These days, it’s a great time to be a metalhead. Correction: These days, it’s a great time to have been a metalhead. Preferably 20 or 25 years ago. Because if that’s your frame of reference for what heavy metal means, you’ve gotta be loving the tidal wave of bands who feel exactly the same way. The “Golden Era” was that beautiful point in time when Priest and Maiden ruled above all, and upstarts like Metallica and Slayer were beginning to change the game. It was right before the hair bands sucked all the credibility out of the genre, and grunge sucked all the life out of it. Metal enjoyed legitimacy, commercial success and, most importantly, an incredibly diverse underground.
Stockholm-based Grand Magus synthesize a good number of elements from that Golden Era underground, but are unique in their unbalanced devotion to the sound of monitor-mounters like Manowar and Maiden. There’s no modular thrashiness here; Iron Will is all bruisingly heavy rock, infused with grandiosity and full-throated vocals. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering that Grand Magus is headed up by JB Christofferson (Spiritual Beggars), a man who has essentially been keeping the flame alive for the hard rock part of the NWOBHM equation for the past decade. Still, this power trio succeeds on far more than nostalgia, proving that it’s possible to evoke metal’s golden age without shamelessly aping it.
Standout Tracks: “Silver Into Steel,” “Like the Oar Strikes the Water”
First appeared June 2008 in Blurt.
Buy this CD at Amazon.com.
Categories: CD reviews · Jason's favorites · Music
Tagged: blurt, grand magus, metal
Oh, to be a band rescued from obscurity by a preeminent reissue label like Fallout, only to have your legacy be defined by the accomplishments of another band. Such is the case with West Coast roots-rock ensemble Yellow Hand. The sextet must have been supremely confident in the potential for success of this, their only record. Released in 1970 – at the very height of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s fame – Yellow Hand could claim that half of its songs were written and demoed by Stephen Stills and Neil Young for Buffalo Springfield, but, at the time, never previously released… by anyone.
What machinations of Hollywood fate that led to these guys lucking into these songs is anyone’s guess now, but needless to say, Yellow Hand failed to capitalize on their coup. They did, however, do the “lost Buffalo Springfield songs” (as well as an un-lost Delaney and Bonnie song) justice. While never nailing the warm, harmonic heights of Stills, Young and Richie Furay, the four singers in Yellow Hand do an admirable job. The folksy elation of cuts like “We’ll See” sound like what they are – Buffalo Springfield leftovers – but the Yellow Hand originals like “Home” tend to a warmer, more rustic vibe that’s surprisingly fully-formed for a group that had to rely on other people to write more than half of their first record.
Standout Tracks: “We’ll See,” “Down to the Wire”
First appeared June 2008 in Blurt.
Buy this CD at Amazon.com.
Categories: Uncategorized
