Packed: Digipak in 4 panels, includes 12 page booklet.
Coming off mildly toastier than the serving my memory threw down the basement steps a number of years ago, I can’t say I mind too much as this nine-tracker finally dusts itself off and takes some bold steps back toward the top of the stairs to backhand a kid who kinda deserves it. But while it finds its momentum, here’s an abridged band history up to this point.
Shortly after independently releasing their ’82 debut, the ep Pray for Metal, Axewitch were picked up by Web Records’ newly-hatched subsidiary Fingerprint Records and in ’83 released this full-lengther, The Lord of Flies, which is possibly the label’s first imprint as well. Licensing from Megaton and Discotto Records seemed to spin the ball even faster to where it is said the lp landed at #7 on the Swedish rock charts, a landing to be maintained while touring with brother Swedes Torch and Silver Mountain.
With an unmolested line-up since the ep, here the quintet command a larger swarm of songs, raised on the naturally-made nectar of traditional songcraft that takes off with more life and confidence, and some of that is due to its solid Decibel Studios (Heavy Load, Y. Malmsteen) launching pad and its change in producer(s). Grooved here is some more-than-decent stuff that isn’t the least bit uneasy about extending rock’s overhang where metal sheds blood in its shadow. With that said, while one shouldn’t expect to sniff fumes from the invigorative cutting edge flight path where Warlord, Legend (UK), and, most obviously, Maiden burn jet fuel, traditionalists should delight in the band’s simple ear for catchiness and almost understated execution that tends to be as warm, easygoing, and even sociable as old acquaintances chatting early in the night around an open fire. Sounds as stimulating as catching lightning bugs, right? Well, to put it nicely, some releases weren’t meant to burn the house down.
The better stories are those singed by the flame. “Sinner”, the closing lid on side one, with its beguiling menace and gradually arduous upsurge, leaps closest to metal’s smokier trail overhead, meanwhile some “Mr. Crowley”-tainted keyboards mist up side two’s doorway where “The Arrival of the Flies (Part 1)” is smartly parted by the title cut’s hot, convincingly mid-paced steam. Partially burned by lightly dour drama is the chorus of “Just Another Lunatic”, making way for the oddly weary, yet proud one in “High Power” that has me recalling the few squirts of airtime it received back in the day. It’s hotfooters like these that have the lp taking two steps at a time up the stairs.
Unfortunately, impeding the lp’s valiant charge are a few missing steps near the top. Comprising the disc’s final 9+ minutes is “Down Town” and “Seven Angels”, whose medium, emotionally-unmoving pace and even-keeled lack of fanfare is the darkness that’s considerably perilous to leap over. In addition, a feature of the ep that pooped my ears’ party also leaves me passed out behind the couch here as the flat-tongued and character-lacking vocals of Anders Wallentoft snag a sock on the same raised nail in the wood. Somewhere in there as well is instrumental “Let the Strings Cry Out”, actually a Mange n’ Micke turn-taken guitar solo that blears kinda unclearly to me not so much in its purpose, but its rather noncommittal execution.
Despite some bum steps, whatever wings this album has grown won't stay pinned back and uses them to carry itself over the rift to the safety of the ground floor. At slightly past average, I should probably offer it an apologetic hand, and if it smacks it away, then whatever. Still, it’s unclear how a teenaged me didn’t hear The Lord of Flies as a more likable offense than its older brother.
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