Friday, July 18, 2014

Commercial Metal, Vol. 7 - K-Tel compilations

A logo that sort of resembles looking into a chick's blouse from the side...
K-tel is a company best known for hawking their compilation albums on TV--their heyday was the '70s, making me too young and my parents too old to truly appreciate those halcyon times.  More detail or historical info about K-tel could easily go here, but I'm less interested in informing readers and more interested in listening to Kreator.

In fairness to the company, their '88 Rising Metal compilation had a surprisingly good tracklist and was one of my first exposures to thrash metal.*

Anyway, they did some metal compilations that had some TV ads, hence this post:


As with almost every corporate label metal compilation, real heavy metal is tempered with commercial pap.

AND WHAT'S WITH THE MASTER OF METAL HIMSELF?  I dig his gladiator-of-the-dystopian-future look and his jerky low-frame-rate animation, don't get me wrong.  But what's with the face, and arm, for that matter? Is he supposed to be cybernetically enhanced, ala Kano of Mortal Kombat?  Is he some kind of robotic compilation shilling Terminator homage?

Actually, you know what?  Fuck the Master of Metal.  "I bring you..."  Yeah, you brought me an album with Bon Jovi on it.  Fuck off.





These seem to be more solid albums overall, and both volumes have Graham Bonnet on them!  Plus, I absolutely love the Axe Attack logo!  It's rather unfortunate that no NWOBHM bands took the moniker and stole the logo. Guitar Pete didn't even bother to use it.  





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