SALEM — Cold as Steel (review)

SALEM — Cold as Steel album cover Demo · 1982 · NWoBHM Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Certif1ed
Great cover art, great production, plenty of talent...

This may or may not be a bad thing to you, but for me, it lacks that ingredient so vital to NWoBHM music; Sweat.

On the A side, the song that introduces the band to the world, the performance sounds quite effortless - lazy, really (except for the drummer, who sounds unleashed - we like that). The vocalist sounds utterly lethargic, which is a big part of the problem, and his range is not great to say the least.

The riffs are fairly cool, if standard fayre, and the progressions are predictable - but the guitar solo, which starts out unremarkably, has a nice build, with impressive bursts of flash towards the end - see, I knew you could do it if you tried!

After 3 minutes, though, the promisingly entitled "Cold as Steel" really drags - it's nowhere near as menacing as the cover would have you imagine.

Flip it over, and we get some meat; Pacy and tight - to quote the song itself; "Yeah - this is how it was meant to be...". This is fledgeling power metal up there with Jaguar's "Back Street Woman", with the potential of real greatness and genre-spawning.

This fulfils the predictions of hardcore NWoBHM obscurity collectors, who insist that the B-sides are where it's at - put this in context, and for 1982, this is real ear-opening material.

There's still a feeling that if they really gave it some stick, then this could be a real masterpiece. Again, the lyrics give it away; "Don't you try too hard" - and we feel that they didn't really.

The harmonised guitar break that follows changes all this - it really is awesome - listen to it, and I defy you not to think of Kai Hansen/Helloween several years later (or possibly 220 Volt in Sweden the same year!).

Between the lines, there's some really great potential proto-thrash / pwer metal going on here, and the second guitar break has you longing, nay, gasping for more - there's that genuine nostalgic, aching feeling of something lost forever.

"Reach For Eternity" is a great title for this bleeding-edge material.

2 and a half stars for the A side, and 4 and a half rounded up to 5 for the B side.

I listened to it again, and will listen to it again tomorrow :o)
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Certif1ed wrote:
more than 2 years ago
I listened to "Reach For Eternity" again today, as I promised in my review - and guess what? It still ROCKS!!!!

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