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Customer Review: Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
It's albums like this that often make me glad heavy metal aesthetics are generally so blatant and stereotypical--particularly in the past, if you saw a cool logo, certain types of cover art or songtitles, or saw leather, spikes, or a number of band t-shirts on an album, you generally knew you were safe. Not so with "Thrash Ranch." In fact, I can't even remember why I chose to initially buy it--I'm not sure if I knew that most of the band were involved with Attacker when I picked it up. It wasn't really the label, as Grudge did release some softer stuff. It definitely wasn't the cover, as which looks like something a glam band or your local hard rock bar heroes might use. The logo? Nope, really just a font. The band photo has four longhairs, but they're not dressed decisively enough for me to make any sort of musical predictions (I'll pass on taking any cheap shots on the Mickey Mouse belly shirt). I think the album title ended up being the cincher. This is an album of competent but plain thrash, and I can say it's better than any initial misleading non-metal cues the packaging gives off. The songtitles and general feel of the album sort of give off an air of humor, like you would get from an Anthrax-type band or something like Mordred, but other than the album intro and the appropriately-titled "Greasy Funk Chicken," there isn't much light-heartedness here. The lyrics are in the typical societal commentary vein of the late '80s. It's really difficult to say anything more than this is mid-late '80s style thrash with fast and churning guitars. It's not soft or notably weak, but it just lacks a real punch and ends up being mostly empty cycles of speedy riffs. It's just so generic, at times overwhelmingly so, that I can't tell whether flashes of similarities or familiarities I get are from the music or the album as a whole. Sometimes I'll think Death Angel, but is that just due to Mickey Mouse adorned bandmembers? Or I'll think Meliah Rage, but is that just due to the songtitle "Medicine Man" and the Indian connotations? As mentioned before, three of these guys are/were in Attacker, but that's pretty much a negligible point where the music is concerned. The instrumentation is great, but while I don't want to say it's totally wasted, it's really just exhausted on songs that fail to do all that much. The best example of this are the solos; they're all excellent on a technical level. But it's as if the band thought "Hey, let's disrupt the song structure with anticlimactic guitarwork while the rhythm section keeps trundling along." It's doesn't descend to the worst levels of mindlessness you may find on a shred/guitar virtuoso album, but the band doesn't try to be technical or progressive anywhere else, so the solos don't work. To my surprise, the band did snag a few catchy parts--"Wasted World" does have some nice soloing which flows with the song instead of impeding it, the post-solo part of "Games" reminds me a bit of Metallica's "Battery," and the harmonious twin-axe work at the beginning of "Last Breath" is probably the most memorable part of the album. The vocals aren't terrible, but they're undoubtedly the weak point of the album. They're slighty gruff, clean singing. The only specific comparison I can think of is a flatter, less distinct and less harsh version of Phil Rind from Sacred Reich from the older SR stuff--to my ear, Lou Ciarlo of Jersey Dogs carries out some words in the same way, without showing much of a vocal range. Again, the vocals aren't really too bad, but they don't help the music at all, which could use any advantage available. I should also note there are nice gang backing vocals (if I remember correctly the only ones on the album) in "Why Is," but the music really doesn't come off as an overly Bay Area thrash type. Again, it's just so broadly plain that it almost defies comparisons and classifications. This is one of those albums that gets trapped in a vicious cycle that's very, very common among thrash bands--it's too forgettable. It's neither good enough or bad enough to remember. I don't play it a lot, and I don't really actively avoid it, because I can never remember what it sounds like. At first I want to type here that this is the metal equivalent of junk food, but junk food can be satisfying depending on what it is, the quantity, and how hungry you are. So after all that typing, I can't provide any concrete musical OR metaphorical comparisons...And perhaps that says more than any words in my review.


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