3 Inches Of Blood Advance And Vanquish (Roadrunner Records) — Ahh, how fun… .remember back in the olden days (early 1980’s) when metal bands sung about nothing of any real emotional substance and / or intelligence. Well 3 Inches Of Blood harken back to those glory days with their Roadrunner Records debut Advance And Vanquish. Get ready to crank up your speakers and get your air guitars ready! How can you go wrong with Upon The Boiling Sea trilogy of songs (which, by the way rock) or the first single Deadly Sinners? Deadly Sinners has some of the funniest 1980’s heavy metal cheese lyrics like Enemies of metal, your death is our reward which just had me rolling on the floor with laughter while head-banging my rear end off. The track Swordmaster is pretty good too, but the best song is Revenge Is A Virtue, which has a semi-serious fell to it and strays (but not too far) from the typical old-school heavy metal thunder and lightning sound that permeates the album. This album pummels you up and down pretty much… .that can be a blessing and a curse! Listening to the album all the way through can get pretty tedious. Crazy Nights and ]Destroy The Orcs are the 2 most annoying tracks on the album and give the album a somewhat tedious feel. Still, the CD is a good listen. Cover art is pretty cool, but overall, the artwork is pretty much lyrics and thank you’s… .nothing exciting. There could have been more of an artwork layout to perhaps give the songs a little more life, but it’s a first album for a label so I was not too shocked that the artwork layout was done in a basic manner. It’s worth buying if you are into the old school sound and / or feeling experimental with your CD spending money! ]Price Range[: Minimal 15 US Dollars. Label Needs to find a way to bring the price on this CD down, DRASTICALLY… .around 7-9 US dollar range would be good. As basic as the CD booklet artwork is on this album, and with a sound that can be deemed a little too old school for the new school crowd, charging a minimal 15 US dollars is not going to entice the age demographic of 13-20 (which is about 80% of the American music buying public) to take a chance on buying a CD from a developing act that no one knows much about. For Fans Of[ Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Accept, Metallica, Slayer, Black Dhalia Murder Ratings: 3 / 5
Note: I had hell tracking down this CD! Not attacking Roadrunner Records when I say this (because I pretty much love almost everything this label puts out) but I thought the label signed to Island / Def Jam for distribution rights to eliminate such a problem. – said Joshua V. on Nov 11, 2004
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