A few years ago when these guys were still called The Lord Weird Slough Feg a friend of mine was raving about them and urging me to check them out, but I never did because I thought their band name was ridiculous and I don't like ridiculous band names. Well, I don't think Slough Feg is that much better a name, but it's less ridiculous than The Lord Weird Slough Feg, and I have to say that with a little more work these guys would be an excellent heavy metal band. That's right: A heavy metal band. Finally, a band who can be called a heavy metal band in the classic sense and nothing more. I'm talking fist-pumping tempos and drum patterns, dueling guitar lines, a thrashy early-80's disposition to a lot of the rhythms, roughly sung vocals, and songwriting that's fairly memorable to boot. The disc is made up of 14 rather short songs, a number of which are instrumentals, but while I'd rather hear a more controlled number of longer and more explorative songs, these compositions are so tactfully succinct that the disc moves along at a great pace and never gets boring. So what is it that I think keeps them from already being an excellent heavy metal band? Well, they're close, make no mistake, but the recording needs some work, as do the performances in a few areas. Both of these issues are relatively minor concerning this particular outing, but nonetheless stack up enough to bother me in the long run. They definitely seem to be going for somewhat of a dated sound, and I have no quarrels with that, but a few elements need a little tweaking. Mainly I think the bass ought to be a bit louder and more defined to fill some of the gaps left by the dual guitar lines, and the vocals should possibly fall back in with the music a touch more. The guitar tone, however, needs a little more grit and fluidity. It doesn't need to be all that much thicker per se, the era of metal that they're largely drawing from isn't exactly known for crushing levels of distortion, but the current guitar tone highlights and exaggerates some of the little performance flaws. For example, most notably, check out the faster intro to "Climax of a Generation" and how choppy the playing sounds. A bit of that's due to a miniscule level of shoddiness in the playing that needs to be corrected, but I think the bulk of the problem stems from the nature of the guitar sound. There are a couple of other moments on the disc such as this, to varying degrees of severity, and it's enough to distract me and call for a slight change in order to fully benefit the songwriting. Amidst all of the classic metal there are definitely some dynamic shifts that bring in more of an atmospheric tinge to the lineage of the record. The title track is stripped down to mainly acoustic guitars and vocals, which actually proves the singing to be a bit stronger than might be suggested in some of the heavier tracks, and the acoustics return in folkier form with "Man Out of Time" later in the disc. "Curse of Athena" starts out with bass and a more dramatic vocal performance over some swelling guitar trills and certainly has that theatrical sort of Iron Maiden approach going on, which is something that sort of twists and turns throughout the album as it plays through and ebbs and flows across different energy levels. However, unlike Iron Maiden, known more for a lesser number of longer songs, Slough Feg's use of many shorter songs can actually create a bit of a hitch in the complete experience, especially later in the record. Take for example the absolutely classic metal stylings of "High Season V": At merely one minute this is just too damn short! Were it longer and more of a real song it could be a classic in the making! Instead it shifts too quickly into the strangely rocked out swagger of "Starport Blues", which clashes with the rest of the record in my opinion. The layout's not bad. I like a lot of the artwork that's been employed and the visual accompaniment looks consistent as a whole. Even though I'm not terribly interested, the lyrics are curious in that they stand on their own fairly well, but also tie together, with certain tracks sharing certain passages to correlate to one another and explore the larger concept dealing with primitive instincts and such (hence all of the caveman imagery). As stated earlier, this is a good record that doesn't get boring. It does, however, lack the force that I think the band would possess were they to simply write melodic heavy metal songs that were independent of one another. There are some really memorable choruses and generally powerful arrangements throughout this disc that, to me, speak volumes of the band's talent. So I actually really like some of this material a hell of a lot, but sadly a number of those little shortcomings add up to hold the record back in the end. I'll definitely be looking into some of the band's other material now, though. And who knows? Maybe their next record will really win me over. I can absolutely see why there are a lot of people out there who really appreciated Slough Feg's traditional brand of heavy metal.
[Cruz Del Sur]
Running time - 38:05, Tracks: 14
[Notable tracks: I Will Kill You/You Will Die, Hiberno-Latin Invasion, High Season V, Atavism II]
Cruz Del Sur Music - http://www.cruzdelsurmusic.com
