Roadkill

Metal is often derided as being a chauvinistic style of music, despite all of the examples to the contrary going back to its height in popularity in the late 80s. But Meanstreak present the strongest refutation of this false sentiment by going into probably the nearly all men’s sub-genre of thrash metal and actually end up doing it somewhat better than several of their competitors. Their efforts yielded this lone studio offering “Roadkill”, which garnered some short term interest, but had since become an afterthought in the minds of most amid some gradual realignment going on in the genre and the very old school, USPM tendencies it has. But some interest has returned in recent years, which may eventually result in a reissue, we can only hope.

From a purely stylistic perspective, this is heavily informed by the mid 80s sound of Overkill, Flotsam And Jetsam, and to somewhat of a lesser extent, Metal Church. The songs range from being high speed to moderately up tempo with an archaic, melodic sense amongst the riffs and melody that is more informed by the NWOBHM influences still being carried by those bands, as opposed to the extreme chromatic tendencies of Slayer and the gritty punk tendencies of Anthrax (though some comparisons could be made to their first 2 albums). It’s performed quite well in spite of being maybe a year or two behind the cutting edge of the genre’s evolution, and features a quality vocal display that walks a fine line between Belladonna’s squeaky clean approach and Blitz Ellsworth’s maniacal howl.

While a bit old school, the amount of options available in this style are actually a bit greater given a lack of slavishness to speed and sheer aggression, and Meanstreak fully capitalizes on this from one song to the next. The opening title song is a proto-typical speed monster with a few gang choruses here and there, almost as if Anthrax and Overkill got together and decided running down Debbie Gibson fan-girls for a few laughs. “Snake Pit” mixes in some Mid-Eastern influences, including some auspicious guitar references to “The Snake Charmer” melodic that come in and out, and largely grooves at a mid-paced crunch not all that dissimilar from “Shout At The Devil”. There are even some more Iron Maiden-like melodic gallopers in “Nostradamus” and “Searching Forever”, and also a more Motörhead oriented speed rocker in “The Warning” for those who liked the mix approach typical to middle of the road bands in the Metal Church vain.

In spite of a few east coast thrash outfits being able to hold on through the changing musical landscape of the 90s, this band was not able to keep up the their output and disappeared after a couple of demos failed to garner further interest. Today this is a band that is sought after by old school fanatics, but often pigeonholed as being that band that has members married to guys in Dream Theater. While a bit on the short side, this is an album that does more than simply getting the job done, particularly with the impressive lead displays and versatile songwriting. It’s time to start tearing apart those backwater CD exchanges again, and with this quarry will come the added delight of shutting up a few politically correct pansies who think that metal is only for testosterone-heavy teenaged males.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on February 23, 2011.