V.A. - Viva La Bands – Volume II - [Ferret Music]

2008-03-18

Fuck me if I understand why Bam Margera is the celebrity that he is. I know he's a skateboarder, that he's a part of the Jackass crew (more people doing nothing and still very well-known) and that he had his own show on MTV. That's about it, but whatever the reason, he seems to be a positive force for bringing good metal to the young fans otherwise acquainted with it.

When I say "good", I mean good current metal, he's not exactly the reviver of classic oldschool metal, but rather centers his efforts on new-school bands and extreme metal bands that have done pretty well without him, too.
His latest effort is a second part of a metal collection that is some kind of a soundtrack to his ongoing series, made up from a variety of metal and hardcore bands, some great, some decent, and some outright worthless, but his effort in putting this album together is still commendable, bringing any kind of metal to the masses instead of the usual label-manufactured hip-crap or dance-shit is always positive.

So, the bands- Clutch, one of the finest stoner/blues rock/metal bands in existence open up the proceedings with the fantastic "King Of Arizona", that's definitely one band that is supposed to be a household name in the US.
The ex-death metal In Flames are next, with material as uninspiring as the whole of their latter day output, Children Of Bodom are next and remind us that they are fast, they are brutal, and still one of Europe's finest metal bands.
Bam's brother's band CKY are next, with an OK remix of their song "Rio Bravo", it's followed by 2 bad songs by two non-metal bands that suck.
Later on we get great songs from the mighty Gwar, Finland's Goth merchants The 69 Eyes, Dimmu Borgir, and the always brutal Malevolent Creation, but that comes with a heavy dose of crap bands such as Kill Hannah, Melody Club (Euro-crap) and Priestess among others.

This is all accompanied by a DVD containing more of Margera's shenanigans, which is really not that interesting to me.
As a metal collection, this is half-shit, half-really good, but looking at it as somewhat of an effort to bring some metal to the masses, and as such I can't really knock this off completely.

Alon Miasnikov