Loss For Words - Prey (1989) LP Death/Metal Blade

Thrash bands in the late 1980's seemed to come out of nowhere and every metal magazine of the day had tons of ads for thrash demo tapes and new LP's which almost totally usurped any other form of metal. Kinda like grunge only a few years later, labels reached out to sign almost everyone they could and lots of bands released one or maybe two records and faded into obscurity forever.

Loss For Words was definitely one of those bands. Formed in 1987, they were signed by Metal Blade/Death Records shortly there after and released their first and only full-length record in 1989, Prey. They disbanded in 1990 and this LP was there only official release.

Unlike psych and prog records of the 1970's, obsure thrash records don't really command huge premiums, which is a shame really as it wouyld keep alot of these bands in the sight lines of serious collectors.





That being said, Prey is a great album without the rarity attached. It's dense, crossover/thrash with fast, short songs and raw vocals. They aren't breaking any new ground, but deliver a stripped down, west coast thrash thing very well.

The CD has been rereleased and is pretty easy to find on Amazon. This LP copy was bought at Zion's Gate in Seattle, WA and looks like a copy of the original record with a 'Metal Blade Original '80's' tag on it - like it was backstck they dug up and rereleased as there are no changes to the artwork or the date of release on the back cover.

Sleep - Holy Mountain (1992) LP Earache Records/Kreation Records

It would be damn near impossible to explain just how much I love Sleep and just how much this album blew me away the first time I heard it. I can remember the first notes of the record, the lead in riff to "Dragonaut" with the airy punch of a tube amp on 10 and the fuzzy, deep, resonant tone of a thunderous monster awoken. It's a landmark recording for the stoner/desert rock genre, but it's also just a damn great album. It lacks the slow plodding of Electric Wizard and the growl of Bongzilla, but it is big on tone and simple, Sabbathy riffs.

This was sent in to Earache as a demo tape and they signed the band on hearing it and put it out as they got it - simple and rough and god damn beautiful.



The video for "Dragonaut" is awesomely representative of the band, with its black-and-white presentation and jamming-in-a-garage esthetic. Everyone is so into their own thing, I'm not sure if anyone even looks at the camera.

The rest of the record is also stellar, with the standouts for me being "The Druid", "Aquarian", Holy Mountain" and "Inside the Sun", but really, every track is fantastic with Matt Pike and Al Cisnero's thunderous tones and Chris Haikus' incredibly varied and hammering drums.



"Aquarian" is a great representation of Sleeps simple, pounding riffs and kiiller tone, spaced-out vocals and definite Sabbath leanings. It's one of my fav's on the record and one of their best live - especially as its a good, slow headbanging track, perfect for the stoners and a great relaxing to just chill hard to with some heavy rock.



You could probably tell that I'm a huge fan of Sleep from the fact that I have a separarte blog dedicated to the live bootlegs which I have been collecting for sometime. There's a few tracks from this period on the live boots that were never released on an original studio LP and its a damn shame as they are truely killer tracks - "Hot Lava Man" and "Sonic Titan". Download the 10/17/1992 and 2/21/1992Gilman boots for both.

This version is the Kreation Records repress that came out in 2007 which I picked up from Zion's Gate Records in Seattle, WA - home of Kreation Records! They also had a vinyl copy of Sleep's Volume One album for something like $150 - which I had to pass on, but damn, it's seriously tempting...

Nuclear Assault - Game Over (1986) LP Combat Records

In 1989, I was 13 years old and got turned onto metal and early punk in equal doses, but really clicked with thrash and metal bands of the day. I watched Headbanger's Ball with abandon and me and my friends compared bands we discovered there and in Metal Maniacs, a great metal magazine of the day. Nuclear Assault released 1989's Handle With Care and produced a video for it with the band playing in front of an oil rig in the desert and that, along with the crushing sound of Dan Liker's bass made this album a must get for me. I bought it, got super into the band.

This is their first LP, 1986's Game Over, which is a searingly fast and direct thrash metal record. It's a great first record and its easy to see how Combat signed them after hearing a few of these tracks of their earlier demo tape. It's 13 tracks compacted into 33 minutes of sheer speed and aggression. The cover is as unrelenting and brash as the music with nearly day-glo colors and apocalyptic imagery and as a 13-year-old, I was drawn to it like afternoon cartoons after school.

As with a lot of cassettes I had back in the day, I listened to it religiously, but it never took over the top spot as Handle With Care became one of my favorite records.

There are a number of classic tracks here like "Live, Suffer Die", "Betrayal" and "Sin," all standouts and all excellent.



"Sin" is a great standout track and whenever I listen to it, I remember the whole of the genre and how fresh and exciting it was compared to glam metal and commercial metal. It really gave me a good understanding of the underground and how music not on the radio could still be amazing and moving, which was a bit of a revelation to a 13-year-old.


"Betrayal" is still one of my fav's on this record and its an anthemic piece, good for singing along with after some imagined slight, but mostly just awesome at anytime.



There's few times when I feel the need to have three youtube links, but I couldn't leave off " Hang The Pope," a Liker vocalized track and a humorous mid-album excursion and one of those songs that always seemed to make it onto a metal comp cassette you'd make for a friend.

Bought at Laurie's, which just goes to show they are the kings of having just about anything in their New Release bin.

Possessed - The Eyes Of Horror (1987) EP Relativity/Combat Records

For a band who only released three records - 1985's Seven Churches, 1986's Beyond The Gates and this stellar EP - Possessed made a huge impact on the death/thrash/crossover scene in the 1980's. They have been referred to as the first death metal band by many, but I really feel like they did their own thing - combinding thrash with darker themes, using the raw skate punk/crossover sound as their platform, mixing it with great speedy riffs.

Possessed are much more melodic than their contemporaries, faster than Metallica and have a vocal edge that is super raw and gutteral, more akin to skate punk than metal.



As a kid, I was a huge fan of Possessed's Seven Churches and its super-rough production and fast-paced thrash. I actually had this record on cassette along with Beyond The Gates and didn't really gell with it. Coming back to it later in life, I find that this is easily my favorite of their releases.

Unfortunately, the band broke up shortly after the release of this EP and three years later singer Jeff Becerra was shot and paralized from the waist down. They did reform in the early 1990's briefly and then disbanded again. Luckily for us, they are again reformed with Jeff who performs in a wheelchair, which does nothing to diminish the power of them live.

I got a chance to see Possessed last summer they just floored me. My fiancee Linda bought me the Seven Churches hoodie and bought herself a girly Possessed T with the logo in rhinestones. No shit. Awesome.

I highly recommend any fans of death metal and early thrash to check this out. It's a bit cleaner in terms of production than Seven Churches, but damn powerful.

Helloween - Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part 1 (1987) LP Noise International

There are few records I have listened to as much as this one, though I originally owned it on cassette, like most music I owned in the 1980's. It's an amazing record, somewhere between Iron Maiden and Metallica, melodic, but fast, hard-hitting but fun. They are criminally over looked and this record, along with Part 2, is some of their best work.

When I was about 13 or 14, I saw the video for 'I Want Out', a melodic metal anthem with a very Maiden-like triumphant chorus. It summed up my early teenage discontent perfectly and I went out and bought that EP, which started a love affair with Helloween. The EP was a live EP and so I tracked down their LP's - most notably this record and Part 2 as well. Both are anthemic and exciting, positive and electric. At a time in my life when I was more interested in the Misfits, Minor Threat and Ministry for their anger and directness, Helloween became the pick-me up when things got me down. At the time, among my group of friends, thrash was king, punk right behind and we laughed at bands like Maiden and their old-school melodic output, listening to bands like Coroner, Forbidden, Destruction, SOD, Metallica, DRI, Slayer and Anthrax for their hardcore thrash and fresh take on metal. But, Helloween always stayed in my listening rotation, even though I didn't pass the cassettes around to my friends, knowing that they would turn it off as soon as they heard the high vocal tones, keyboards and orchestral openings to each album. That didn't stop me from absolutely loving this band though.



The above youtube link is for the intro track and the first cut on the record, 'I'm Alive', a true melodic metal classic. The playing is virtuosic and just mind-blowing. It's a perfect representation of what this band can do, operatic vocals, soaring, technical guitars and such a fast, driving song you just feel like going out and taking on the world. At least I always do when I hear it.



'Future World' is a side 2 cut, one of my favorite from their entire catalog. Such a tremendous track and again, so triumphant and fun, its hard not to want to sing along. It also highlights their fantasy/sci-fi leanings for lyrics and album themes, if the wizard on the cover of the album didn't already key you into that fact...

This band will always be close to my heart and mean more to me than any of their melodic metal counterparts, like Maiden. They made an intense impact on me and I still love this band like few others.

I found this record and a new favorite record store on my last trip to Seattle at a shop called Zion's Gate, which sounds like a head shop and half of the store is dedicated to Reggae and dub, but the other half is metal, which seems like a strange mix, but the owner is also the owner of Kreation Records, a metal label and the very label that repressed Sleep's 'Holy Mountain' to give you some idea of their street cred. I bought something like $300 in metal records and cd's when I was there and it is an absolute must-visit if you are in Seatown.