Metal Dreams

Vol. 3 (Nuclear Blast)
by Scott Hefflon

I panned Vol. 2, saying it made me wanna wash afterwards, so I’m pleased to be consistent (for a change) and dislike this volume as well. As one who somehow survived the whole lighter-waving thing of the late ’80s (“Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” and various unfortunate tunes by The Scorpions, Bon Jovi, Skid Row, and most of the latter-day glam fags whose names I’ve undergone gallons of therapy to forget), not to mention the mid-’80s when feathered-haired “rockers” like Bryan Adams and Richard Marx were your non-Bobby Brown choices if you wanted to hook up with the tipsy, kinda metal chick at the high school dance, hell, I can barely finish this sentence, much less this CD!

I’m an admitted speed freak (the verb, not necessarily the drug), and while Goth metal tickles my brooding dark side, I’m just not a fan of ballads and don’t wanna hang out with anyone who is. Some of the selections here are kinda dismal and sexy, but the majority is squealing falsetto fruitcake bullshit. Most of the world has gotten over chuckling at “hair ballads” and anyone stuck in a timewarp badly enough to still need a fix can call in the next ten minutes to some not-available-in-self-respecting-stores late-night cable offer with their credit card ready, and that’s the way it oughtta be.

A few bands here are otherwise quite good and would be forgiven a brief skip to the girlie side on their own albums, especially if the tunes before and after kicked up some dirt and snarled all manly a bit more than usual. Bands dreaming of when poser songs like this would get ya laid as well as laughed at: Hammerfall, Amorphis, Helloween, Stratovarious, Anathema, Primal Fear, Crematory, Nightwish, Narnia, Orphanage, Iced Earth, Lacuna Coil, The Gathering, Paradise Lost, Nevermore, Opeth, Orphaned Land.
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