80% of heavy metal is played by after-hours Burger King workers with lyrics that are about killing people and worshiping the devil. It’s not exactly high-class entertainment, and you’d think more metal fans would have a sense of humor. However, they tend to be insecure crybabies, and this album illuminated that fact with an atom bomb blast.

Iron Fire is a power metal band that arrived in 2000 with Thunderstorm, a Hammerfall ripoff that possessed energy and passion (things the actual Hammerfall has not had in years) but little creativity. Their second album, On the Edge, was frontman Martin Steene’s effort at fixing that by adding Motley Crue vocals, progressive song structures, and various other things. The results were dismal sales, countless lost fans, and the termination of a record deal.

The band is too obscure for the album to be a notorious flop, but a listen reveals a sadly overlooked and misunderstood album that could have been the cure for power metal’s current diseases. I would rather hear this sort of thing than the new Edguy, Helloween, or Sonata Arctica albums – “experimental” though it is. Derided and maligned, this album is the power metal Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (but as Neil Degrasse Tyson pointed out, if Rudolph’s nose is shiny then it’s probably just reflecting light, not emitting it – useless for navigating fog.)

If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, stay with the program just for tracks 1-7. The band is just on fire in these six songs and one prelude, with huge hooks, addictive melodies, and Tommy Hansen’s superb production – each of “The End of it All’s” kick drum hits strikes your ear like a spitball of perfectly compressed air. “Into the Abyss” lurches from downtempo sludge to uptempo thrashing like a Panzer tank changing gears, and “On the Edge” brings lots of agitation and vocal histrionics, accentuated by some death metal vocals.

But the greatest song of all is “Thunderspirit”, an amazing shockwave of high-speed energy driven by Morten Plenge’s lightning-fast drumming and maybe Martin Steene’s best vocal performance ever. The cannon-fire in the bridge was a nice touch.

Two songs are total bombs. “Wanted Man”…Stop it with this cat crap, Steene. The only place where you’re a wanted man is in the local gay bar for the 345345987 male escorts you forgot to pay. “The Price of Blood” is not as irritating but instead is far more boring – nothing to grab on to here except dry rock riffs and some goofy vocal effects.

But out of all the Iron Fire releases, this is the one that interests me the most. It’s unified, it’s catchy, it has an impressively low number of filler songs, and it’s not overly muddy or dark-sounding like their newer efforts. Definitely underrated, and worth seeking out. Heavy metal can suck, but you don’t have to.

It’s not as notorious as “Having Fun with Elvis on Stage” but it’s probably the most famous Elvis bootleg to actually contain music. Released on the “Dog Vomit Sux” label (a subsidiary of “Dead Obese Guy Enterprises”), Elvis’s Greatest Shit kifes shitty b-sides and soundtrack songs and presents them in a lovingly disrespectful package. The goal, apparently, was to remind people that Elvis was human.

Honestly, it compares favourably to Roy Orbison’s efforts at making disco, or Brian Wilson’s rapping, or the more ghoulish Beatles songs such as “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Greatest Shit isn’t as musically intolerable as you might think or hope. The main reason? It has Elvis singing on it.

As a performer, he’s too good, and he keeps making these bad songs sound better than they have a right to be. “Old McDonald Had A Farm” made me laugh at the start, but then Elvis’s timeless baritone got me under its spell. The songwriting is consistently dreadful, but that doesn’t mean the songs are also consistently dreadful. The end result is often like a skilled poker player winning the river on a bad hand.

Elvis came from the period when albums existed to promote singles. Stab down a turntable needle at random on nearly any late 50s to early 60s LP and you’ll likely hear impaled bad music bleeding and writhing through your speakers. Elvis was no exception – even his some of his supposed classics sound boring and uninspired to me. I don’t believe “Now or Never” have been a hit without the push of the Elvis name behind it.

A lot of these songs come from soundtracks – specifically, films from his flower-necklace-and-hawaiian-guitar days, and obviously they sound odd with no context. And a lot of them are gag songs, with comical lyrics – “(There’s) No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car” takes a courageous stand against dancing inside moving vehicles, and “US Male” (often considered the album’s classic) is full of funny chauvinism.

The packaging’s a hoot, too. The back cover contains images of nonexistent Elvis LPs “Dead on Stage in Las Vegas, Aug 20th 1977” and a vocal duet with Richard Nixon. The front cover contains the iconic picture of Elvis lying in his coffin – ultimate proof that Elvis was human.

Rhapsody of Fire recorded together for nearly twenty years, and seemed like they’d last forever. But, as Hewlett-Packard Lovecraft said, even death may die. The band schismed in 2011, with guitarist Luca Turilli and keyboardist Alex Starapoli forming separate versions of Rhapsody. Dark Wings of Steel is the first Luca-less album. Call it a “friendly split”, whatever. We all know there’s a shocking story involving a haddock, a pressurized pump, and the bassist’s mother in there somewhere.

Looks like Nuclear Blast made the right call by going with Turilli’s Rhapsody, because this album is chintzy, cheap-sounding, and unworthy of the Rhapsody of Fire name. The band literally comes up short of Triumph and Agony (rightly regarded as their worst album up to this point). Where to begin? It’s Situation Abnormal, All Fucked Up.

The production is not dense and layered, as in past albums. The symphonics aren’t “real orchestra” so much as “real VST samples on Starapoli’s computer.” Dark Wings has a fake, synthetic quality that I dislike immensely. And what’s with the crappy brutal guitar tone? Rhapsody was never famous for its guitar sound, but at least Turilli’s tone fit with the massive orchestral and symphonic backdrops. New guitarist Roby De Micheli has a dry, midscooped sound reminiscent of a Crate practice amp – annoying and inappropriate. Add in weak-as-fvck drumming that couldn’t knock the froth off a double-latte, and you have the new Rhapsody – an album that’s sure to have elderly neighbours banging on your door, demanding that you turn it up to help facilitate their afternoon nap.

Two good songs – that’s it. Not three, four, or five. Two. The first is “A Tale of Magic”, which has an excellent chorus. The second is “Dark Wings of Steel”, with fast zigzagging rhythms and interesting contrapuntal ideas.

The other songs are like quarantined hospital patients dying of various diseases. Some are poorly written and forgettable, with no catchy parts or good hooks. Others try far too hard to be Rhapsody and provoke laughter – “Silver Lake of Tears” is particularly horrible. Rhapsody’s music is almost parodic already, taking the joke any further is crass. Fabio Leone’s vocals are still powerful, but he’s an overrated singer and he’s really exposed in this new stripped-back format. The shitbox production kills any atmopshere.

Last year Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody released Ascending to Infinity, which got right everything this new Rhapsodomy album gets wrong. It has lush, organic production, great songs, excellent playing, and a cohesive musical style. Ascending didn’t quite match Rhapsody’s best work, but it utterly embarasses Starapoli on this new release.

Are you a fan? Go listen to whatever Luca Turilli is working on, because HE is Rhapsody of Fire. Everyone else was dead weight, and this album proves it.

The good news: Megadeth and Black Sabbath both have new albums out, so this isn’t quite the disappointment of the year