Maximum Metal Rating Legend

Speeed - Powertrip Pigs (Reissue) - 2006 - Crash Music

Track Listing1. What Dya Want 2. Dragon 3. China Town 4. Zombies 5. I Used To Believe 6. Monkey Brains 7. Chrystal Meth 8. Sin 9. Speed 10. Powertrip Pigs 11. Ride Like The Wind

It is all about Jack Frost for the early part of 2006. We welcomed the year with a new Seven Witches album, two Seven Witches reissues, a new solo record, a DVD, and NOW Crash Music has dug into Massacre's back catalogue to introduce the one album project Speeed from 1999. This band was a combination of Jack Frost on guitar, ex-Annihilator frontman Aaron Randall, ex-Annihilator drummer Ray Hartmann, and ex-Tragedy Divine bassist Bernie Altman. The band itself was a fantastic mixture of hard rock flavorings and aggressive thrash overtones. At the time the record was probably a little ahead of its time, probably more like the types of hybrid bands floating around in today's much more popular metal pools.

This of course is the first time the album has seen US shores, with the previous Massacre Album only seeing European distribution. Fans of Jack Frost's solo material will probably find more to like here than his power metal endeavors with Seven Witches simply because this is a much more diversified offering of various metal styles. However few can resist the absolutely crushing melody and lead playing on groove oriented tracks like "Dragon" and "Monkey Brains". The band really compose some strange song structures, almost going as far as sounding slightly more industrial or even leaning very slightly towards the early "nu metal" playing field of that time period. The first track I heard from the album was "China Town", which was featured on a Metal Merchant sampler. I was blown away by the hard rock power put on display there, with Randall in complete command behind Frost's massive guitar chops. Throughout the album the band showcase the rock offerings, the thrash precision, and often enough the strange, diverse industrial styled efforts.

For the most part this is a solid album with very little filler tracks. Really no matter what mood you are in you can find plenty to like about "Powertrip Pigs". Fans of Jack Frost will find this mandatory, however fans of Annihilator's "Set The World On Fire" should find Aaron Randall's voice on par with his performance on that album. The only other album I could find that was anything like this was Alice Cooper's "Brutal Planet" one year later.



--EC 04.16.06