2. Raging Slab - Raging Slab
Another band who should have been mahoosive. If you like heavy-duty, inventive, killer riffs then this is the album for you. Raging Slab were labelled "Lynyrd Skynyrd meets Metallica" and employed a muscular twin guitar attack with a third bottleneck guitar adding a jagged, southern flavoured edge. All the songs on this album were written by Gregory Strzempka, whose clever and artfully vague lyrics somehow make the whole package even more engaging and intriguing. If you want to know how heavy this album is, the drums were played by Tony Scaglione who stepped in for Dave Lombardo of Slayer when he initially left after Reign In Blood. Bent For Silver was the song which got me hooked on this band, and it features an impossibly immense outro. The last twenty seconds sees the introduction of a riff so gargantuan you'll put the song on repeat for a couple of hours. The video for this song was an homage to Russ Meyer which is as Metal as it gets, frankly. The mash-up of Southern Boogie and Heavy Metal is carried off with such consummate ease you'll wonder why more bands haven't had a go at something similar. It's such a feast for the ears that as the final cymbal crash fades you'll notice you've developed a double-chin.