Titan

*Written for the 10th MA Virgin Reviews Challenge

A notch or so below the so called “Three Musketeers” of French ‘80s heavy metal (Sortilege, Blaspheme, ADX), lie some quality acts such as Fisc, Dum Dum Bullet, Demon Eyes perhaps High Power and others. This is where the French incarnation of Titan comes in. Not unlike their French counterparts High Power & Sortilege, they released a set of two classic, well respected albums back in the heyday before stuff arguably faded away. The tier one French acts, and arguably some of their lesser known acts in heavy metal and thrash metal, have been praised as such for possessing a certain abominable power, aggression and enthusiasm in their music. Sortilege of course for their pure emotive power and fantastical beauty with the legendary Augustine at the helm, and ADX meanwhile, with a display of inventive riffs carrying through an almost insane amount aggression, while maintaining excellent creativity and poise. Titan comes in somewhere between ADX, Demon Eyes and Fisc.

The sound in this debut record ranges from cuts with unadulterated, thrashing type riffs, and snarling vocal aggression, to more melodic traditional metal numbers such as the questionably titled ‘Black Power’. An interesting blend, it does perhaps remind me most closely of countrymen Demon Eyes - with a commitment to aggression and riff contruction that see’s it hold common ground with the boys in ADX, High Power. Anyway, some of the material is quite solid indeed – ‘GI’s Heritage’ is a full on album opening assault, packed with high pace, and twisted with an assortment of riffs, the heavy, crunching guitar tone winding throughout them. Aggression, and commitment to riff craftsmanship don’t avoid ‘L'Irlande Au Coeur’ either – and I’m actually quite surprised at the coolness of the riffs in particularly the early songs on the album – as well the bands willingness to fire out some damned heavy material.

Towards the second half of the thing – material begin to falter though. The aforementioned ‘Black Power’ signals the death knell – and with its attempt at sounding like countrymen Presence, leaves the band sounding a wee bit confused. ‘L'Irlande Au Coeur’ is a bit better – it packs in some riffs, though being of a slower pace, but things get ugly in ‘Enfant De La Guerra’ – an awful ballad attempt. The singer is not capable of this material, and the production job makes it sound like a mess. Patrice le Calvez has that Germanic whinge going on – that in the heavy songs is drowned out enough to not matter – with the weird, crunchy production, but he is exposed in the ballads – and they just don’t work. ‘Damien’ isn’t too bad – but maybe slow and unexciting.

Anyway, not a bad album – the first half is really good, snarly, heavy metal, with a mixture of NWOBHM influence, and dare I say, more than a little influence by big boys ADX and High Power. Somewhat of a confused bunch though – it seems like half of the band wants to play speed/heavy metal with balls of steel, while half want to be Presence or AC/DC. Oh well – I guess a bunch of them had that going on. Dum Dum Bullet too – they were half snaring Motorhead worship, half fumbling AOR amateurs. Anyway, ‘Popeye le Road’ finishes things off in a decent enough fashion. A little bit patchy, but still worth a listen for the riffs and crunchiness.

-DeathRiderDoom