Excess – Melting Point

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Sometimes we can never tell why a band couldn’t get the recognition they deserved. That’s the case of Excess. Very good band of old school heavy metal that was brought to light by producer Bart Gabriel and No Remorse Records. “Melting Point” shows a band with lots of personality with heart and passion. The opening track, “Foreign Lands”, is a blast. It’s really a pitty the band split up and left us only two albums. The second track, “Rough Edge”, keeps the flame burning. The vocals soon called my attention. The mix of a Heavy Metal singer with a voice near 1980’s post punk as Gene Loves Jezebel is quite different, just to mention a word. The fourth track, “Glamour Girl”, gets the spirit of The Cult‘s songwriting and vocals. But with a very played and powerful guitar and a pounding slow pace drumming. The guitar lines at the end are very cool and melodic giving a certain futuristic atmosphere to the song.

“Melting Point” is an album with a lot of atmospheres. It goes far from what is expected from european bands from the 1980s, most of them playing some speed metal. Excess do that too, but  not too much. They preferred to build songs, piece by piece, guitar lines by guitar lines, vocals by vocals, and the result is a very well mixed album. For instance, “The Stranger” has a great taste of Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell. Powerfull and thick guitar lines. Thundering bass and Ian Astbury vocals. Could get better than that? Really don’t know. You tell me.

Maybe the problem with Excess “Melting Point” is that it was too well producted. Production can kill albums sometimes, but I don’t think that way. It just happened. But surely Excess deserved better. Or maybe “Melting Point” was too eightish to 1980s metal fans. I’m from that time and I would have enjoyed Excess “Melting Point”. Who the hell knows?

Track Listing:

  1. Foreign Lands
  2. Rough Edge
  3. Too Much
  4. Glamour Girl
  5. Burning the Night Away
  6. The Stranger
  7. Cut
  8. The Game
  9. Foreign Lands (bonus track)
  10. The Game (bonus track)
  11. Too Much (bonus track)

You can listen to “Foreign Lands” here: