BLUE CHEER: THE BEAST IS... BACK (1984)
1) Nightmares; 2) Summertime
Blues; 3) Ride With Me; 4) Girl Next Door; 5) Babylon; 6) Heart Of The City; 7)
Out Of Focus; 8) Parchment Farm.
A little research shows that it is not
altogether correct to talk of a Blue Cheer breakup — more like several extended
vacation periods. Various incarnations of the band did function in 1974, 1975,
1978-79, and 1983, with Dickie as the only permanent link; none of them,
however, succeeded in landing any record contracts, which is why, for many,
this vinyl resurgence in 1984 appeared as a complete surprise — a feeling that
the band further enhanced with the appropriate title. (Which, upon subsequent
re-releases, was cheesily changed to The
Megaforce Years, after the name of the label to which they were signed at
the time).
In any case, the title alone clearly announces
vengeance — no sissy-hussy roots-rock shite for the good old fans, this is
going to be «The Beast» all the way through. The track list does not look too
promising, though: half of the songs are re-recordings of old classics from Vincebus and Outsideinside, which is usually not an auspicious sign — what good
is a comeback, after all, if you have not managed to write more than four new
songs in thirteen years?
Expectations drop down even lower, though, once
you hear the first notes of the record and see how the band tries to catch up
with the times. In 1984, if you were a veteran of the
bang-your-head-against-the-wall aesthetics and wanted to impress the kids, you
had basically two routes to choose from — thrash metal and glam metal («New
Wave metal» was more of a British thing), and guess which one those guys had
taken. Nothing against Dickie Peterson, or the original drummer Paul Whaley,
making a triumphant return in style; but the band's resident guitarist, Tony
Rainier, is a Van Halen-influenced B-grade hack, in command of a suitably nasty
tone but thoroughly relying on cocky pop-metal clichés, well-tested and
over-abused on Sunset Strip for several years already.
To be more precise and polite, we have all
heard worse than that, but still, was it really worth coming back to let us
hear a Def Leppard-style re-recording of ʽSummertime Bluesʼ? Maybe it seemed
like fun at the time to try that old stuff with new production values and
improved technique, but thicker layers of distortion/fuzz and flashy
high-pitched lead trills/arpeggios were so commonplace at the time that it is
impossible to look back on that stuff without irony — where Vincebus Eruptum, with all its flaws
and potential negative influence on the evolution of hard rock, was still an
innovative, daring breakthrough, The
Beast Is Back prompts just one inevitable question: But Who Gives A Damn
This Time?
The new songs, however, are not at all bad.
Once you get past the production clichés, three of them have solid pop-metal
chorus hooks (particularly ʽHeart Of The Cityʼ, where Dickie manages to convey
the «lethal insanity» atmosphere of being sucked into the whirlpool of city
life), and one (ʽRide With Meʼ) does a good job at gradually building up
tension until they botch it with the lack of an adequately climactic
resolution. No masterpieces, but a decent bunch of snappy pop-metal anthems
that makes one wonder whether they really
needed to leave the rest of the album to useless re-recordings. In fact,
calling this «glam metal» would be quite inaccurate — the songs are influenced
by the commercial metal sound of the times, for sure, but they have none of
that unhealthy Sunset Strip hedonism (other than ʽGirl Next Doorʼ, I guess,
with beautiful lyrical lines such as "I'm gonna wait right here just to
get the right meat / ...get what I need from the girl next door" — and the
song is credited to Rainier, too).
Altogether — not a tragedy, but a relative disappointment,
although, come to think of it, any prediction-yielding model would have
probably guessed that, were these guys ever to reform, their first album would
look something like that: re-recorded
old chestnuts + glam metal production + a few nostalgic signs that hint at the
band's arrival from a distant past, rather than being a young artistic cousin
of Def Leppard. Giving it a thumbs up would be out of the question; putting it
down would be too unjust, because I really have nothing against most of the
songs, be they old or new ones. Proceed at your own risk.
Check "The Megaforce Years" (CD) on Amazon
"Proceed at your own risk."
ReplyDeleteHeart of the City has a more than decent riff, so the 80's style shredding doesn't bother me at all. Moreover the coda is all but stereotypal glamrock with that clever acceleration, forcing Rainier to pull off some non-trivial pyrotechnics quite non-typical for hair-metal. What puts me off is the annoying backbeat drumming. Why not some nice rolls?
This unfortunate "comeback" era actually did far more harm to the BC brand than the lame hippie/country crap of the immediate post-Stephens era. At least with that stuff, you could treat it as the work of another band entirely, since Peterson was the only surviving member of the original BC.
ReplyDeleteBut with this era of the group, you're forced to endure increasingly senile repetitions of the classic material, all the while witnessing the clueless and clumsy attempts at staying relevant by trying to cop some of Motorhead's bluesy biker metal vibe. While no one doubts the authenticity of Peterson's "street" persona, he sure ain't no Phil Lynott, much less Lemmy. Avoid at all costs!