Mace, Cryptic Slaughter, and Crimson Glory

Hail! Welcome to this first Metal Night posting. Basically, me and my friend Chris get together every Monday and listen to metal albums while drinking liquor. Metal Night is so much fun, and so much good music is listened to, that I decided keep a record of our findings. It's a chance to for us aging hipsters lay back and be non-ironic metal heads together, since most of our other friends are not about the metal.

Anyhoo, tonight we listened to Cryptic Slaughter, Crimson Glory, and Mace. We usually have a theme going. Tonight was punk metal night, with Crimson Glory being the darkhorse.


Mace-Process of Elimination-1984

Mace was a thrash metal/crossover band from Washington state. This was clearly the worst album of the night, sloppy musicianship and lack of focus marred what might have been a halfway decent thrash band, if the singer hadn't wanted to be The Exploited. The best songs reminded me of Battalion of Saints, making me think they would have been better off as a straight up hardcore band, instead of throwing metal riffs and leads all over the place. There were a few decent riffs, though. Oddly, the guitar player went on to produce albums by Alice In Chains and Blind Melon.

Crimson Glory-Transcendence-1988

The darkhorse of the evening, I turned Chris onto this band tonight. Crimson Glory were a prog metal band from Florida, and this is their best album. Many in prog circles consider this album a classic,and they are mostly right. The worst thing I can say about this album is that it is derivative of early Queensryche; but if you are going to rip off Queensryche, this is the way to do it. The guitars are sleek and majestic, the vocals souring, the songs epic and stirring, the musicianship second to none. This album came in a close second for us. I thought it petered out in the end. And it wasn't the absolute monster motherfucker that the next album would be.



Cryptic Slaughter-Convicted-1986

This is an amazing fucking album, a fast and ferocious classic of the 80's crossover genre, 30 minutes of pummeling. This was the winner of the night. Not exactly math metal, this band's strength is in tight and extremely fast execution of it's three chords and hardcore rhythms, all with a thrash feel. Chris got pretty excited about this band, which he had never heard before. He did three back flips in his frantic hesh frenzy.

Well, that's all until next week. Devil horns and all that.