Music Street Journal - Music News & Reviews

Neal Smith Halloween - 10th Anniversary Edition - Best of KillSmith 2008-2018 Review by Gary Hill This is a new compilation disc from Neal Smith. The music here is raw and quite industrial in nature. Yet there are elements of metal, punk and classic rock built into it, too. All in all, this is quite an entertaining set, warts and all. I have previously reviewed quite a few of these tracks on their original discs. For the sake of consistency the track reviews of those are modified or copied from those original reviews. Neal Smith is an alum of Alice Cooper's band, and the dark elements of this fit that pedigree quite well. I should mention that some might argue with this landing under metal, but I think it probably fits in a weird way. This review is available in book (paperback and hardcover) in Music Street Journal: 2019 Volume 1. More information and purchase links can be found at: garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-2019.

Track by Track Review

Evil Voodoo Moon There’s some tasty guitar work on this. It’s like an old school rock and roll tune with a punk rock sneer.

Death by the Numbers A cool punk meets metal groove makes up this tune. I dig the harmonica on this.

How Do You Bleed This has a lot of smoking hot metal at its core. It's fierce, grinding and a real powerhouse. There is a classy raw edge to this.

Cemetery of the Damned Here’s an extremely cool tune. It’s got a lot of horror rock built into it, but it also has a real raw metal chugging and some punk. The later parts of the arrangement, including a section that feels like a choir of the undead, is very cool.

Squeeze Like a Python While this song is more of the same in a lot of ways, the retro keyboard sounds make it feel a bit like Lords of the New Church, and that’s a good thing. There’s even a cool keyboard solo.

The Killsmith Overture The opening section on this has a lot of classical music built into it. Spanish guitar is one of the elements bringing a Latin flavor. As the arrangement fills out, it takes on a definite progressive rock leaning. There are non-lyrical female vocals in the mix, too. As it continues to work through, that prog element is more pronounced.

Thrill Thrill Thrill Shoot to Kill This is screaming hot and potent. It has a lot of metal along with industrial in the mix.

Die for the Night There’s more of a pure rock feeling to this one. It’s still got that same chugging punk meets metal sound, but with a more catchy classic rock chord progression.

Pandemonium This powerhouse is noisy. It’s also got a lot of psychedelia built into it. It’s a pretty crazed cut in a lot of ways, really.

Strychnine Raw and quite punk rock based, this has a cool catchy chorus. It also has some particularly tasty guitar soloing.

Dynasty of Darkness Drums bring this beast into being. It powers from there into some smoking hot industrial styled hard rock. There is both metal and punk built into the mix here.

Monsters in the Attic Not a big change, this is another killer industrial, punk metal stomper.

Return to the Neal Smith Artist Page

Artists Directory

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
© 2024 Music Street Journal Site design and programming by Studio Fyra, Inc./Beetcafe.com