Firstly, this is not as I first suspected, a release from the leather lunged air-raid siren vocal chorded singer for hire Mr Owens, rather a release from the resurrected eighties Texan metal heads. That said, first track on ‘Third Witness’ did in fact put in mind at least two bands said Mr Owens played for, predominantly Iced Earth. ‘Dead Dreams’ has an undeniably classic metal sound, pumping drums, cleanly sung vocals, and a raft of technical riffs. Follow up ‘Fragrant Earth’ has a distinctly classic sound too, the prominent (on my player anyway) bass line and sinister feel making it sound as if somebody had re-written Metallica’s ‘Orion’ with the addition of vocals and some swirling dark synths. In fact, I’d challenge anyone familiar with the classic ‘Master of Puppets’ to listen to the two tracks back to back and not see the comparison. Hey, I’m not for one second implying plagiarism, just maybe a similar vintage and influences; remember the core of the band of Rus Gib on vocals and Rob Graves on guitar and bass would have been contemporaries of “The Big Four” back in the day.
A host of classic sounds abide in the album, covering the whole history of Ripper’s existence. ‘Morphinia’ harkens back to Layne Staley era Alice in Chains with the grungier sound and vocal layering, the subject material of heroin addiction further invoking that long lost soul and his chemical demise. In contrast ‘Geneticide’ could easily have been a lost chapter of ‘Operation Mindcrime’ with the power riffs and tale of dark New World Order technology taking over mankind. To close the album, Ripper pay tribute to the band from which so much of Metal evolved, covering as they do the classic ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ (anyone who has to look up who first played that, consider yourself forever ostracised from the world of metal and hang your head in shame!), and rather than just try to produce a carbon copy of the original, or try and take it into a bizarre and kooky direction, ‘Ripper’ just play it straight down the line, hard, heavy, and respectfully. I’ve little doubt that this is one of the tracks that the original line up of Ripper would have heard plenty of times growing up, and wanted to play homage to.
‘Third Witness’ is an album that is bereft of gimmicks, and in a world where the word “Metal” can have a host of prefixes, from “Black”, “Death” and “Doom”, to “Power” or “Stoner”, and fall into so many sub-genres it needs a slide rule and a ready reckoner just to try and keep track of them all, Ripper need only the word “Heavy” to be added to properly describe their sound. That’s a fact that I find more than a little refreshing, and whilst I can hear the styles and influences of many other what are now known as “legacy bands” in their sound, that’s probably because I’m of a generation that can remember when Lemmy wasn’t old; to younger and less jaded ears, this sound may well be fresh, and is well worth sampling.
(7/10 Spenny)
19/08/2015 at 3:53 pm
Much appreciated, Spenny, on behalf of Rus Gib, Robert Bogle, Don Ramirez, Stephen Bogle, Black Widow Records and myself. ‘Heavy’ Metal cheers from Houston!