There are times that bands can amaze me. Although I have had the
\nfirst three albums from the hard rock quartet Slaughter in the
\nPierce Archives (what can I say, I’m a sucker for a sale), I’ve
\nnever been a big fan of the group. (I also admit I have not
\nlistened to these albums in years… this is one reason “The Daily
\nVault” was started: to force me to listen to things I hadn’t
\ntouched in a long time.)<\/p>\n
However, a recent trip to the used record store found me walking
\nout with a copy of Slaughter’s fourth album (third if you don’t
\ncount
\nStick It Live<\/i>),
\nFear No Evil<\/i>. And what I heard on these twelve songs, quite
\nfrankly, blew my mind. This was a band that had gotten their
\nmusical act together and had created a tight package that was not
\nafraid of taking chances. One fan site I checked out called this
\nSlaughter’s best release; I don’t have any disagreement with
\nthat.<\/p>\n
The band – vocalist\/guitarist\/keyboardist Mark Slaughter,
\nguitarist Tim Kelly (who was killed in a car crash earlier this
\nyear), bassist Dana Strum and drummer Blas Elias – have by no means
\nabandoned their hard rock roots. Instead, they have refined them,
\nas well as their chops, to create a fresh sound. One listen to even
\nthe first song on the album, “Live Like There’s No Tomorrow,” tells
\nyou that this is a different Slaughter than the one that cranked
\nout “Up All Night” and “Fly To The Angels”.<\/p>\n
Songs like “Get Used To It” (which still had a little more rock
\ncliche than I would have liked), “Let The Good Times Roll” and
\n“Outta My Head” all demonstrate the power Slaughter has had all
\nalong – a power better served with well-written material. (Even the
\n“spacer” pieces “Divine Order” and “Prelude,” are solid efforts,
\nand make you wish they had been longer to see how they
\ndeveloped.)<\/p>\n
The chances that Slaugher take on
\nFear No Evil<\/i> are where the band finds its greatest success.
\n“Searchin'” features Slaughter performing a vocal in an entirely
\ndifferent style. In fact, I preferred it over some of the yelping;
\nthis was much more soulful and moving. And although the keyboard
\npart on “It’ll Be Alright” sounds like it came right off of The
\nBeatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” it does add a new twist to
\nthe mix that ends up freshening up the flavor quite a bit.<\/p>\n
In one sense,
\nFear No Evil<\/i> is the perfect album for the Slaughter fan. But
\nstill, I would have liked to hear more songs (which would have
\nmeant possibly cutting the two “spacer” pieces”) and less cliche –
\nfor that matter, I would have liked to hear Kelly break the
\nboundaries of control and just cut loose with a guitar solo from
\nhell. There’s definite emotion in his playing, but I would have
\nliked a little more garlic to it, if you will.<\/p>\n
\nFear No Evil<\/i> faced two hurdles when it came out in 1995.
\nFirst, metal was – at least in the eyes of the industry – dead, and
\nno one seemed to want to promote it for fear of throwing money into
\nthe toilet. Second, many people didn’t take Slaughter seriously
\n(and some still don’t). Saying that Slaughter made a good album was
\nakin to saying that a television product actually worked. (On that
\nnote, I loved my Pocket Fisherman when I was growing up.)<\/p>\n
Let’s be honest: I bought this album on a whim; I was willing to
\ngive it a chance for two bucks. And in the end, it turned out to be
\na gamble that was well worth taking. Unfortunately for Slaughter,
\nnot many people were willing to take such a gamble. Two words: your
\nloss.
\nFear No Evil<\/i> showed a lot of growth in the band, and was a
\nsurprisingly solid and powerful release from a band that earned the
\nright for your attention. It’s enough to make me willing to give
\nthose earlier albums another chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7429],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-39307","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-slaughter","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39307"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}