U.D.O.: The Heaviest of Heavy Metal, Mystic Ambience, and E
LawrenceSvetlana | USA | 01/14/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Nobody gives the goods to his fans more than U.D.O. does. And he's smart about the way he does it. He follows the trend of giving fans the single version (trimmed of 56 seconds of music) and the original album version. And this single is a great song. It starts with plastic crackles from an old record on a phonograph, goes into an ultra-cool, Middle-Eastern sounding yodel (trust me, here, it's very cool), and then churns into a crunching song with lots of attention paid to solid rhythm chores, a pounding backbeat, and enough musical ambience that you almost feel like you're watching a movie. And the tone of the song is that vibrant: this is a great addition to U.D.O.'s oeuvre, a song about resurrection in shadows, healing through being torn apart, releasing the virus of the Beast by kissing poison lips on papyrus. It's imaginative and brutal. As to the two version, the only place I noticed a difference is the shortening of the introductory phonograph / keyboard music from the album track's 9 seconds to the single version's 4 seconds. Obviously they cut out 51 seconds somewhere else, and I'm assuming it's done in similar ways, but I listened and listened and couldn't figure it out. The next two songs are worth the price of this cd alone. And these are true non-album tracks. They're not on the Mastercutor cd from which the single came, and there's no limited edition that includes them. For a lot of bands, this would be a marketing gimmick. For U.D.O., it's just making sure their fans get their money's worth. These songs are just as good if not stronger than a few of the songs on the Matercutor cd. Let me talk about my favorite, "Man a King Ruler" (the fourth song on the cd) first. U.D.O. could play this live and absolutely bring the house down. It's Dirkschneider's outraged anger at "f***ers and the scumbags defended by the law," "human parasites . . . with no more room for honor," and when Udo says, "Hey, you slime, you listen; I've really had enough now," you'll be voting him for the Man a King Ruler position so he can put a stop to the tricks these "f***ing perverts" play with their "seedy little . . . quests for domination" with "dirty evil hands." When he asks, "Who wants their protection?", you don't want to be raising your hand. This is one of the strongest metal songs I've every heard, and I hope the fans make it known so that this song isn't forgotten years from now. "Streets of Sin" is almost as good as "Man a King Ruler." I hate to keep repeating the word "brutal," but the songs on this cd rock like nobody's violent business. "Streets" is about life on some very mean streets full of racing through grit and steel, gang warfare, and standing together through all the bullets that come your way. It's hard to tell whether Udo is glorifying this or just letting you know what the mean streets are truly about. I'm glad the Russian (and Udo's Russian if flawless) version of "Cry, Soldier, Cry" is here so that we can relax for a second rather than running to our closets and putting the clips in our guns. It reminds us what U.D.O.'s true message is. Wars and violent death always end in very sad losses, and the only way to making any bad thing better is to have a human response from the heart. As to packaging, you get a first-look, primordial picture of the Mastercutor and all lyrics. If that wasn't enough, Udo blesses you with the video of "The Wrong Side of Midnight." You can't beat this guy. It's because of stuff like this that he's got a hardcore army of fans. U.D.O.'s put out a masterful mini-collection, here. I'm tempted to call it the best cd single ever, but I will say that it's probably the best of 2007 and the one to beat in 2008. But Udo will probably do that himself.
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Track Listings (5) - Disc #1