If It's Loud, We're Proud

Covered with elderly spiders inside Mausoleum’s crypt, If It’s Loud, We’re Proud is a sampler (hardly a compilation) of three country-connected bands, two that’ve clocked in nary any scene time combined by this point and the recently recruited Killer, the most vet band brandishing the Belgian scepter with already two records stuck in shallow graves at the edge of town. Now, its no secret my initial confrontations with Mausoleum were duck and cover conflicts, approaching its creaky cellar door with caution after having it repeatedly slammed in my face over about two years as I searched the yard for the really heavy stuff, but wound up tripping over what I thought was its dim-witted prisoners lying around instead. In retrospect, however, half of what were in its dungeon weren’t half bad.

Killer, Crossfire, and Ostrogoth may pay taxes to the same government, but the dough doesn’t come from the same source i.e. different patches cut from the same cloth i.e. they don’t sound alike. Good, ’cause it makes this diminutive collection that much more useful. As the old hands on deck, Killer is awarded special treatment with side one’s entirety, two tracks at almost ten minutes, the first being “Walls of Hell”, a medley of title cuts from their Ready For Hell and Walls of Sound albums recorded especially with this disc in mind. Wrapped in Motorhead’s biker leather with Spooky doing his own usual yet specialized Lemmy semi-replication, it’s a straightforward strong n’ bawdy song that even owns some time on my mp3 player. On the other hand, “Blood on the Chains”, destined for their near-future lp Shockwaves, is pretty dull and dry - run of the 1980 mill Killer - not really a surprise from a band whose first pretty much blew and the follow-ups weren’t bad at all, but also weren’t the tallest trees in the forest, either.

The new blood here is Crossfire and Ostrogoth, though only one rocks on like it is. For the latter’s entry, “Ecstasy and Danger”, there’s really none of either, rather faceless and meekly catchy in its pedestrian stride, this title track to the band’s up-coming full-lengther being the mild-mannered refrigerator insurance salesman of songs and once it’s left the premises, you’re sure to forget what it offered. At your door about three and a half minutes later is a “Sound of War”, Crossfire delivering the draft notice like a convincing, ardently-trained, vocally-shearing militant to someone who just happens to be in the market for a war. Neck in neck for best tune with “Walls of Hell” which, like I said, runs a different race on the same drag strip.

Identities, while (again) evidently diverse, ride the line of cool and uncool. Crossfire, here and on their slabs to come, prove to be capable songsmiths while Killer don’t seem to know what’s going on half of the time, though Wall of Sound is a blacker-eyed improvement over the hell they were supposedly ready for three years ago. Ostrogoth trudge forward, dragging this tune into ’84 but wind up heaving it over the side for a toothier renovation that ambushes us along with some others on full boat Ecstasy and Danger, an assumed, stooped over deadbeat that stands fairly upright in the end.