SOUND BARRIER • Hollywood 12"

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Metal Blade Records 1986
As requested, here's SOUND BARRIER's take on the THIN LIZZY classic "Hollywood (Down On Your Luck)" from the latter's 1981 Renegade album. Renegade was by no means the highlight of LIZZY's career, there's a couple of decent songs ("Angel Of Death", "The Pressure Will Blow"), but the Gorham/White guitar duo was uninspiring and the weakest of LIZZY's legendary guitar combos. Much the same can be said about SOUND BARRIER's pairing with Metal Blade Records. After their stellar debut on MCA, and the raucous Born To Rock EP, the mighty SOUND BARRIER found themselves on a label whose roster was generally populated by one-off Metal bands of varying and questionable quality... certainly not the most illustrious company for a band of SOUND BARRIER's caliber. They delivered the Speed Of Light record which included "Hollywood (Down On Your Luck)", a tribute to Phil Lynott who passed away earlier the same year. As they did with "Born To Be Wild", SOUND BARRIER are able to make the song their own by adding interesting, tasty flourishes, but unfortunately the production is weak, flat, and sounds little better than a demo. This woulda kicked mucho ass if it sounded even half as good as their earlier records, but still, it's a great song, and any THIN LIZZY cover is OK in my books.
DOWNLOAD: SoundBarrier-HollywoodSingle.rar (13.79 MB)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was just grabbing The Wild Dogs LP, I was doing a search for Hateful Snake, and it popped up.

I am always hoping some oldschool metalhead will upload something.

The ONLY track I have is on a comp LP, forgot the name right now.

I wish I had them when they were on The New Music, interview and live clips, (cover of Accept's restless & Wild), plus the video that Toronto Rocks Midweek Metal Mania always played, "Are You Ready?"

The Hateful Snake schoolbus, painted black I think, was usually parked on ChorazaiM's street near Bathurst & Queen, unless they went out of town for shows/ out on tour.

Alcolm X said...

I remember the video clearly: them walkin' down Yonge St. outside Sam's and someone gets shoved into the back of a convertible... that's all I remember actually. They used to play that video quite a bit - I'm surprised it hasn't turned up on youtube.

Alcolm X said...

Finally, the HATEFUL SNAKE video's popped up on youtube here.
There some other HS clips available too... cool shit!