Soundtracks

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Artist: Various Artists Title: ECW: Extreme Music Label: CMC Records Reviewed By: Vinnie Apicella Rating:

From ECW, "Extreme Wrestling" now has extreme music to go along with it. Boasting a hard-core following in professional wrestling circles, ECW has built a solid reputation for relying less on the glitz and glamour of its competitors, and pushed the boundaries of square-circle punishment well over the top rope. With this compilation of equally hard-hitting magnitude that features the best of many of today's "hard-music" artists, "Extreme Music" strikes with about as much force as a folding chair to the back! Starting off with the obligatory "ECW Theme," contributed by Harry Slash and The Slashtones, the disc line-up includes the likes of White Zombie, Kilgore and Megadeth, the odds on favorite for "ruler of soundtrack appearances champion." A slew of your favorite musical stars re-interpret some of their favorite rock classics, offering another option than just the usual rehash of already existing music. Kilgore does a brutal version of Pantera's "Walk." Bruce Dickinson contributes a reworking of the Scorpions classic, "The Zoo." Anthrax tears a page from early Metallica, doing "Phantom Lord," while latest rock-radio Gods, Monster Magnet lend their version of MC5's "Kick Out the Jams." Can we see a theme developing here?? Hard-hitting, hard-music, and hard-bodies-I was actually making that reference to the scantily clad young lady posing on the back cover, not of the wrestlers themselves-just so no one draws any peculiar conclusions! Thanks to the joining of forces between Concrete/Slab and CMC International, now fans can feel all the body-slamming and head-banging excitement of ECW and "Extreme Music" right from the safety of their living room recliner!

Artist: Grateful Dead & Merl Saunders Title: "Twilight Zone: Vol. 1" Label: Hoopla Reviewed By: Pedro A. Vera-Perez Rating:     This is a compendium of tunes performed by the "Grateful Dead" and "Merl Saunders," from the 1985 re-invention of Rod Serling's classic series on CBS. The compendium includes the series' main and end titles, and the theme songs to six of the most popular episodes. The main title itself is a trip. For real. I still remember how spooky the show sounded like back in 1985, when I had to watch it in a tiny black and white TV (and dubbed in Spanish too!). This is the first time that I've listened to it like it was intended. This piece is a duplication of the original theme from the 1959-1964 series, but with a surreal touch (uh, I wonder where did that one came from?). My favorites? "Kentucky Rye" was the story of a drunk driver that finds himself buying a bar for a suspiciously small sum. When he wakes up, he realizes that he is dead and the bar is his own personal hell. The three tracks represent the phases of the episode, the first two being your run-of-the-mill Honky Tonk music, which evolves little by little as the mood of the crowd at the bar shifts. Toward the end, the third track shows a darker mood as the drunk driver realizes the person he was talking too was killed by him, and that he was also killed in the wreck. The piece ends with the "Twilight Zone" theme. "Nightcrawlers" is considered to be the most violent episode that was aired, violent enough that it was edited down after the first airing. This piece has a very strong Afro-Caribbean flavor, like a mix of Caribbean Jazz with slow Calypso or a Cuban beat. Toward the end it turns into a really mean Salsa. This episode was about a Vietnam veteran that believes that his dead buddies are returning for him. The music does a very good job of enhancing the illusion that the soldier is back in the jungle. This score is based on Peter Gabriel's "Rhythm of the Heart," which was the music used during filming for this episode. Oh, and Huey Lewis plays the harmonica solos. This album is quite a significant piece of work. "Twilight Zone" was one of the greatest TV shows of all time (times two), and to top it off, the soundtracks of the individual episodes were made by the greatest stars of the time. This CD is going to be an excellent collector's piece, both for fans of the shows and of Merl Saunders and the Dead. Hopefully additional volumes will be issued to cover other artists and musical styles that were represented in the series.