Total Metal - The Neat Anthology

Like most other entries in Castle/Neat's frequently excellent line of New Wave of British Heavy Metal anthologies, Atomkraft's two-disc Total Metal is indeed "total," assembling virtually every recording that the Newcastle outfit ever committed to tape during their nearly decade-long career. Ironically, only half of those years account for all of these 29 songs, since Atomkraft didn't graduate from club performers to proper Neat signings until 1985, by which time they'd been active in one form or another since 1979, and had already financed four separate demos of their own — including a legendary 1983 pairing of "Total Metal" and "Death Valley" used to close this collection. Before going anywhere near that far along, though, this set presents you with the complete contents of all three official Neat releases from between 1985 and 1987, albeit strewn about in haphazard rather than chronological order. Not that this is such a huge calamity in view of Atomkraft's minimal sonic evolution over this period, but common sense still suggests it would have been better to first sample the decidedly rugged but always enthusiastic thrashing of the band's 1985 debut, Future Warriors (including the career-topping title track and additional early Brit-thrash nuggets like "Pour the Metal In" and "Warzone"); then witness the loss of direction personified by 1986's Queen of Death EP (whose title cut saw the band regressing to a state of evident Venom imitators); before finally finding some measure of redemption with the modernized thrash of 1987's more professional and American-flavored Conductors of Noise mini-LP (highlighted by the irresistibly neck-snapping "Requiem" and "Vision of Belshazzar," among others). Once these wrap up, and before that final demo tandem, the Total Metal anthology unearths a few live cuts, a cover version of Girlschool's "Demolition Boys," and three never-before-heard rarities from late in Atomkraft's career, including the particularly memorable "Annihilate the Bride." All in all, quite an impressive overview for a band most pundits would dismiss out of hand, but which heavy metal archivists will recognize as having made a few worthy contributions to the history of British heavy metal.