If at First You Don't Succeed

The band’s flirtation with the word “success” has always perplexed me… provided that it was already featured on the debut album-title… I mean, were the guys hoping to cover themselves with fortune and glory with the couple of demos and singles they released before it? Or were they using this word in a less serious, semi-sarcastic way, something like “we couldn’t care less about success, unlike the other acts out there… we’re just out to have fun, first and foremost”…

whatever the truth here, it’s a fact that success, in its very literary sense, has been eluding the band ever since their inception as they never managed to place themselves on the very upper echelon of the metal circuit. Trying to find the right reasons for this has already become a most redundant pastime so we won’t waste any time in this direction but we’ll try to see how deserving the guys were/are to win at least an ant’s share from it.

The band founder and its main driving force, the guitarist Dan Lorenzo, put his offspring on the map fairly early, in 1978 to be very precise, and in the early and mid-80’s he mined the US field with demos, splits and singles, making sure all fans and labels around the country were aware of the presence of this lord of the underworld who was looking no further than the good, still new at the time, American power metal. It was nearly ten years since the start when the man finally managed to find a stable line-up among whom was also the vocal prodigy Alan Tecchio (also Watchtower, Power, Seven Witches, etc.). The debut was promptly unleashed, a fairly cool slab of speed/thrash, not much power metal anymore, with bigger ambition admirably displayed through more stylish riff-patterns and elaborate song-structures (the excellent closing 9-min saga “Masque of The Red Death”).

The album reviewed here gracefully follows the same path, the guys confident in the execution of a few more semi-technical speed/thrashisms, capturing the audience’s attention with two ripping blitzkriegers (“Opinionate!”, “In The Mean Time”) initially, with Tecchio screaming his lungs out, soaring above the interesting hyper-active skirmishes with authority and pathos. More moderate, less exuberant mid-pacers (“Rebel Without a Brain”, “King in Exile”) are certainly provided but their more officiant power metal charge nicely adds up to the proceedings as the only number that doesn’t quite belong here is the crunchy groove precursor “Face the Fat Reality”. Pioneers? Not really as unexpected occurrences don’t become the order of the day the band way more interested in moshing to oblivion with headbanging winners like “I Too Eye” and “Process of Assimilation” before the provision of the obligatory more complex finale, “Aftermath of Betrayal” is the title, a progressive thrashterpiece with lyrical interludes, jumpy rhythms, surreal doomy walkabouts, fiery outbursts, dazzling lead sections... the lots.

Very well done Hades, lord(s) of the underworld; a varied dish that would tend to the tastes of a wider gamut of fans, and one that can even be considered superior to the debut… in a way. What should have made the guys a hotter prospect on the scene back then was their go-between position, this ephemeral niche between the less speed-prone power/thrash hybriders (Metal Church, Nasty Savage) and the more vehemently-fixated representatives of the Bay-Area (Forbidden, Heathen). The most frantic, also more technical moments easily side with Toxik’s “World Circus” even, Lorenzo’s manic shreds boldly making claims at bigger musical audacity.

Success achieved? Well, it remained to be heard/seen how the band would be able to pull it off on the “third time’s the charm” instalment… the thing is that this belated third album, apart from dropping the success “tag”, didn’t sound as frantic and as exciting anymore the guys voting to disturb the already thickened groovy/aggro clouds with a passable, not very revolutionary power/thrash hybrid which, to add one major plus to its resume, firmly belonged in the classic camp. The 7-year gap between it and its predecessor was another detriment largely caused by the emergence of the Lorenzo/Tecchio collaboration Non-Fiction, a somewhat progressive metal combo (three full-lengths and an EP released, 1991-1996) flirting with both modern and retro sounds to an uneven, not entirely very positive effect.

The Hades discography was enriched with three more full-lengths by 2001, all modelled after the delivery from this third offering; in other words, don’t expect the album here to be beaten in any way although shades of more aggressive thrashy strides can be easily detected on each of those. With Lorenzo more interested in the stoner/doom side of things in recent years, both with the band under his own name and the freshly sprung epic doom metal cohort Vessel of Light, it seems as though the underworld would be covered with well-deserved doom and gloom in the months/years to come… no chance for the odd uplifting speed/thrashy stroke to break through this barely penetrable miasma.