One
wonders if the American Christian right moralists didn't find albums like
these a lot more threatening than any Slayer or Venom-album you could
think of. How the hell are you gonna keep Hell a scary place to be, if
it's portrayed as a scene from "Saturday Night Fever" with guys
in spandex and chubby tarts carrying plastic pitchforks?? Yeah, the cover
is a riot, but colorful enough with the gold lettering and infernal lightshow
to raise an eye or 2. Although it's not an all-out, flawless 5-star record,
musically I'd still rate SINFUL's "Gonna Raise Hell" as one
of the most underrated US Metal albums. A review in an old issue of Metal
Forces first raised my interest. It gave the record a full 10-point rating
and wrote something along the lines of "ANGEL meets METALLICA in
a dark alley and the white hot ones come out on top". Dunno about
that comparison, seeing as it obviously lacks "historical perspective",
but the hype sure is well-deserved (even if the Shades/Metal Forces-connection
also might have had something to do with it;)
All three songs on the A-side kicks the respective asses of fellow Yanks
like RUFFIANS, QUEENSRYCHE (mostly) and Q5, with extra merits to the fantastic
"Midnight Sun" - one of those perfect pieces of golden Power/Epic
Metal music that NO-ONE of the multitudes of fans of this genre should
have to live without. After only hearing this side of the album I was
ready to give this a US-top-10 rating in no time, but you never know what
kind of hairy, scary shmallad-muppets might lurk around the corner...
Nope, no ballads. "You Gotta Rock" is an OK, LA-style Metal-rocker
saved by a pretty sturdy lead-riff, not quite what what I'd wish for but
I've heard worse. It's the closing "Teenage Overdose" that ruins
the overall performance and cut back SINFUL a full 5 points on the credibility-scale.
Why did so many bands around this time think they had to do at least one
wimpy FM-rock/a.o.r. song like this on their albums? Well, to get laid
I guess. (How utterly
untrue of them! Get your priorities straight
you pimps!) Still, with the top-standard of the A-side, they can actually
be forgiven.
Finally I need to mention the thing that gave SINFUL some extra credit
for originality. They used keyboards in a very innovative way, incorporating
them in the actual songs and riffing rather than sprinkling icky-sticky
fluff on songs good enough without them. Not that this in any way prevented
to scare off plenty of "true" Metalheads at the time. Keys in
Metal has always been and still is a controversial issue, but these guys
did it with plenty of flair and fingerspitzgefühl.
Originally written in German. Translate to:
Sinful sind eine weitere, gute US Band, deren Sänger vielerorts sicher auf wenig Gegenliebe stößt. Teilweise erklimmt er extreme Höhen, ohne dazu aber genügend Volumen zu haben. Geschmackssache, mir gefällt es recht gut. Musikalisch hingegen gibt es nichts zu meckern: druckvolle Songs, dezente Keyboards, gutes Riffing - Zutaten, die jedem Sammler schmecken. Da die Scheibe auf dem englischen Shades-Label veröffentlicht wurde, ist sie weder extrem selten noch extrem teuer - selten bei US Metal!