Mean Streak - Metal Slave 4/5

01. Whom the Gods Love Die Young 04:47 02. Battle Within 03:34 03. Eyes of a Stranger 04:01 04. The Seventh Sign 05:02 05. Raise Your Hands 04:37 06. Rock City 03:58 07. Sin City Lights 04:51 08: Carved in Stone 04:43 09. Metal Slave 04:20 10. Sinners and Saints 03:42

Welcome to the world of Mean Streak, the latest crusaders in the battle to defend the faith of heavy metal. The kind of largely imaginary battle which involves leather armour and large axes, obviously. They were formed in Sweden (where else?) in 2006 entirely as a studio project by Peter Andersson, apparently in order “to make music straight from the heart”…and “the early/mid ’80s”. Andersson started out alone, recording all of the guitar and bass parts and even programming the drum lines before he had recruited another band member. He added singer Andy LaGuerin and drummer Jonas Kallsback to fill out parts in the studio before the idea of getting a record deal or even playing live even occurred; guitarists David Andersson and Patrik Gardberg were only recruited when a local club heard their demos and requested a live performance. This led to interest from a local record label, and all of a sudden Mean Streak had walked into a recording contract.

The first fruit of this deal is the album “Metal Slave”; the name tells you quite a lot of what you need to know about Mean Streak. They are Slaves to Metal. Indeed, they are so dedicated to their particular craft (their Myspace defines it as “Metal/Metal/Metal”) that every song is a microcosm of the greater whole; essentially, you always know what you’re going to get. Right from opening track ‘Whom the Gods Love Die Young’, there are no surprises here; every song comprises a selection of thundering riffs, double-bass drumming, wailing solos, and soaring vocal melodies. We’re firmly in the Manowar/Grand Magus/hooray-for-epic-metal vein here.

Again going back to their Myspace, the band lists their influences simply as ‘NWOBHM’ (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, stupid), and there is indeed a strong flavour of Iron Maiden in the twin-lead guitar assault at times. The album’s title track, ‘Metal Slave’, opens up sounding like a sped-up version of ‘Dance of Death’ (just listen to that bass line!) before erupting into something more akin to ‘The Trooper’. And there’s something very ‘Aces High’ about the intro to ‘Eyes of a Stranger’. Being as they’re not exactly looking to break any new ground here, I suppose it’s a good thing that Mean Streak are capable of instantly evoking thoughts of the metal icons they’re influenced by - as long as they do just enough to avoid coming across as an outright cover or copycat band. On “Metal Slave” they largely manage this, happily, injecting a sufficient amount of originality to be a ‘homage’ rather than a ‘rip-off’.

As is kind of par for the course with this kind of music (*cough*Manowar*cough*) the lyrics are hilariously cheesy. To drag out a torturous analogy, if you were to compare music to film, then lyrics would be the dialogue; well, Mean Streak’s lyrics are like the dialogue in a porn film. You know exactly what to expect, and it all serves a purpose; however, frankly anybody could come up with them, and nobody’s really tuning in for that anyway. You’re mostly there to see an enormous and climactic, um, finger-tapping guitar solo. Take ‘Rock City’, for example, which I assume is some kind of suburb of Detroit Rock City. There’s a lot of talk about being “in Rock City, in rock and roll town”, but for the most part I have no idea what they’re on about - and it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Because it’s got a solid, galloping riff, several face-melting solos, and all of the lyrical nonsense is conducted at an entertainingly high pitch. It’s followed on the album by “Sin City Lights”, which lyrically is the exact same song, but hey, it’s got a kicking solo, and we’re on track 7 now so you’re past expecting anything different. Someday, I’m sure there’ll be a band who combine deep, thoughtful lyrics with balls-out, solo-heavy cheese metal, but that day is not today, and that band is not Mean Streak.

Producer Fredrik Nordström was working with Mean Streak before they even had full-time guitarists, and this is reflected in the production job, which is seamless; it never even really occurs to you that anything has been done to it, which is no mean feat in itself. It’s a good fit for the music, too, and the general philosophy of the band - plain and simple, no messing about, just straight-up balls-out metal. It’s hard to find specific fault with the album, really; everything is very well done, very cleanly executed, and if you can forgive the lack of originality then it has to go down as a solid effort which demands wider recognition. Whether the band are capable of recreating the material live on tour, given their origins as a studio project, remains to be seen.

Mean Streak present a fairly straightforward formula: if you like your ’80s NWOBHM fare, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, that kind of thing, you’re fairly sure to appreciate “Metal Slave”. It’s a joyous salute to the days when a metal band could just be five guys wearing leather jackets (and, yes, pants), singing some cheesy crap and ripping the odd awesome solo. It’ll make you miss the 80s, even if you can’t actually remember them.

Genre : Metal

Article by Phil Sim