BATTALIONS OF FEAR

Battalions of Fear ? 1988 (2/5) 8 ? Best Song: I don't particularly care. Is this some poorly enunciated joke? Am I to take this band seriously? Oh, the world of metal could be a very unforgiving place in the late 1980's. On one hand you had the immaculately processed MTV-ready radio pop metal with hair as big and teased as the guitars were neon and all that pallid gimmickry. On the oter hand you had the chunkachunka bullshit swords and sorcery speed metal movement, which I guess was a way of both rebelling from Metallica and stealing from them at the same time. I won't say which is worse, suffice to say that Poison sucks and so does Hammerfall. Blind Guardian though, here's a band with real potential to suck a lot of ass right from the beginning. Not only are they a group of hairy nondescript dudes from Sweden or some country?do I look like a globe? But they're so enthralled by the writings of Tolkien that they decided to make the Lord of the Rings their spiritual influence. Now I don't know how you feel about the Lord of the Rings. I've read the trilogy, seen the films, read the Hobbit, and hate all of it with a passion. I'm setting them up for a pretty nasty biting aren't I? I won't do that, instead I'll ask you, looking at their first album, Battalions of Fear (oh boy, be afraid!), looking at songs like 'Majesty' and 'Guardian of the Blind', can you tell me exactly what it is that they're adding to the world of music, or even the world of metal, other than another boring excuse to play music very loud? From the doublebass- doublebucket thump drumming (almost sounds mechanical), to the vocalist's godawful impersonation of a snarling Rob Halford, to the guitars and their thrashy roots (complete with skittle doddle scale solos a la the worst of power metal), what is it that we've never seen before? Oh that Hansi fellow's so off tune it's nauseating. This is the kind of material that makes me resent an entire group of people. If it weren't for some of the solos being really surprising, I'd never have given something like this the time of day.