Yes, this is what this album sounds like at times. See my review for "Crusader" for the general idea of this album... "Rock the Nations", the title track, is quite really impressive. Not epic, but just a total headbanging anthem. GIVE US THE STAGE!!!!!

Yes, but then they go into stupid crap. I can't even remember if this is true, but Elton John apparently was on this album! Yes, it's that bad - even Bon Jovi can do better than this. Not worth getting into all the details, this album is totally avoidable.

But, on a brighter note, Saxon managed to completely keep tearing shit up live during this era - a few bootlegs from the '86 tour attest to that quite nicely. They would play maybe one obligatory song from the crappy albums (Crusader and Rock the Nations, nicely represented by the title tracks, probably one from Innocence too) and then pull out all the good stuff like Heavy Metal Thunder. So if you're ever about to skip on a live album from the mid 1980s, give it another chance! There, this review has been a public service announcement from the Society for the Enlivening of Saxon

Keep 'em coming.

CRAP. - 0%
Written by Habakuk on March 6th, 2005

Well, to be honest, this album sucks. I really gave it a couple of chances, but I wasn’t able to find anything good about this.
After listening to a Blood red throne cover of Cryptic realms, I thought this band would be good. But as far as I can tell by having listened to only this very album, I was wrong.

Firstly, the production, in short: The bass is much too loud, the guitars aren’t loud enough. And I say this as a bass player myself. The drums don’t really kick in either.
There is nothing more of importance to say here.

The vocals suck. This is not nice grunting or thrashy screams or whatever, it just sounds stupid, especially when they sort of “talk” in a monotonous whining style. (>> black soil nest) Additionally, they have some strange vocal samples from god knows where. Another bad thing about the vocals is that they are clearly comprehensible, and so you understand every bit of the crappy lyrics. And lyrics about love, broken dreams and other shit are not what I enjoy in “death metal”.
Also I can’t stand wannabe evil text like “The way I live my life/To the bitter end/full of hate and rage/To the bitter end/ I truly hate you/ I fucking despise you“ (Bitter end).
This is fucking ridiculous.

OK, so now to the songs themselves. In one word: Boring. The songs are way too slow, maybe they are supposed to be “groovy” or whatever, but they terribly fail. This is partly because of the songwriting, partly because of the bad production. There is not one exception on the entire album.
The fastest song (inner demon) doesn’t even get as fast as Metallica’s “Seek and destroy”- main riff. (This comparison is heresy, I know… but I hope everyone gets what I mean by it.)
The absolutely worst point of the album is “Bloodletting” which is a cover of a music style I can’t identify. It’s awfully slow again and even worse than the rest. What’s interesting about this song is that the lyrics sound like a tired frog. Is this supposed to be funny or what? I don’t get it.
“Unnameable” has a small part of maybe 10 seconds that is not bad, but then the lyrics start off again.
It doesn’t get any better till the end of the album. Again lots of “experimental” vocals, which by the way also suck, and even a doublebass part that goes on for a while in the last song.

That last song ends with sort of “distorted” children voices, which is a good ending for this CD, because it just reflects my conclusion perfectly:
If you are looking for death metal, don’t buy this. If you are looking for fast stuff, don’t buy this. If you are looking for something to laugh at, don’t buy this. It is not funny. It has NOTHING that could make it any good.
Even the cover artwork sucks.

Again, DO NOT BUY IT. Don’t even waste your time downloading songs from this album, you’ll miss absolutely nothing.

Solid, but more riffs would be a good idea - 78%
Written by Habakuk on April 2nd, 2005

Six feet under are on the right path again. This album is definitely better than True Carnage and Bringer of Blood, but it does not reach the quality of Haunted, Maximum Violence etc.
(who would have expected that, anyway…)
Still, SFU is not a typical death metal band, so you won’t find any blast beats or technical stuff on the album. So when I say fast in the song reviews, I mean SFU-fast, not cannibal corpse etc.-fast…
Most songs are kind of straightforward mosh and headbanging songs on this album. There are a lot of cool moments, but also some letdowns.

Ok, let’s start with the production, which was done by Chris Barnes himself, and the performance of the individual band members..
If you have listened to Bringer of blood, you will notice that not much has changed here. Barnes’ voice is a little deeper on 13, I’d say. But the overall style of his voice is pretty similar to Bringer of blood.
Sadly, Barnes does none of his “Pig squeals” on this album, which he obviously is still able to do, since you can hear them on the bonus live CD.
The guitars as well sound pretty much the same as on BoB, rather crunchy and thick, not as ripping as on Maximum violence and the earlier albums. In my opinion, that’s not a big deal. It’s simply different than early SFU, but in its own way it’s cool. There are a lot of good solos, but others wouldn’t be missed probably.
The bass has a nice sound and is rather high-pitched, which makes it more audible when the guitars kick in. Well, the drums are alright, maybe the bass drums could be turned up a bit, but basically they’re ok. Nothing special here. Some more tom fills would surely add a lot to the drum playing, as well as some more doublebass work during straight riffs.

Alright, to the songs:
“Decomposition of the human race” starts with a 20-seconds-intro which is not very special, but nothing annoying either. The bass and drums begin to play kind of slow, guitar joins in, then it gets faster. The whole verse keeps this speed, the chorus changes to a slower, groovy drum rhythm. The straight riff and drumming in the verse get boring after a short time, but together with the cool chorus, this song should be really nice live.
7/10 points

“Somewhere in the darkness” basically has the same structure, but the chorus is fast here, while the verses are kind of slow. Nice solo at 1:48 though. The lyrics are kind of boring because almost all lines start with “somewhere in the darkness…”, but the riffs, especially the main riff make up for this.
7/10 points

“Rest in pieces” is one of my favourites on the album. This is a fast song with nice gory lyrics. Maybe Chris Barnes wanted to summon old days by including 2 Cannibal corpse album titles in the chorus: “rest in pieces/ in the grave you’re bleeding/rest in pieces/in the tomb of the mutilated”. The chorus is the weakest part of the song though, with a strange “melody” which consists of 4 notes and barnes singing higher and lower growls accordingly. Well, but this is not really a big problem, this song rocks and has another nice solo.
9/10

“Wormfood” is a very good song from the beginning to the end. Again we have lyrics about decay. The chorus riff with its breaks especially made me like this song. Nothing more to say here.
9/10

“13”, the titletrack is rather weak. Again, as in decomposition …, almost every line starts with the songname, “thirteen”. Barnes changes his voice after roughly every four lines from low growls to raspy high screams. The chorus is a bit too boring, it’s just 4 chromatic notes played in a line…
4/10

After this rather lame song, there’s another cool one. “The shadow of the reaper” has a nice chorus and the verse is fast enough to start a nice moshpit. At 2:17 there’s a cool straight riff and shortly after that the short solo kicks in.
9/10

Speaking of straight riffs, here comes a song which is full of them: “Deathklaat”. (Don’t know what this means, maybe an allusion to Soulfly’s Bumbklaatt). The song is fast from beginning to the end, features catchy lyrics and is also one of my favourites off this album.
10/10

“The poison hand” is rather slow, but also with straight riffing. Some parts of it are really slow, almost doomy. Not a bad song at all, but not the most interesting one.
6/10 points.

“This suicide” has a short main riff including two long guitar bendings, and I don’t really like it. It’s again not very fast, but luckily rather short.
4/10 points

“The art of headhunting” is the part on the album when you know that they ran out of riffs. The main riff is almost the same as “deathklaat”’s main riff. I don’t really mind, but if you’re looking for diversity, this album maybe isn’t the right choice for you. The song has a good solo, but it sounds like it has been on some other SFU album before. Well, since I liked “Deathklaat”, I also like this one, but I’ll give it only 7 points for lack of creativity. The lyrics are cool, though.
7/10

“Stump”, the last song, is like a mixture of “The day the dead walked” and “bonesaw”, which is a very good thing. For those who have never heard about these songs (shame on you): this is the fastest song on this album, but it has a nice groove part at 1:02. Steve Swanson does kind of a standard soloing on this song, but it’s pretty short and does not really drag the song down.
8/10


The bonus live CD is not bad, too, so for old school SFU fans who are not sure whether to get this album, CD 2 could be a good reason to give “13” a chance (no songs from “bringer of blood” included). The playing time of CD 2 is 54:23, while “13” itself lasts only 35:57 long.

I’d give CD 2 nine points.

All in all, “13” is solid, but it shows lack of creativity at some points. At least there are no experiments like “Amerika the brutal” on this album. It is a straight and uncompromising DM album (yet rather unconventional for the DM genre – you know Six feet under…), but I think an additional guitarist would help them a lot.
Back in the days when Allen West was still with them, SFU simply had more and better riffs. Steve Swanson seems to run out of ideas from time to time.

This seriously rocks - 89%
Written by Habakuk on March 7th, 2005

This album is one killer debut.

You have to imagine classic rock meeting with thrash metal and raw, sometimes almost death/grind-ish lyrics. I’ve heard people compare them to Pantera (in their cowboys from hell / vulgar display of power time), which is true for parts of the riffing and vocals, but in the end they sound a lot less thrashy, and come along with catchier riffs and sometimes very cool melodies. Furthermore, the guitars are tuned down to D. The result is a groovy, yet rather heavy album.
The production is pretty well done, the bass drum could be a little bit louder, but the REALLY crunchy guitars make up for this. The bass also is nicely done, not too loud but rather clearly audible. I really like the lyrics a lot, the best way for me to describe them is in between Kyle Thomas of Exhorder, Phil Anselmo and Lemmy.
The riffing is totally awesome. Good examples for this are the main riffs in “Demon Destroyer”, “Cromptons” (well this one is cheap but it totally rocks), the opening riff in “Rev. Evil” or practically the whole song “To Hell we’ll ride”.
The latter also comes with a killer hookline at 1:20 which fades to a nice solo. Definately one of my favourites on this album. Other highlights are the 3 songs already mentioned, with “Cromptons” sporting a cool shout along verse and “Rev. Evil” in a way reminding me of blues.
“No surrender”, “Curse the sun”, “Angry” and “Drowning” with its good riffing do not stand out as much as the others, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad, not at all. At least 4 of 5 points for those.
The only two songs that I do not like that much are “The Pyromaniac”(which still has a nice part at 2:28 that goes on for a while) and “March of the living dead”.
I find this kind of weak for one cause: It’s too slow in my opinion.
Another little flaw is that the drummer plays cool rhythms, but almost no fills at all. This makes it a little (!) monotonous, but I only noticed this after having listened to this album for some time.
For their catchy songs and nice headbanging quality, the Cromptons still totally deserve 89%

So there are some days in my life when I can honestly say I’d rather be listening to the Backstreet Boys. You know the wonderful merits of listening to cold, lifeless, and machinated sounds from poly-carbonated plastic. It’s a miracle how those pop artists can sell so many records, and yet have zero artistic chops to back up those triple digit figures. They do however have one slight hint of integrity however, when they notice that the trend stops they quietly bow out. Not like the Kansas death metal band Origin however with their infamous formula, blast endlessly and lack everything that makes a song good. Now sit back a minute and let me tell you why the band collectively will suck the life out of you.

First of much like they did on their newer album “Antithesis”, the production fails to mix the guitars like guitars should sound. The end result sounds something like the laser sound effects from Star Wars, and if you put a microphone up to the suction effect of a vacuum. Effectively there are no riffs in the album just a continuity of layered sound, its as if they pre-programmed their guitars to just make sound without any noticeable riffs at all. The only moment I can recount even a mere semblance of song crafting is the middle of “Staring from The abyss”. There is a jump from a slight groove in “Staring from the abyss” to the usual mindless riff-bashing the guitars normally do. That’s one discernible moment out of one overstretched, unabridged, pointless supersong!

The band sensing that writing riffs and creating at least an illusion of song writing capability have not left us wanting. Both guitarists exactly how to make up for their collective lack of talent, they include sweeps in the songs! From “Reciprocal” to “Echoes of Decimation” expect a whole lot of droning vacuum noises with screechy sweeps. So apparently the “Decimating” is in effect a wall of noise meant to bore the listener to death. You crazy Kansonians!, Kansaskians, Kanasonites whatever the hell you call people from Kansas. With that the band however manages to have one of the most athletic drummers, he is practically blasting a marathon on every song! He may as well because he doesn’t do anything else!

So with no riffs or any talent whatsoever and one of the ugliest coverarts in the world, what do the band have left to offer the metal scene? James Lee and James King the twin J’s, double J, the drummer and the vocalist, most of the creative gaping black hole of suckage stems right from their tiny brains. James Lee is without a doubt the worst death metal vocalist ever. His range consists entirely of a monotone growl and a pussy screech that would make Howler monkeys blush. “Cloning the stillborn” is a good example of his terrible performance, and he manages to conjure up the demons of his voice in every song! That and with his trusty sidekick James King, the band have reached the zenith of absolute shit.

The drummer as noted in my review for Antithesis is the polar opposite of say Flo Mounier or any good drummer. There are no fills, no good drum rolls, just a lot of blasting and blasting and more blast beats. Yeah I know I made the point already but just listen to the album, he doesn’t do anything else but blast and blast some more. It’s as if the band ordered him from the future or something, because blasting that much is in my opinion impossible. Oh and the bass is once again nonexistent sucked into the black hole, the black hole created by Origin!

It takes a pretty shitty album for me to sit through and not even get moved remotely by, the kind of album that promotes downloading and filesharing by today’s listeners. This isn’t music it’s a pointless wall of sound, blaring endlessly appealing to the hordes of tech death fan boys/pseudo-musicians out there. “Echoes of decimation” does no decimating at all, if it were a measurable force it couldn’t even topple a wall of Legos. Origin are one of the worst band’s in death metal today, and sadly people will continue to buy their shit. Avoid this album and spend your hard earned money on true death metal, or maybe even the Backstreet Boys!

On paper, this album looks awesome. It's not just far more complex than most other eighties power metal albums, actually most power metal albums period, the song arrangements mostly make perfect sense. The song structures blend the diverse influences - I can already identify Mercyful Fate, Iron Maiden, even Black Sabbath and probably a few prog-rock bands too - seamlessly. The lyrics aren't shabby either, and the cover art is pretty cool.

The performances are very good too, these guys can obviously play their instruments and John Arch can obviously sing. At first he sounds like your average power metal falsetto if one that's more nasal than usual, but if you listen closely you'll notice that the vocal melodies are really intricate.

There is only one ingredient lacking... and unfortunately, it's an important one:

Energy.

For the most part, this album is boring. When listening to this album, there are very long stretches where all I feel is "wow, this sure is complex and well-written". I have no idea exactly what went wrong, because I do quite like "The Spectre Within".

This, however? I'm told how it's heavier and more intense than most power metal albums and, yeah, I understand that the main riff in "The Sorceress" is very similar to "Children of the Grave". Guess what? The song still bores me and so do the majority of this album.

I'll admit this much: "Valley of the Dolls" is a fun speedfest despite being from an objective point of view the album's only serious misstep due to actually being meandering, "Fata Morgana" is as good as anything on "The Spectre Within" and "Exodus" is a great closing epic complete with a wonderfully catchy chorus.

Except for those three songs (out of eight, remind you) I just don't see the same things in this album as most reviewers here do, just a lot of navel-gazing. As I've found out the hard way, life's too short for the latter.

This must be the best OVER-ALL release of the year 1999. And this must be InsideOuts most important release ever! This album (originally demo) is that mindboggling, psychotwiggling piece of mastery that isn't very often heard nor seen.

This piece of magic contains the smash: "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Where the Winds Blow" that somehow reminds me of the basic ingredients of mankind. It has got the elements that makes an album mystic and swirling with life. As god himself had put the finishing touch on it!

Im a drummer myself, and if you are - this album is an MUST-HAVE! Macaluso must be the underestimated drummer of the century! His enormous technique and skill brings his play forward to become an instrument that leads the songs just as much as any guitar or keyboard could ever do.

Hail to the A.R.K!

This guy is probably the pinnacle of idiocy. It is basically an incoherent rant put together by a guy who simply wants to give the band a bad score. A number of the things he writes are simply incorrect, and very stupid, not to mention the spelling errors.

I don't know why this one by optimuszgrime was accepted: http://metal-archives.com/review.php?id=474#141800

It's 2 paragraphs of bitching about why Dan Swano doesn't know what the hell he's doing anymore and the third paragraph is still more bitching. There is very little musical description on the song itself, which is funny because it's 1 forty minute song that you could easily go into. He assumes we know what Edge of Sanity sounds like, which explains his lack of content related to the MUSIC.

Honestly, this isn't a music review - it's a post belonging on the forum.

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=148812#154734

This review stinks. The author sounds retarded at some points through this.

If you are into raw fast-riffing headbanging bm then just stay away from this album.

The production of this album is clear with high bass sound. One of the better album production than usual

Another great track is Abysmal Hate..impressing drumming works and vigurous vocals. Impressive guitar melodies in some parts of the track which makes the song more interesting.

The musical description is sufficient and there are no other reviews. Sure his writing is terrible and worse than mine but it is mostly grammatically correct and no spelling mistakes stood out to me.

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=270404#197373

Utter shit. Ooh, calling a black metal album pop and complaining that it's an insult to anyone who is "more than a casual fan of the genre," what an in depth and well written criticism.

So this is MANOWAR, the mighty Kings of Metal, the band in which all must bow or be duly slain by their mighty, eagle-clad broadswords. In order for one to achieve greatness in the world of heavy metal it seems that the one must exhibit prurience in the eyes of these Floridian barbarians by whatever means necessary, lest the evil of being "not true" come to pass.

Yeah, OK...but what about YOUR music, guys?

I got this after all the repeated ramblings from one and all, and I had to figure out just what exactly "true metal" is, and if by "true" metal you mean slightly heavier AC/DC riffs, wildly operatic wailings, and plodding tempos, then I guess all those legendary extreme metal acts better get back to their Art of Heaviness 101 class to figure out who to get things done right. Seriously...I hate to break it to ya, but this is pretty damn awful. I would hardly constitute this heavy metal in the least; this is, at best, generic hard rock with barely enough oomph to make metal-heads take notice. Everything about this album is so standard and generic that nothing at all stands out...hardly befitting a band of such self-imposed high standards. Every song has the same crap working against it; the simple riff work, the go-nowhere soloing, the punchy-yet-weak-kneed drums, the "glorious" choir-of-the-gods vocal work...and all that would make for an awesome album if these goons were able to put more emphasis on the metal SOUND and less time on the meatl IMAGE, with their gaudy outfits and wicked-bad warrior personas. In the end, music is supposed to be about the MUSIC rather than the mask one puts on, and the likes of "Death Tone", "Shell Shock", "Dark Avenger" (even Citizen Kane can't help this...) and the titular "Manowar" song don't have the energy, the intensity, and any kind of balls to the wall to make this smorgasbord of tedium work. Oh...but the production is actually pretty clear for an album made during its time. That's something, at least...

So all in all this didn't thrill me, kill me, or even spill me. The legend of MANOWAR speaks louder volumes than their dullsville musical output, and even future records weren't able to better the overall musical stew in the least. Ignore like any -core band...unless you're into this kinda thing.