Elias Hulk – ‘Unchained’ (1970/2023) – Album Review

One thing I’ve been having fun with is collecting the Exclusive vinyls offered at my local Record Store, Noble Records. Each month he generally has one or two releases that are exclusive to his store. Usually that means a colored variant of archival release. It has allowed me to branch out and listen to things I would normally never ever hear or get the chance to hear. And I will say, 90% of his releases I have found to be quite enjoyable and made me really appreciate a lot of these cult bands that seemed to fall by the wayside or discarded from this rock & roll business. I have reviewed two of these before and I thought, it is time to start diving in to more of this and do a review. So, here we are with one of those exclusives.

For this review, we are going to look at a band that had one album and was done. A One And Done band called Elias Hulk. The album was released in the UK sometime back in 1970. The band was originally called Alias the Hulk due to their love for Marvel Comics and The Incredible Hulk. Eventually the name was shorted to Elias Hulk. The band consisted of members James Haines (Bass), Bernard James (Drums), Neil Tatum (Lead Guitar), Granville Frazer (Rhythm Guitar) and Peter Thorpe (Lead Singer). And as far as sound, they are a cross between a heavy bluesy rock with some psychedelic hard rock mixed and some Eastern elements that add a cool uniqueness to their sound. And if that wasn’t enough, it is a little proggy as well. I would say that it is a pretty accurate as we definitely have some heavy moments and then some not quite so heavy, but all sounds are still rock and still kick ass.

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Night Ranger – “Wasted Time” / “Free” – 7″ Single (Record Store Day – April 23, 2022)

For Record Store Day, April 23, 2022, Night Ranger and Frontiers Records released an RSD “First Release” of two previously unreleased songs recorded during the recording sessions for their latest album ATBPO (And the Band Played On). That is right, two never before released tracks. Now that my friends, is a single worth picking up.

According to the back cover and the stickers on the vinyl, the A-Side is “Wasted Time” and the B-Side is called “Free”. However, that is not what you get. The A-Side of “Wasted Time” is actually the song “Free”. Which naturally means, the B-Side of “Free” is actually “Wasted Time”. Talk about a screw up. The Stickers are on the wrong sides. Oops. I find that pretty cool though, as I love little mistakes like that. The one thing that is not a mistake is the pretty Green Vinyl!! I like colored vinyl!

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Axel Rudi Pell – ‘Between the Walls’ (1994) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

While Jeff Scott Soto was touring with Talisman in Europe, Axel Rudi Pell was ready to make another album. After the mixed reaction from the fans on ‘The Ballad’ album, Axel was going to go to his roots and make a pure metal album…a German Metal Album as he has stated. He contacted Jeff and arranged for him to come in and work on the album while his other band was touring. Jeff was happy to do so as he really enjoyed working with Axel since it wasn’t a dictatorship like other bands he had worked in. Jeff and Axel work well together and Soto co-wrote 4 of the 10 tracks.

Most of the band was back from the last studio album, ‘Eternal Prisoner’. There was obviously Axel and Jeff, but Jorg Michael was back on drums and Volker Krawczak on bass. Keyboardist Kai Raglewski was out and in his place was Julie Greaux who has worked with Billy Idol and happened to be Soto’s girlfriend. That’s convenient wouldn’t you say!! What I would say is that this was a solid line-up and had me interested to hear what they had put together this time around. It is definitely more fantasy and mystical lyrics and it is truly metal for sure! One more thing, in the liner notes, it lists out what instrument each band member plays with and for Jeff…it says he plays with Julie….”Oh Heffe, Oh Oh Ooh”…Let me just say…Wow!! Okay, hold on tight and let’s get to the music.

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Turntables & Vinyl #8 – The CD Edition

CD Edition??  What the hell???  This is a series about my journey rediscovering Vinyl. Why would I discuss CDs??

Well, let me tell you why.  Before I started re-collecting vinyl, I use to have a pretty extensive CD collection.  After we had kids and the digital age, I burned all my CDs to digital and then started selling them off (made pretty good money on some).  When we moved from Georgia to North Carolina, I gave my neighbor the final box of CDs as I didn’t want to move them and I was going to have no where to store them (I regret that decision to this day).

Lo and behold, one of my neighbors inherited a collection of CDs he had no desire for keeping.  He had a bunch of scratched up, banged up CDs that probably didn’t even work and he was going to try and sell the rest.  I let him try and make a little money on the others (which he was able to sell about 100) and if there was any left, I told him I would be interested in whatever he had left.

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