USPM often varied between more stirring, violent tracks and darker themes on other tracks. Bands like Jag Panzer and Omen tended to write songs in each direction, with Jag Panzer for instance accompanying 'Ample Destruction' with tracks like 'The Watching' - albeit with both aspects sometimes more or less clearly figured. While they can still perhaps take slightly too much for granted in the darker tracks, or play on whatever the audience might vaguely associate with them rather than working atmospherically as such, it's still a promising direction. Bands that attempt USPM stylings generally go along these lines, albeit often less coherently, such as Ballistic or Fatal Violence, although in a sense these diverge in part due to being slightly less coherent among these aspects. Things like Tales of Medusa generally speaking just take the darker angle, and hence can be slightly partial, but still stand out in some ways. Generally, the violent tracks tend to be more personally identified, while the darker themes are identified with the external world or things outside, locations, etc., and hence it needn't be that much of a surprise to find that most tracks about females and whatever generally speaking identify them, as opposed to the singer, as slightly dark and so on. Bands like 'New Religion,' for instance, go in this kind of direction with tracks like 'Tainted Angel,' etc., with decent lyrics like, 'She couldn't stand the pain inside, but your soul is the price you pay,' although darker archetypes are more common. Their song 'World Gone Mad' is beset by usual problems of the darker songs, being unable to specify particularly what its problem with this world is and hence drawing on vague or popular associations which are 'of' this world anyway, but it does seem at least slightly self-concious of this. The call to 'believe' is also interesting for a band of that name, and suggests a more general theme, although not fully developed in their songs.
Bands like Adramelch go in a slightly similar direction to Tales of Medusa, although they are in the weird position of being a band that apparently likes the medieval era enough to base their band's thing on it, but still seem to have very little good to say about it. This can make it slightly disjointed, and they can be slightly all over the place. Due to the alien theme, the early Agent Steel might be one of the closest to the opposite pole of tending primarily towards the more stirring aspect, while the later, post-Cyriis band tended to just conflate them and were closest to more a thrash angle. This has some interesting products on their earlier albums, such as the biblically-relevant name '144,000 Gone' for an interesting apocalyptic themed track. Apollo Ra are also interestingly similar in 'Ra Pariah' - which takes a darker archetype and tries to turn it notably towards a more stirring angle, and hence withdraw from the world generally - and 'Bane of the Black Sword' is a fairly good example of a similar more stirring song, slightly qualified but nonetheless fairly exuberant. A lot of their other track are slightly more confused or basic, though. Cyperus are slightly more ambiguous, strangely, but nonetheless songs like 'Hot Dice' do try and bring this more violent aspect to bear in contrast to 'popular music' and the darkness associated with the world, and hence is in a sense a lot more 'progressive' than you might expect of the band. That song is quite special, really.
The lyrics:
Once I evoked the opposers
I knew the disease and its biteAre a fairly nice reference to the opening section. While the song is still not quite in one direction, as it were, it does manage to be more coherent than most.
Defender are also more focussed on the darker section, and hence for this among other reasons songs like 'City Ad Mortis' also resemble 'Tales of Medusa' in some ways, and also give a better take on the subject of Iron Maiden's 'Hallowed be thy Name,' for instance, while integrating the religious aspect in a slightly interesting way. That said, they can at times be slightly mild, which makes their lines about 'burning the palace down' and 'shining blades of metal,' etc., or 'Deadly Peril,' come across as at times slightly out of place or lacking the correct context to be consistent musically. Lyrics like 'You just talk, I hear no sound,' are still quite good. Riot, on 'Thundersteel,' for instance, do identify in some ways with the more stirring element, but nonetheless often seem to want to portray things as dark, but generally come off as if they can't portray anything as dark although they really want to. As such, when they do go negative, it can be pretty harsh, as with identifying the apocalypse as a 'crimson storm' while discussing how God will make them 'pay for their sin.' Nonetheless, this still ends up slightly limited or vague due to the overall tendency there, and hence it generally speaking comes across as slightly different from the darker themes of other bands in related genres, while still more of a USPM direction than the Euro-power one of much 'speed metal'-related bands. Songs like 'Tokyo Rose' are also quite bitter and cynical, in a way, although not that far from similar themes from bands like Great White at a similar time.
Anyway, so part of why this is slightly useful is to help place slightly 'strange' bands in terms of their general significance in the genre. For instance, the band Solar Eagle, with for instance the song 'Charter to Nowhere,' combine a highly progressive tendency with poignant lyrics such as the initial chorus, 'Take me away into the sky,' which works really well with the later, 'Charter to nowhere' choral segment, which is followed by again asking to be taken back into the sky. This also works well with the band's name. Generally speaking, part of why this works is, alongside a generally expected focus on the 'dark' element, the song looks through the various aspects of this 'darkness' looking for anywhere that allows them to escape it, which hence ends up with going beyond usual genre boundaries of this kind of style to pretty much span the general musical themes of the whole heavy metal genre and such. One of the possible problems with it is that it still stays within slightly unspecified categories as with the 'sky' section and 'can't you see,' and hence leaves a bit too much up to the audience, although its overall direction is clear. It's also quite a daring song title for such a determinedly obscure band. Stranger, from Germany, with songs like 'Broken Harmonies,' which has a slightly similar opening, are slightly more complex as well. While the song has certain similarities to 'Iron Tears' among other things, it also has some pretty nice, cynical lyrics like:
Love is a game of fall and rise
Every mistake has its own price
Take a look in the mirror's sad eyes
Wish yourself to fool's paradise
I hate this game of broken harmonies
Again and again I'm put back on my knees
Those games of broken harmonies
Broken hearts in broken harmonies.In general, while obviously they are drawing in some ways on the darker aspect of things, which they are 'identifying' with somewhat - not necessarily personally - in order to contrast this with something better, they also generally speaking use this as an opportunity to turn their knives as it were towards this situation or are quite casually critical of it in brief. Generally speaking, the reason why this band becomes more complex is by stressing this dark aspect to the point of positing a general contrast to it, such that they end up trying to draw on anything positive by contrast to this, and hence go beyond genre boundaries. This might be hard to keep up for long, however, in part because such an approach to things would generally draw significant approbation from the world, and hence the rest of their album can be slightly inconsistent, keeping up similar themes but slightly robotically as it were, and ends up slightly garbled when they try to return to genre conventions. The band Shiva also do something similar on the song 'Wild Machine,' although slightly differently, or they identify with the more violent and stirring aspects in some way, but then attempt to portray this as a more 'genuine' darkness or take control of or 'overthrow' the darkness of the world, but this is itself limited because it generally relies on taking up a 'character' in their case, and hence isn't necessarily organically connected to themselves or the band as they are and therefore unlikely to be kept up consistently along the record.
Quote:
I can't say exactly why but that Ballistic track didn't move me much at all.
That song is on the catchier and slightly vaguer side. Other than that, Ballistic do go into more specific and often elaborate themes, and often resemble 'Master Control.' Generally, if you like that album, you'd generally find something when it comes to Ballistic, especially on their harsher songs, unless you mostly like 'Master Control' for the sentimental aspects.