Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Beowulf - 2 cents (1995)

This follows a Jamie Hewlett theme because Beowulf's 2 cents album title song appears on the Tank Girl soundtrack and the 2 cents music video contains Hewlett's Tank Girl artwork which you can see in this youtube clip.

Beowulf were a punk/metal crossover band who lasted from the 80s to the mid-90s from California's Venice Beach and are often grouped in with band such as Suicidal Tendencies, No Mercy, Excel and Uncle Slam.

Beowulf recordings first appeared on a Welcome to Venice compilation LP which was put out on Suicidal Tendencies,Mike Muir's Suicidal record label which was posted on the cosmic hearse blog. The band's sound was a cross between Motorhead and Suicidal Tendencies due to frontman, Dale Henderson's voice sounding close to Lemmy's.

In 1995 Dale Henderson was the only original member of Beowulf and somewhere between 1988 and 1995 he must have taken singing lessons because there are no gruff Lemmy styled vocals on this album despite this album being somewhere between punk and metal but not being crossover in the 80s sense of being a mix of punk and thrash metal. In fact at times his vocals are reminiscent of Savatage's John Olivia. There is a small touch of reggae mixed with hard rock which brings I and I period Bad Brains to mind as do the punkier tracks like Badge Abuse.




Track listing
1. Throw Your Rock
2. Bullet Hole
3. 140 Days
4. 2 Cents
5. Jumped In
6. Life Ain't, Life's Only
7. Lack of Knowledge
8. Superstar
9. No One Knows No One
10. Only Human
11. Badge Abuse
12. Dope Bag

Get it!

Beastwars - IV

After over a year off for various reasons, we have returned solely because we wanted to review the new Beastwars album. I really w...