Mettle Church

 

This week, I heard that long-time survivor of the Dave Mustaine revolving door membership programme known as Megadeth but now former bassist of the band, David Ellefson, had joined Metal Church.

A metal church sounds like the last place you’d want to be during a lightning storm, but in this case it’s actually a band. I think the idea of their name is to suggest that metal music is like a religion, rather than to present themselves as some sort of Christian rock band (they’re not, or at least, they don’t really vocalise any opinion about religion).

Apart from remembering when one of their guitarists filled in for Metallica’s James Hetfield after a pyrotechnic accident in 1991 and owning one of their albums in my teens that I really don’t recall listening to, I realised that my Metal Church knowledge was beyond slim.

This needed to be remedied ASAP.

A quick look at the band’s Wikipedia page told me that Metal Church was formed in 1980 in San Francisco before locating to Aberdeen (not the one in Scotland) and that they have so far released 13 albums of “heavy metal/thrash metal/power metal/speed metal”.

I set to work listening to the band’s eponymous debut and ploughed through their full discography to Congregation of Annihilation. This listening journey that would have filled at least six and half C90 cassettes (ask your parents, youngsters) took me three afternoons and left me feeling less than plussed. I fact, I was downright fed up. Not a single album stood out and not a single song left any real kind of impression on me or made me feel like listening to it again. There were moments of almost brilliance, but they were fleeting. And fundamentally, none of it is really thrash metal.

And so on to the only output of Metal Church to feature Ellefson, the new single F.A.F.O. That stands for “fuck around, find out”, in case you were wondering. If only Metal Church had been British and called it C.S.G.B. (“chat shit, get banged”) instead. The video for this single sees the band in a prison, which is quite ironic given the musical crimes being committed here. Actually, to be very fair, this might be one of the best things Metal Church have ever recorded. In over 40 years. Although that’s not saying much.

I can’t wait for the new album that will presumably come at some point. Said no one ever.