One Final Sin

“…children…the time is now to protect the world from what’s below…”

So my two friends and I are heading to see some bands at this place called Mingles somewhere on Rt. 35 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. It’s an all ages show, and I’m the only one old enough to drive, which makes me about 17. The band roster is a who’s who of nobodies, but the walk-up tickets are cheap, plus it beats driving around looking for trouble (or just something to do) on Saturday night in this lovely town. It’s still daylight when we roll up and I pull into the parking lot purposely blasting debut ep Sodom (‘cos I wanna be cool, y’know…why do I remember these things?). The lot’s fairly crowded with lots of high hair and rainbow spandex on both sexes, meanwhile we’re all decked out in our finest denim n’ leather thrashwear. We weren’t the majority by a long shot, and everything points to a sissy jamboree of glammy, butt-slap hard rock. Wonderful.

Two or three bands blow (and I mean blow) by rather unimpressively. The next band sets up. This guy that in my mind resembles a younger Bon Scott comes out with a mike and proceeds to hit the earwax-clearing high notes at the start of “Reincarnation”. The hair we’ve been desperately trying to grow blows back. The song hurls along in grand traditional style while Mike Dworkin’s clean, epic tenor bounces off every drop of youthful sweat in the joint. The song ends, and someone calmly shouts “it’s good to see the real metal bands finally showed up!”, and even the band laughs. It’s an endeared, photographic moment that lives in my brain, hopefully forever.

For some reason I failed to snag a demo on the way out. Who the hell knows why, but in pre-internet years later and through my bazillion underground contacts I finally got my mitts on this three-tracker (making sure it wasn’t one of the other Chalices, especially one particular band many people tried to pawn off on me as one and the same i.e. nay). It comes in the mail. My eyes sparkle, and all I could do is hope it’s a good as I remember. Foreboding piano creeps in the entrance of “The Seven Seas of Rhye” and as Dworkin’s regal lungs hold me in imperial sway, I raise the cassette case to the sky (the ceiling, actually) and shed the tiniest of tears.

As traditional as a crypt is creepy, the New Jersey quintet not only fended off the vaunted furry-booted glam attack, but valiantly held their ground against thrash’s unholy warriors, and as we all know, thrash hell was breakin’ loose in ’86. Songwriting and musicianship are the pillars holding up the demo’s blue sky, thought and skill etched all over them in a parallel language that had already been deciphered and painted by the likes of Omen, Manilla Road, Dark Quarterer (technically), Trouble, and even mighty Tyrant (US). We’ve got some great time-tested galloping rhythms that at times are played double-time for a quicker boot to the can.

Dworkin’s nourishing and mystically-echoed vocals are the highlight, striding majestically across the Bifrost Bridge between Omen's J.D. Kimball and Johan Langquist of early Candlemass and to the front of the production with unperturbed purpose, clarity of tone, and a daring flair for dynamic intonations, yet glinting with those lovable imperfections of the mid-trained. Songcraft travels well here, flooding “The Seven Seas of Rhye”, “Reincarnation” and “Egypt” with gallant choruses (like the one in TSSOR, which I adore), well-placed breaks, tempo transformations (like the moaned-in crawl in “Reincarnation”), fluent solos via Gregg Zubowicz, and an effortless panache for piecing things together.

Regrettably, Chalice was probably two or three years post prime for the style, not saying that all bands doing this in the mid/late ‘80s were given the cold shoulder, but success would’ve probably smiled a little wider on them in ‘83/’84 or sooner. Then again, in ’86 they were kind of a breath of April air, and I sure as hell woulda signed them, so who knows? One of my fave demos.

About a year later, Mingles burned to the ground, and as far as I know Great White had nothing to do with it.