Lee Aaron - Two Masculine Names, One Mediocre Album

I'm not going to comment on the pic, since Mses. Pesch and Greening aren't looking their best here, and besides, it's not like I would have turned down a sexual favor from either.  However, if you were excited about Lee Aaron's inclusion over any of the other bands whose logos appear on the cover, you are a truly sick individual and should leave this blog immediately.

One of my eventual plans for this blog is a regular feature based on brutally honest reviews of females in metal bands (particularly '80s), both in terms of looks and music (Spoiler alerts: Acid and Holy Moses are terribly overrated, one of the greatest female contributions to metal ever was done by a pop/rock songwriter under a pseudonym, and you're probably safe from valid criticism withering misogynist attacks if you're in a deathdoom band). This post could be considered somewhat of a precursor to that, except, well, Metal Queen...isn't very metal. Sure, there's some present, and given Lee's musical output both before and after, it's surprisingly heavy at times. But I suspect those who overpraise this and take the album title literally are more likely to consider Helix and Kick Axe to be classic '80s Canadian metal than Exciter and Anvil.

I never thought of Lee Aaron as a world-class beauty, but she was attractive in her 20s, and certainly hotter than most females associated with rock music. It could be argued that Lee's topless photos for Oui are more interesting than her music ever was, but given her smallish tits and severely overdone hair/makeup, I never found them all that titillating. Unfortunately, she remained clothed in later pictures with less exaggerated coifs, although she still had a penchant for odd photoshoots--posing with truck exhaust stacks, wielding a crowbar, and of course the whole Metal Queen budget barbarian thing.

The album's guitar sound may lean towards the heavy--yet polished--side, but there are only two actual metal tracks on Metal Queen. The solemn intro and epic aspirations of the title track initially point to Dio, although it clearly also wants to be a simplistic, catchy Twisted Sister/Quiet Riot-type anthem (complete with gang vocals in the chorus).   The solo section is genuinely great, and I also hear some Thor undercurrents in the main riff--with some minor tweaking, it wouldn't sound terribly out of place on Only the Strong. "Deceiver" is the album's speedy tune; it opens like Loudness circa '85 and then settles into the Priest veneration typical of the heavier strain of '80s mainstream metal.

As for the rest of the album, well, "Lady of the Darkest Night" is pretty catchy, and "Steal Away Your Love" is notable for its valuable information on dealing with rapists since Lee really sounds like Leather Leone at some points. The rest is rather unspectacular chorus-driven hard rock.  "Shake It Up" is a upbeat, goofy rocker that seems to take a mildly anti-disco lyrical stance.  The Cars' song of the same name is far more menacing.  The exceedingly corny "We Will Be Rockin'" may as well be titled "C'mon Rawkers Let's Rawk."

Lee would have been quite a formidable female metal vocalist had she had consistently heavy stuff to sing on. She reminds me of Jan Melanson from the first Reckless album (ironically, another Canadian release that typically has its metalness greatly exaggerated) mixed with Ann Boelyn and Leather Leone (though not quite as gritty and husky as either).

The two metal songs are solid quality-wise (PROTIP: get the Australian promo 7" if you want all killer, no filler) and I wouldn't hesitate to throw them on for some occasional variety. They were never in the running as contenders for truly great metal songs, though--female-fronted or otherwise.

Finally, the video of the title track:

The monk being set ablaze by the sort of flame-spewing prop you'd see at the end of a monster truck show is pretty neat, but the laughable green laser effect almost immediately negates it.  A certain level of schlockiness should be expected and even welcomed with any larger budget '80s videos, but this is frankly just C-grade shit compared to videos such as "Holy Diver," "Last in Line," or "Fear No Evil."

AMON GUITARIST ASSAULTS DRUNKEN RAPE ROCKER

 

Here's the full Deicide set; Duce appears during "Carnage in the Temple of the Damned" at 18:51:

Never seen Glen address this incident.  I would assume it was a non-event for him, but he definitely seems like someone who would have appreciated the Mentors.  On the other hand, I get the impression that the Hoffman brothers tend to be the humorless sort (although really, how true can that be if you allow someone named Jechael in your band?).

Of course, this wasn't the only Deicide-related drama during the '92 Metalfest--according to Ted Kirkpatrick, Deicide threatened not to play if Tourniquet wasn't knocked off the bill.  Yeah, in theory it's kind of lame, but it's hard to be sympathetic given Tourniquet's output after their first three albums.  Tourniquet wasn't the only no-show listed on the flyer, as Cirith Ungol had dissolved months before the fest; if I remember correctly, they were still listed on Metalfest promotional material for a deceptively long time.

The rising popularity of death metal combined with pay-to-play logistics and overstuffed band lineups made the 1992 iteration feel like an oddly transitional fest even before multi-stage antics.  Previous Metalfest rosters were largely thrash dominated and unerringly metal-focused for the most part, aside from weird genre-nebulous outliers (Last Crack) and the smattering of more HC/punk-associated bands (yeah yeah, I guess Ludichrist, '88 Cro-Mags, Impulse Manslaughter, etc. are defensible enough, but if you're the type of oddball who would prefer seeing Murphy's Law over a New Renaissance Rec. signee, why are you even here?).  By 1992, the focus was clearly on death metal, although as the musical extremity increased, so did the amount of non-metal acts.  The plot gradually shifted to a largely death metal fest with some odd shit added; by the mid '90s, it seemed less like a decent metal festival and  more like a gauntlet of numerous opening sets to be endured in order to catch Venom, Sodom, Exodus, or some semi-interesting mid-tier band.  I skipped on the final years, and while the lineups concentrated heavily on death and black metal, the bands were largely mediocre, either from their inception or through hanging around past their primes long enough to wear out their welcome (on the plus side, it seems like the overtly non-metal stuff was toned down, or at least seemed more diluted due to the huge volume of bands).

I didn't intend for this to be a general Milwaukee Metalfest post, but I wanted to get some thoughts down, as unfortunately I don't anticipate scraping together enough material for a separate dedicated post.  A reason for this is the lack of documentation--even after a few minutes of searching, I found nothing online about UFO's ridiculous 1995 soundcheck and the ensuing clusterfuck.  I feel reasonably certain Michael Angelo Batio played a quad guitar one year, but that also yielded nothing (was it ever documented by a primitive Geocities or Angelfire site that has been lost to time, or was it merely a Nitro-induced fever dream in my mind?).  

They may not be able to carry a post on their own, but witnessing Cronos' neat stripey pants and that weird version of Destruction fronted by the alternative rock-looking guy are metal memories to cherish and enjoy nonetheless.