I'm still kicking myself for missing AD at the Empire Roller Rink (could it be?) four years ago. What makes it worse is the outstanding quality of what they have released since then. "Magdalene" kicks your ass from the start with a bass line that refuses to die. It evolves into one of the best pop songs I've heard all year.

The B-side is a typically spooky Donut take on a Billy Joel song. No Garth Brooks-ish thoughts here. If you even recognize the original, you're way past me. But I love it just the same.

So many songs it almost qualifies as an EP. This is brutal death from Mexico. As the story goes, some guys in a Juarez jail wrote Billy Gould of Faith No More and sent him a tape. He decided to produce a couple of singles. The real story is much less interesting, but it still involves Billy Gould...

Thanks to excellent press from outgoing LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, the first single on Nemesis records sold quite well. And so should this one. It transcends the novelty of the situation. This is a decent band. The name is Spanish for a kind of witch, but I can't remember exactly what the connotation is. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to listen to the 7" again. Damn.

Okay, so I'm one of those fools who thinks Glenn Danzig hasn't done anything useful since the disintegration of the Misfits all those years ago. But he comes close here.

Certainly the best of the Danzig albums (the stupidity of the first and incoherence of the second are not present here). Musically, the band has coalesced its sound into a more definite time and place (say, May 1980 in Seattle). Still listening to too much Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton, but you can almost taste the beginnings of today's ugly Athens-acne case.

As for the lyrics, well, they aren't quite as dumb as in the past, so Glenn scores points there as well. I don't know if four stars is right (especially when the same RS issue gave the Poster Children two stars for an album that was released almost a year ago), but life rolls. And Danzig gets more and more popular. Many worse things could happen.

Some claim death metal bands lose their purity when they bring in outside influences. So they won't touch My Dying Bride or even Tiamat. Poor saps. They don't realize what they're missing.

Soul-wrenching music. And if you happen to be among the legion playing MDB, then by all means find this disc and jam. I've got to stop this "finest death album ever" bullshit, because as soon as I say that, another rivals it. Better than, well, the two albums do approach death from different perspectives. Of course, they are both European...

All my yapping won't do this disc justice. You MUST sit down and listen. And be damn impressed. Pray for the death trade imbalance to slack off sometimes in the future. But be happy with the present.

In case you thought FLA was still in that anesthetic techno mode, check out their latest album. Or, better yet, check out the B-sides on this disc. My God, "Re-Animator" sounds positively MLWTTKK-ish (figger it out).

"Laughing Pain" wanders into more a psychedelic industrial playground. Lots of cool noise here. And while you can dance to some of it, you can also blow your brain out if the volume is high enough. Give it a shot.

It's interesting to sit back and listen to the vitality of Racer X when compared to the relative flaccid sounds of the bands its members are in now: Mr. Big, Badlands, Judas Priest (and there is a Priest cover here) and the Scream. While not really harsh, there was a definite edge to Racer X.

Of course, four of the ten tunes are covers, which seems to indicate this may some sort of cash-in kinda thing. But who cares? This is fun listening. Why worry about ulterior motives, and the originals are the best part of the album anyway.

I've been to Dallas, and I just don't see how these guys made it out of there alive. As far as metal goes, the only evidence I could find was an overabundance of "Cherry Pie" t-shirts (I shiver at the memory). So why...

To avoid quoting a certain St. Louis brewery's ad slogan, I don't know why. "Crimson" picks up where their last album left off and takes doom to a new level. This stuff is melodic enough to be played on MTV, but SAE has far too much talent for Rikki (or whoever programs metal in that wasteland) to pick up on it. These boys rock me like few others. Since Fates Warning mellowed a couple of albums ago, there hasn't been much out there sounding this good.

This segs with death, it segs with glam, it segs with thrash. It truly is the middle of the metal road. But unlike Barry Manilow and Amy Grant on the pop side, in-between is a great place to be in the hard rock universe. Did I mention after listening to this album I had a spontaneous orgasm?

The upcoming Star Star album is the most commercial product Roadrunner has released in some time, and still should be one of the best. This single is not the best thing on the full disc, so don't sweat. I really don't groove on it much myself. It sounds a little too much like the new Faster Pussycat to really do anything for me.

But Star Star at its best combines the finest parts of seventies glam with the moods of the Ramones. So be sure to check out the album when it arrives in a few weeks.

You all know the original Sugar Shack. Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs made it famous back in 1963. I went to high school with the daughter of one of the Fireballs. The Sugar Shack was a whorehouse south of Clovis, NM (the town where Buddy Holly recorded the majority of his tunes). History.

Sugar Shack (the band) sounds nothing like the Fireballs or Buddy Holly. But I felt like telling you all that. No, Sugar Shack is straight-ahead sum-bitch slammin' sludge. But as unsavory the grooves and harsh the scents emanating from Charmer, I still can't help but hum (not the right word, let's try hock) along with the songs. Good music to sacrifice a cat to, and feel good about it to boot.

Most great guitar players really dig the blues. And when they cover blues standards, it often comes off stale. The situation gets worse when original blues material is involved.

Pat Travers avoids the second problem by recording only one original song (which isn't too bad, either). But the shiny production on the album makes everything sound too pat. The best part of those old blues albums is the creaky chair you hear in the background, the occasional slip, which the singer knew would never be dubbed over. One-shot, live recording is the blues ideal. "The Thrill Is Gone" may have been B.B. King's big hit, but his best stuff came before the strings.

As for Travers, well, he's a good enough guitarist to make you believe he's really playing the blues. But I still prefer the originals.

Two-for-one: a soundtrack and original score thang. While most of the soundtrack is eminently forgettable, Sykotic Sinfoney has a wicked FNM/Bungle-ized kinda groove that makes me truly smile. And DMT is not too bad.

You must know: this is a soundtrack for one of those direct-to-USA (and Gilbert Gotfried) things. So you can expect the cheeziness of the vocal tracks. But the BOC score is something else again. Yeah, it's commercial at times, but I haven't heard Buck and Co. this adventurous in at least a decade. Hang with the score: it is the goods.

Non-Fiction
In the Know advance cassette
(Grand Slamm)

If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. Non-Fiction displayed a number of Seattle-esque tendencies with their debut disc, but now the Gotham-based band has absolutely capitulated. And I like them better this way.

Now they combine the best sides of Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, which automatically means the songs move faster than they did before. This stuff is unremarkable, but grinds the earlobes well. If I'm not raving, I'm not bitching, either.