By Jim Rowland
In the vast history of heavy metal, there are of course plenty of bands that simply fell under most fans’ radar of metal at the time, leaving a small footnote in history. If they’re lucky, an album they left behind could one day be dubbed a ‘cult classic’, and labels such as Relics From The Crypt do the metal community great service by digging out these obscure lost treasures and giving them a second chance. One such band this applies to is Germany’s Mad Butcher. Forming in Essen in 1981, Mad Butcher were one of the first real metal bands in Germany to pick up sonic influence from the burgeoning NWOBHM movement and the early US metal scene of the early 80’s. Last year their 1985 debut ‘Lightning Metal Attack’ got a vinyl reissue, and a year later their second and final album, 1987’s the curiously titled ‘Metal Meat’, gets the same treatment.
Firstly, let’s just take a step back and ponder the true majesty of ‘Metal Meat’s cover, as it is truly a sight to behold. With the artist obviously taking the band’s name and the album title quite literally, here we have a clearly disturbed butcher inserting a Gibson Flying V into a meat grinder, and somehow miraculously producing actual meat (of metal) at the other end. And when he’s finished with the Flying V, there’s a good selection of Explorers ready and waiting too. I’m sold just on the cover to this, and for me as a big fan of metal of this era, it sums up the fact that heavy metal, certainly back then, didn’t always take itself too seriously; there was an important element of tongue in cheek humour to it. It’s fun – something that its miserable critics, who did look at it too seriously, missed completely. It’s still the case today.
So does the music it contains live up to my gushing praise of said cover? Not quite, but that’s not to say this is bad by any means, in fact it’s rather good. Forged from the steel of NWOBHM and speed metal influences, ‘Metal Meat’ contains ten high octane cuts that spew an avalanche of very decent pure metal riffery, clearly evident on tracks like ‘Remember’, ‘Freewind’, ‘Silhouette In Red’ and ‘Children Of Tomorrow’. One band this does remind me of a bit is Canada’s mighty Anvil, another band that fused the influence of NWOBHM with an early speed metal approach, especially on the instrumental ‘Machine’ which bears some resemblance to Anvil’s classic instrumental ‘March Of The Crabs’. They don’t quite match Anvil in terms of quality though.
Perhaps the strangest thing with Mad Butcher’s sound is the vocal, with vocalist/bassist Harry Elbracht not quite managing full-on singing, but almost talking the lyrics in a creepy German accent. It takes a bit of getting used to but after a few tracks actually becomes quite appealing.
‘Metal Meat’, along with the more lauded debut ‘Lightning Metal Attack’, would be a worthy addition to the collection of any old school heavy metal fan that likes to dig a bit deeper into metal’s illustrious past, and on the strength of this it’s fair to say Mad Butcher deserved a little more recognition than they got. Perhaps they’ll get it second time around.
- ‘Metal Meat’ is released tomorrow (Friday 17 December). You can get your copy HERE.
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