LORDS OF THE TRIDENT – Death or Sandwich
(2009 Self-Release)
Lords of the Trident kick ass. Their songs are good. Their album is adequate. The production is pretty poor. But don’t let my bland use of adjectives define this band. They fucking rock. The guitars wail. The falsetto screams are hilarious. The lyrics are intense and silly. Again, these are just more inadequate adjectives. When you roll all of this into a metallic amalgam of epic proportions, the truth is unequivocally clear. Lords of the Trident kick ass.
Perhaps I should have seen this ass kicking coming before I even hit play. Even after the first couple songs on Death or Sandwich I wasn’t convinced. But as I let the metal wash over me, it became clear that threads of Dio and Iron Maiden wove themselves through the chainmail of hard rock antics with all the audacity and none of the pretense. For fuck’s sake, the song titles alone will kick you in the face and spit on your wussy little body. It opens with “The Robot’s Revenge” with all the understated charm of Ironman melded with a bit of Kilroy thrown in for good measure. Then there are “Cliffs of Desolation”, “Rapeshore” and even “Evil Heights”.
But as unequivocally awesome as all of these titles are, not to mention the brutal metal they concoct, they all pale in comparison to the heady and unruly “The Barbarian Horde”, which in this mere mortal’s humble opinion is the apex of this collection of rock ‘n’ roll fury. “In the fortress of power atop the demon spire, the barbarian went berserk and threw his sex slave in the fire. In the wake of the rampage, the survivors made a vow. The barbarians drew their swords screaming, “Where is your God now?” Yeah. I know. It fucking rocks. But you haven’t even heard the balls out riffage, singer Fang VonKilenstein’s falsetto fury, and the nimble fingers of lead guitarists Asian Metal and Killius Maximus that rip at your pussy ears.
There are some unmistakable weaknesses here. Korgoth’s drums are way undermixed with the double kick getting lost in the mix. The vocals are overmixed and VonKilenstein’s delivery gets muddled in his falsetto craziness. A few of the tunes dwell a little too far in the hair metal route. “Heart in the Fire” may be a tongue-in-cheek laugh in the face of Poison’s “Fallen Angel”, but that doesn’t forgive the fact that they gave up kicking you in the teeth for almost five full minutes to sound like fucking Poison. I can take a joke just like the next guy, but we all know you guys can kick more ass than that. Think of all the metal fury that you could fit into those five precious minutes.
If I were lucky enough to find myself at a Lords of the Trident show, and believe me I will do all I can to get to one soon, none of these minor deficiencies would get in the way of my pumpin fists of Satan and the deep regret that I ever cut my long locks of hard rockin hair. If you don’t like to fucking rock, if you can’t handle the barbarian hordes, then step the fuck off. After all is said and done, as the motorcycle engine revs in the final tune “Street Lights”, the band says it all. “We’re so bad ass, no one can compete when we’re out on the street, no.”
One Comment
Eve Browning
January 24, 2010 at 3:52 pm