Here’s one that people often ask about, as it tends to catch the eye of many a metalhead.
No, it’s not that Slayer.
No, it’s not that Slayer either.
These guys never haunted the chapel or went for the throat. THIS Slayer, hailing from Arizona (which is admittedly about 29 miles south of heaven), recorded their only album in 1982. The album features Darryl Ogawa; he was previously heard plying his trade on the 1981 album ‘
Different’ from White Noise, who operated in the same geographic area. ‘Dangerous Appetite’ is a much more coherent album than ‘Different’, sticking to one vocalist and a more focused songwriting approach. While the name and album title are promising, the only thing that is really dangerous about this release is that you might spend a lot of money on it only to discover that you’ve bought a pretty sub-par offering of early 80s hard rock.
The first problem is that calling ‘Dangerous Appetite’ an album is somewhat generous. This vinyl slab includes only 6 songs and lasts just under 30 minutes. Releases such as this have always kinda annoyed me. Is it a mini album? A maxi EP? I never have known what to call them (I’m looking at you, Pretty Maids). So right off the bat, the band doesn’t have much material to use to win you over. The second problem is that the song titles raise a big, red flag regarding just how heavy this ‘album’ is gonna be. Some bands named Slayer deliver titles such as ‘Unholy Book’, ‘To Ride the Demon Out’, and ‘Chemical Warefare’. This bunch wrote ‘Blonde in Red’, ‘Slight Delight’, ‘Candy Cane’, and ‘Dreamer Blue’. So even though this release was much too low profile to ever get Tipper Gore’s attention, you cannot say that there wasn’t a great big Advisory stuck right on the cover to warn you about what the contents held. Read before you buy!
The ‘album’ opens with its best track, ‘Fighting Fire with Fire’. It develops a decent, galloping beat and is delivered in a slightly forceful manner. But there are lingering 70s influences around the edges, such as the spacey-sounding synth effects during the chorus, and I can’t shake the sense that these guys were hoping to channel a bit of early RUSH. The holdout 70s sound rears its head several times over the course of this ‘album’, giving the entire outing a rather outdated feel at times. But overall it’s not a bad start. Then we have ‘Blonde in Red’, which is not exactly ‘Spirit in Black’. I can say two nice things about this otherwise generic-as-hell-awaits early 80s wannabe-on-MTV party rock song. First, they at least dressed the blonde in red instead of the more cliched color; black is so 1993. Second, they RAWK that damned cowbell harder than a coke-fueled Rob Garven in a gong store. Oh, I can say a third nice thing about the song too- it’s a helluva lot better than the next track, ‘Candy Cane’. If the blonde in red is the girl everyone wants to party with, Candy is the girl you date when you trade in your denim jacket for a smart blazer and perm your hair at the mall before you go cruising in the sensible sedan mom and dad bought you for your Sweet 16. It’s a toothless, saccharine affair. So…. at the end of side 1, the score is a disappointing 1-2.
The B-side fares little better. ‘Dreamer Blue’ is meant to be more radio friendly fare pretending to be hard rock. ‘Loyalty’ at least tries to be something different, as the band spends over 6 minutes on what is meant to be an epic tale full of fantasy tropes, but the song just falls flat. It feels like the slowest, most boring mid-70s rock releases that just amble on, never going anywhere yet taking forever to arrive. Imagine your local covers band- you know, the one that only plays 2-3 times a year and never travels more than three towns over- trying to play ‘Lakeside Park’ but making it 50% longer and 75% less interesting. Songs like this are exactly why punk made such a splash in the mid 70s - this sound was boring a good seven years before ‘Dangerous Appetite’ was recorded. We finally, mercifully, wrap up with ‘Slight Delight’, which tries to inject a little of the opener’s energy back into the mix, though after sitting through the previous four songs it’s rather difficult to get excited for this one.
And there you have it: 2 passable songs, and 4 that are pretty disappointing. It’s not the worse set of vibrations ever etched into vinyl, but this one just does not appeal to me. It should be noted that, as a child of the mid-late 80s, I have a higher tolerance for these commercial-friendly acts than your average underground metal fan; I can handle ‘Danger Danger’ and ‘Darkness Descends’ in equal amounts. But ‘Dangerous Appetite’ leaves me hungry for something ‘different’. Oh well, they can’t all reign in blood.