VARIOUS ARTISTS Heavy Metal (Rhino)
Defiant in its stance, in terms of both relevance and intrinsic general attitude, heavy metal has seen and done it all: underground phenomenon, outsider soundtrack, mainstream chart-topping cartoon, vital and influential art form…you name it. Which is why its story needs to be told by those who truly know and understand where it’s been and what it’s done, making the folks at Rhino Records prime candidates for the job.
Arguably the kings of the re-issue, Rhino offer up this 4-cd box set of that never-a-critical-darling-but-we-don’t-care rock subgenre with much riding on it. Unfortunately, like most good-intentioned endeavors, the nature of the beast—in this case, the business of licensing tracks for compilations—rears its ugly head. So, what that boils down to is this chronologically compiled set—which ends in the early ‘90s, and omits the likes of Helmet, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, among many others—has no Ozzy-fronted Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe or Guns N' Roses. We understand how inflexible some of these artists and/or their labels can be when it comes to having their songs appear in these kinds of comps, but perhaps Rhino should’ve gone the extra mile to secure music by the above. (Maybe they did.) Or at the very least added a decent selection of tunes from the last 15 years, in the hopes of making this box a bit more comprehensive. After all, if you’re going to leave out some of the very greats you should give us something more to counter the inclusion of Cinderella, Poison, and Lita Ford.
As it stands, Heavy Metal comes across like a studded version of those K-Tel comps of yesteryear: not much in the way of classics and missing many of the hits, but a workable, general summation of the music at hand. Sadly, for a box set dedicated to metal's history, that’s just not enough.
