In the Company of the Gods

A real disinterred obscurity is this one. In The Company Of Gods, this Cleveland, Ohio band's sole output was originally released on CD only in 1992, re-released on CD in 2010 with 3 bonus tracks from related project Prodigy, and now for the first time on vinyl with 4 completely unreleased bonus tracks. So wildly different are these bonus tracks from the album proper that I'd like to give them proper consideration at the end because as far as the original 31 minute release is concerned, there is very little good to speak of.

Pure Underground have done a great job of dressing this up with the excellent new cover artwork that does justice to the Egyptian mythological theme of the lyrics, and as the spacey intro track fades into the proto- Symphonic Metal of “Graveyard Of The Dragon” it momentarily seems like there might have been something of quality unearthed here. It sounds jarring and unpolished, which is unfortunately unsuitable for the style but probably a result of the fact this was a self-released album in a time when Traditional Metal was at it's nadir and Amon-Ra were attempting something that wouldn't become commonplace for several years. For the Metal parts there is a big dose of Fates Warning as well an proggy inventiveness to the vocal lines, but the illusion that this might have been a gem of long lost groundbreaking Power Metal is quickly dispersed.

“Forever” is a frankly awful ballad sub-par even for the standard of the 80's Hair Metal gods with whose hit it shares its title and further cracks form when the seemingly complete lack of mixing and mastering starts to show. Low budget production could have been overlooked if the rest of this album tread the same sort of path as the opening track, and as said before was probably unavoidable given the circumstances of the band in their brief history. For attemtping to rehash musical ideas 5 years past their sell-by though the lifeless production here is wholly inadequate. The guitars are buried in the mix, the drums sound barely real at times and the mid-tone vocals are flat, powerless and should in no way be the most prominent feature on this display. On this track in particular it is so bad that it is actually better to listen to at a quiet volume.

“Middleground” sounds like the montage music of some long-forgotten 80's high school movie made by a Fisher Price keyboard whilst the pointless, nonsensically titled and overly long interlude of “Seasons Of May” and wetter than even before low-point “When The Glitter Fades Away” are similarly terrible efforts, questionable even as to whether they can be called Metal or not. Pure Underground call this “Traditional US Metal for open minds”- but if anything having a closed mind to all the irreparable problems about this album is the only way to be able to enjoy it. The final 2 tracks of the album “As The Mirror Cracks” and “Cloak And Dagger” give some hope that this might have been rescued by a decent remastering job, but really is there any cure for a performance so flacid, a singer so lifeless and a band that from what I can tell seemed to be just one man (guitarist and lead songwriter Byron Nemeth) having delusions of grandeur played out by a group of hired guns?

When it comes to the unreleased songs “Garden Of Eden” is so different from what has come before that it could even be a completely different band. The playing is still juddering and shoddy in places, but the mixing is far more balanced, the vocals hit some powerful high notes and most importantly of all, it is authentically Metal. “On The Shore” continues the attempted rescue mission with it's Warlord-like gallop before there is more idiosyncratic Hair Metal balladry in the form of “She's My Lady”, this time a la Whitesnake. Last of all “Long Overdue” is an interesting experiment in what Queensryche may have sounded like if they had have kept their heaviness post-Empire but the title pretty much sums up the sentiment at the end of this listening experience. After 53 minutes it's hard not to be glad that this is over.

The awkward length is another issue as it means that tracks 1 through 7 are crammed onto side 1 of the record whilst the last track of the original 31 minute release sits incongruously alongside the unreleased stuff on the other. Releasing this as a DLP would incur the same problem as the much-needed expensive remaster job (and that new artwork doesn't look cheap either), but all the same would it not have made more sense to have the album as originally intended and the far superior (“She's My Lady” aside) bonus tracks on a separate slab of wax? Whilst we're going down that route, was their really any need to re-release an album so poor at all, especially when there is no sought after first vinyl pressing going for $$$ on ebay, anyone who has a CD copy will probably pay you just to take it off their hands and Byron Nemeth has the mp3s on his website for free? The only thing I can hear on here worthy of being re-released are 3 of the 4 bonus tracks, and those could've been done as a separate EP. If you can find these songs online to check out first you may want to pick this up to have those, or maybe even just for the sake of US Power Metal completism. Otherwise this whole thing is an unmitigated failure. [2/10]

From WAR ON ALL FRONTS A.D. 2013 zine- www.facebook.com/waronallfronts