Watch Your Ears and Save Your Neck We Are Back to Our Second Attack!

Dwelving into Metal Enterprises territory with another review, "Watch Your Ears And.." uhhh...just forget it. I'm not going to reference the title of this album not even once on this review, because it's long as hell. Anyway, this is the second album released by Teutonic heavy metallers Show No Mercy. Allegedly, the title was stolen straight from the lyrics of a song written by fellow ME band Crossfire. Speaking about plagiarizing, the lineup of this LP is rumored that it was hired by Ingo Nowotny, the owner of ME as part of his metalploitation scheme, therefore, it contains no members from the Steelbreed album. Considering this album however, whereas most of ME's metalploitation follow-ups were dog turds, (hm hm Killer Fox hm hm Thrash Queen) this one's actually a valiant studio effort with some talented musicians involved.

First of all, Michael Cloud is without a doubt, a vocalist who cannot be ignored. He sounds like Terry Glaze from the I Am The Night sessions, on steroids. Seriously, he must have had incredible stamina to scream his ass off on almost every song without sounding neither like an old lady nor like Rob Halford trying to sing "Painkiller" in the modern era. While the high notes are Michael's forte, there are very few displays of his lower register. Thus, his singing technique becomes very repetitive in the entire album with close to zero versatility. The 'Cherokee' part from "Indian Nightmare" (Which is one of the few vocal parts that aren't sung in falsetto) and the chorus of "Russians" are effin' great and memorable nonetheless. Returning on the downside, is it just me or does Michael sound off for the most part, in the Led Zeppelin cover?

Αs far as the rest of the musicians' contribution goes, they do fine. There are some cool guitar parts here and there, such as the 'Thunderstruckish' intro of "Power Of Evil" or the cool melodies played on the same song. While the song does drag on for too long, it's catchy as hell and it will be over before you know it pleasantly, much more like how time used to pass fast when some of you went to the waterslides when you were still "seeds". The lead guitar work is also pretty decent, not sloppy at all, with lots of unique shape variations and is generally much more preferable than the uninspired, 10-second solos the same guitarist, Simon wrote for AOR band Break Point, which was also signed on Metal Enterprises. Nevertheless, The rest of the instrumentation is decently played but without anything noteworthy to pinpoint.

As a final mention, the arrangement of Focus' "Hocus Pocus" is not as bad as the Led Zeppelin cover (which is sung only with falsetto), but still, the yodeling is executed sort of 'intermittently' and the head voicings are very breathy. But nonetheless, it was an above-average performance by ex-Burning Vision vocalist Peter Swoboda. And now, for the end of my review, I'd like to comment on the rarity of the album. You can only find an official release on LP format on Discogs for around thirty dollars, so you could say it's not that expensive and all the die-hard collectors won't become desperate in seeking it. Also, apart from the songs I mentioned previously, the other original compositions sound pretty cheesy and are definitely forgettable.

Highlights:
"Power Of Evil"
"Hocus Pocus"
"Indian Nightmare"