holocaust version sounded like. Same goes with “The Wait,” which shows us that James Hetfield can occasionally sing rather than grunt and wince, as he belts out the chorus.

Probably my favorite cut from the album is Budgie’s “Crash Course in Brain Surgery,” because it showcases Jason’s bass skills in a fun little song. Yes, he plays a bass solo! And he’s got a groovy line through the whole thing, which also enables Kirk Hammett to lay down a couple of really shredding solos. (A word of warning: you really don’t want to hunt down the original Budgie album with this song on it. It seriously sounds like Jethro Tull’s backing band rocking out to their favorite Spock’s Beard tunes, with Geddy Lee’s sister on vocals. Seriously.) I’m not as hot on the final song(s), “Last Caress/Green Hell.” Yes, I like the Misfits, but it just didn’t fit the band or the rest of the songs on the album. I know at the time I probably thought it was the coolest thing ever, killing babies and raping mothers and all, but now I look back and wish they would have covered “Hybrid Moments” or something.

The best blessing about this little gem of an EP is that it quickly went out of print, and only the old Metallica fans knew about it. For at least a decade, the thing was completely unknown, except for the old-skoolers and a few people who found Japanese bootlegs on eBay for a hundred bucks. That ended when the tracks were reissued on the Garage, Inc collection, and they just didn’t work right mixed in with all of the other B-sides and rarities issued over the years. For me, this was the perfect burst of greatness the band needed before continuing on with bigger and better things. It’s a shame though, because seeing a Metallica do covers like this makes me wish there was an alternate universe where we could just see this band from 1987 belt out Saxon and Motorhead tunes from yesteryear, instead of what Metallica eventually turned into.

Rating: 9

Not many people remember this St. Louis-based metal unit, except for the music critics who claim they were one of the era’s best bands, but were simply lost in the shuffle of the whole Death Metal craze of the time. And guess what - I’m a bit of an amateur music critic, and when Marco at Metal Blade sent me these demos at the beginning of ‘93, I loved the prog-gy rock band. Here’s the review I wrote in Xenocide back in the day:

ANACRUSIS - Screams and Whispers (Metal Blade) This is the fourth release from St. Louis’ claim to progressive metal. These guys aren’t a Death or Thrash band, they have some of the accent and meter of a doom band but they have the balls and sharpness of a hard rock band. Its like Cathedral meets Fates Warning or something. Kenn Nardi’s lyrics are strange, they are sung in places and the phrasing is abnormal, but it gives the album a good feel. The drumwork by Paul Miles and John Emery’s bass lay down a really offbeat and unique foundation for the lucid guitarwork by Nardi and Kevin Heidbreder. The guitars blend pretty decently into the mix except for a well planned jump out of the pit for a sharp, distortion-clear solo of precision, or a harmonic, dual guitar chorus. Don’t forget the clear standalone guitar passages here and there. This concept probably won’t sit well with most fanatic headbangers, and even some more broad-tasted individuals may have to give it a second or third spin before it catches. But to me, it was worth it.

For whatever reason, I never had a copy of this album on CD. I looked around, and found I had two prerelease copies, I think mixed differently (with the standard black-on-white photocopied Metal Blade labels) and also a reviewer/cutout of the actual release. But as far as listening to tapes these days, they might as well be wax cylinders to me, so I haven’t heard these guys in like ten years. Luckily, I thought to punch it in google one day and found the band’s web site, containing MP3s of everything, which I promptly copied to my iPod for another listen.

I’ve never checked out any of the band’s other stuff; their first two on Restless plus Manic Impressions on Metal Blade all sounded a bit uneven in comparison, with the band getting their act together as far as music and production. Screams and Whispers shows the band fully together, playing well and sounding excellent. They detune their guitars like a Death Metal band would, but instead of going for that Carcass-y grindcore sound, it instead makes things more doomy. Add to that the band’s first experiments with synth, in the form of artificial orchestral hits woven into the music, and you have a much thicker soundscape than the average thrash/death release of the time.

Back in 1993, when I was in college and doing the zine, I did not have a car, and used to walk miles and miles everywhere. And this album was one of the ones that I’d put in for a really long trek, when I needed something to push me forward, but not something that was completely manic and then over in 15 minutes, like most demos of the era. There are some highlights here that I really like, that pull me back to when this album was in the walkman constantly. One I really remember is the opener, “Sound the Alarm,” which starts with a very atmospheric, clean guitar sound with a bit of delay, and then slams into a faster beat. “Release” has a more straightforward march to it, but with Ken Nardi’s strange lyrics on top it, adding a weird sense of unease that makes the song more interesting. “A Screaming Breath” and “Driven” both showcase the band’s ability to go in different directions in the same song with complex odd-meter arrangements, which are the band’s trademark. What’s even more amazing is that they switched drummers just before recording, and were able to hash out such complicated meter with a new guy right as they went into the studio.

Like I said before, this album really isn’t for everyone. Even people well-versed into odd-meter, fast-solo prog-rock probably aren’t going to appreciate this, because it’s a lot more about the strange mood captured in the sound. This isn’t a Moving Pictures rocker that has solid AOR songs from start to finish, and even though I love the album for what it is, it’s not like I pop it in the car player when I’m out driving and having a good time. But it’s very well done, and the only chief complaint from me is that the metal world couldn’t really get this, and the band disbanded a short time later. That makes this the only little time capsule of the band’s brief career, and maybe that’s what makes it even that much more special.

Rating: 8.5

The first concert I ever attended was Rush at the old Rosemont Horizon in Chicago, supporting the Hold Your Fire album. Imagine my amazement when I found that the exact tour I saw was released as a live album! They didn’t record the same show (thank god - the sound at that place was similar to recording a live album inside a large oil storage drum), but they did capture the spirit with the fifteen tracks recorded for this CD. I think if I would have reviewed this back in 1989 when it was released, I would have given it a ten. I think it’s interesting to come back to this two decades later and give it a second look.

This is probably the cleanest recorded Rush live album of the five (or six) officially offered by the band. It’s hard to even tell it’s a live album during most of the songs, because there’s absolutely no crowd noise, and the conditions are absolutely perfect. It’s also important to note that Rush almost never deviates from the recorded version of the song, except maybe an extra “ba-bum” at the end of a song. Combine the two, and it’s sometimes hard to distinguish if you’re listening to the live version or the studio version through a lot of the album. Rush fanatics absolutely love this, and think it’s the highest form of perfection and a demonstration how well the trio can play. I’d be more impressed if they could mix things up a bit more, maybe not as much as Frank Zappa did on his ever-changing, ever-mutating setlists, but maybe an extra or different solo here or there.

This album captures the era of Rush after Moving Pictures, but before the band slowed things down and became more irregular with their studio and touring schedule. They blew their wad on the classic, rockable stuff over their previous two live albums, and the only old tune that survives here is the closer, “Closer to the Heart.” Yes, they did play “YYZ” and “Tom Sawyer” on the tour, but this album is just a 75-minute collection of the best parts of the evening, not a historical bootleg-type capture of the whole show. So they really trimmed back the tracklist to only showcase the new stuff.

That means you’ve got a lot of the more dire, more synthified, less guitar-oriented numbers. We’re talking half of Power Windows, a lot of Signals, and a lot of Grace Under Pressure (although not the songs I’d want, and they do “Red Sector A” toward the end of the CD, which usually puts me to sleep.) The one advantage is that the live sound is much better than some of the studio sound on some of these numbers. For example, “The Big Money” (the opener, after a track of the Three Stooges theme music) has a much crisper and a slightly bassier sound to it, and I like it better than the cut on the original album. This is consistent across all of the tracks; without spending hundreds of hours spinning knobs in the studio for that polished sound, they introduce more of Geddy’s bass and a good live guitar sound that challenges the synth-heavy landscape.

There are only four tracks from the album this tour supported, which is also strange. It’s a good grouping from Hold Your Fire, though. They all sound pretty much identical to the album version, which doesn’t do much, but it’s always enjoyable to hear them again. “Mission” was a remarkable live track, because that’s the song where they dropped a million red balloons into the crowd, ala the three red spheres on the cover of the album. It was sensational to be on the first deck of this auditorium and see all of these red spheres float down into the crowd on the floor and then spread out like crimson paint. Unfortunately, you can’t hear this on the live album, but the song’s a nice reminder if you were there (or saw a video).

The highlight of this album is “The Rhythm Method,” Neil Peart’s drum solo. Unlike other albums, this is a standalone solo, not merged in the middle of another song. Peart does a bit of the old-school stuff, but halfway through the solo, his drum kit turns to reveal his electronic drums, and he plays between both sets, using the e-drums to trigger MIDI synth beats that sound like stuff from a big-band number. It’s a completely unique sound and approach, and even though it’s less than five minutes long, it packs a tremendous amount of drumming in a short space.

This isn’t a bad live album. At first, I thought I’d give it a lower rating, because I seldom listen to it, and it’s not a lot of things. It’s not long, and it doesn’t have a tremendous amount of stuff on it. It doesn’t have the old favorites. It doesn’t do anything dramatic or weird or neat (aside from Neil’s solo). It’s a very straightforward capture of one CD’s worth of a concert that was recorded well, end of story. But looking back, it’s such a great-sounding capture of the band at a very key time in their career that’s usually forgotten. I don’t think most people would buy this album to get started on Rush, because there are all kinds of collections and compilations of the old stuff, and I don’t think a fan looking for a good live album would pick this, when they could get one of the older classics, or get a much greater value out of the 3-CD Different Stages CD. But for some reason, I keep listening to this CD, and I think back to when I got it, and it’s just such a perfect little time machine to then, that I realize I do really like this.

Rating: 7

There are a lot of amazing things about this total definition of heavy metal as we know it, but one of the most amazing things about this album is that it was released only five months after Bon Scott died. And no, he didn’t die when the album was in the can, only to have it released by greedy record execs looking to make a buck. I mean the band actually had the balls, momentum, and determination to hire Brian Johnson to take the front slot, and then record one of the best heavy metal albums ever. In five fucking months. Most bands these days take five months to buy the outfits they wear on the pictures in the liner notes. It just took me five months to move a one-bedroom apartment full of stuff across town. These guys laid town probably the most solid guitar-oriented 41:31 to be recorded ever in the same amount of time.

These ten tracks follow pretty close to the formula of the band’s previous release, Highway to Hell, with a mix of bluesy guitar played through sweet feedback and crunchy power chords, and a minimalist rhythm section, supporting the powerful wailing of the lead vocals. What’s different about this album is that the tracks are all a bit closer in consistency, while HtH had a few outstanding hits (“Highway to Hell,” “Girls Got Rhythm”), with tracks that dragged on a bit (“If You Want Blood”) and those that were simply lethargic (pretty much everything else.) I don’t know if the band had a lot of better ideas going into the studio, or if there was some kind of meeting, or if they observed this stuff after years of playing live, but this was the one album where they really got their shit together.

Let’s face it: you don’t listen to AC/DC because you want a history lesson, or because you want to see how many scales Angus Young can play in three seconds. AC/DC is a party band; they’re a lifestyle band. They drink Jack Daniel’s like you drink water, they close down bars every night, they have women in every port of the world, and just the sound of any one note on this album will instantly conjure the image of rough bars, rougher men, and even rougher women. And anywhere you go in America, or Australia, or anywhere else in the world, and you see someone in an AC/DC shirt working on their car, you know that guy is cool. You know when someone puts one of these tracks into a jukebox, it’s time to order another pitcher a beer and say “hell, yeah.” AC/DC is an instant summary of a whole unsummarizable lifestyle, and this album is the apex of that functionality. Every song here was written as a testament, in the same sense that the bible was written as a testament to God. It’s a work that spreads its message to all who are willing to receive it.

The album starts with the slow and sinister “Hells Bells,” a first-person tale of the guy who brings in the dead. I don’t know whether or not this was some conceptual thought having to do with Bon Scott’s death, or whether it’s just a cool way to draw people into a good album, but the song keeps slow and steady. It’s our first chance to hear Johnson’s pipes in action, and he’s got some volume and clear tone, although he shares that same bluesy, bottle-of-Jack-a-day tone that his predecessor had. On “Shoot to Thrill,” the band slowly brings it up a notch, to a nice idle-speed rumble, with Brian hitting some higher notes, and singing the infamous “too many women/ and too many pills,” as the song clicks along. It’s showing AC/DC in its normal state, like a Mercedes engine that always jumps to life on the first turn of the key and then smoothly chugs at 650 RPMs all day long. Part of the charm of the band is that over the years, they’ve written hundreds of songs, but most of them are the same song. It’s got the same drum beat, the same solos in the same places, and even more amazingly, they’re all good. The consistency of the band is its truly lovable quality, and a lot of the base for their future success is on the style and structure of the songs on this album.

There are a couple more songs that are similar yet still thoroughly enjoyable, like “What Do You Do For Money Honey,” “Givin the Dog a Bone,” and “Shake a Leg.” In the ultimate tribute to Bon Scott and his alcohol-related death, they wrote “Have a Drink on Me,” the ultimate drinking song. It’s also interesting, because it goes into a final repeat verse that’s faster and more powerful, showing the band can seriously hit the nitrous and add some boost to their power-chord formula when they need to get it to eleven at the end of a tune.

The title cut is also a big testament that the band’s still alive and here to stay. It’s a classic rock anthem, strutting through the music and screaming out the lyrics, with some absolutely classic soloing in between. They also got a lot of mileage out of the song “You Shook Me All Night Long”, which is forever associated with this album and used in commercials and movie trailers to this day. And the last song, “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” is a great salute to all of us who listen to loud stereos, starting with a slow guitar riff and continuing at a mid-speed march. It’s like a power ballad, except the lyrics aren’t syrupy, and it’s about more than just some anonymous woman, it’s about rock and roll itself.

There’s only one minor flaw with the album, being the slow-paced “Let Me Put My Love Into You.” It’s not a horrible song, but it breaks up the pace of the album. Without it, the other nine songs fit together perfectly. If you listen to it out of context and by itself, it’s got a decent melody during the verse, but the chorus is a little goofy. Aside from that, the album is pretty much flawless. It’s a big step above their earlier bluesy work, and everything after this point is just imitating the classic. This album is a must-have, and when I rent a car and I have to stop at a K-Mart or a Wal-Mart to pick up a handful of CDs for the trip because I didn’t pack music, this is always the first thing I buy.

Rating: 9.5

Back in 2002, David Lee Roth came up with the idea to make a feature-length collage of music video and reality-type surreal TV, and spent about a million dollars of his own money doing it. The video went out to all of the big names in the music and TV industry, with the hopes that, on the heels of The Osbournes, Dave would get some sort of new reincarnation of Dave TV, but with more money. Instead, the people in the industry all simultaneously thought “what the fuck is this guy smoking?” and passed on the idea. There was talk of a DVD, maybe sold only from his web site, but nothing happened.

I never even heard about any of this, until I was cruising around and saw that bootlegs are available from your less reputable and out-of-the-way tape traders. I managed to snag a dub of the tape on VHS for only $4 plus shipping, so I figured I had nothing to lose, right? Riiight.

Do you remember back in the 80s, when those huge VHS camcorders became popular enough that some dude on your block had one, and you used to pretend to be friends with him so you could film dumb shit and imagine that an hour’s worth of footage of household produce getting flushed down your toilet would someday make you the next Marty Scorsese, or even better, George Romero? And then, when you had a party and this dude brought the camera, you’d set it up and everyone would do reeeally funny shit, like fake falls off the couch and talk with their mouth full and act like they were on MTV or something? Well, basically David Lee Roth has done the same thing in this video, but instead of a six-pack of Haams and a Little Caesar’s pizza, let’s just say his tastes are a little more, um, esoteric.

For starters, Dave’s got the women. That includes playmate Victoria Fuller and the Dahm triplets, also playmates. (If triplets are playmates, does that mean they are collectively one playmate, so like Erica Dahm is 1/3 a playmate, or would you say they are each a playmate, and collectively they are the miss December 1998s? I don’t know.) Anyway, there are models. There are also dwarves, or I guess they are now called little people, and there are guys dressed up as SWAT commandos, and rednecks, and lots of pirates, and Mexican dudes dressed in Hawaiian gear, and ninjas, and a lot of other shit. It’s basically like if you got a 12-year-old boy with a lot of money to direct a P. Diddy video, after he took a pound of mescaline.

There is no real theme here. It opens with Roth doing Kung Fu with a sword in Seattle at six in the morning, running down the street and doing high-kicks and splits and whatnot. Then it melts into a weird montage of him running around, the Dahm twins in either incredibly attractive (catwoman, skin-tight suits, hula girls) or disturbing (pregnant trailer trash, some kind of rabbit thing) outfits. The dwarf (sorry, “little guy”) runs around, and Dave breaks into Spanish when he’s not singing, unless audio from a porn tape is spliced in. The camera work is very jerky and all over the place, so much so that it would make an MTV Real World cameraman reach for the Dramamine. Colors are saturated and weird and acidic, and the sets range from cardboard to “why did he spend money on that?” mixed with stuff at his giant Pasadena house, where almost everything is filmed.

These aren’t music videos per se; it’s not a collection of VH1-ready clips from his last album, as much as it is him and his band running through songs in the background as the action is going on. Some songs are from previous albums, and sound good; some are really strange cover tunes, 70s stuff including a Beatles song and I think some BTO, along with Edgar Winter. When he gets bored of a number or a tune, it simply stops and it goes into something else. Between bits, Roth either be-bop improvises some weird raps or just goes off on a transcendial vocal riff in which he sells an imaginary product to an imaginary alien audience on the 17th dimension.

It’s really hard to sit and watch this tape, at least without some kind of mind-altering substance. This is so fucked up, it makes Crispin Glover’s most avante-garde filmwork look as conventional as an episode of Happy Days. If you have no tolerance for DLR, you won’t make it ten seconds into this thing. If you play it in the background, it’s weird. You will barely make it through the whole thing, but then wonder if maybe you should watch it again. If you get a copy with director’s commentary, it’s actually a much better film, only because Diamond Dave has no attention span, and he randomly yells out stuff like “WE WERE GONNA SHOP THIS PART OUT TO BURGER KING, BUT THEY SAID IT WASN’T PATRIOTIC ENOUGH” or “WE HAD AN OPEN CASTING CALL FOR CATWOMAN, AND INVITED BACK EVERYONE.” Then when he does some karate kicks and swings around his sword, he gets really serious and explains exactly what year of Japanese history influenced his form or something. I personally would pay any price to have Dave add commentary to somebody else’s movie.

So, neat stuff, but not for anyone. I’ve gotta wrap this up so I can make a sword out of my shower curtain rod and practice my dojo-mojo now.