Mpire of Evil - Crucified
By now, everyone must know that Mpire’s main men are former Venom members, the legendary Jeff “Mantas” Dunn, and Tony “Demolition Man” Dolan. They’re joined by the previously unknown (at least to me) drummer Marc Jackson for this collection of almost entirely Venom covers from the D-Man era, consisting of 1989’s Prime Evil, 1991’s Temples of Ice, and 1992’s The Waste Lands. (Are they technically covers if D-Man and Mantas wrote them?) The band had fans pick some, or perhaps all, of the songs they would re-record. “Blackened Are the Priests” is hands-down the best one here. How could it not be? Naturally, there are a few missing that I’d like to hear (and voted for!). “Prime Evil,” for one, is inexplicably nowhere to be found, which is absolutely beyond my comprehension. Mpire of Evil started out named Prime Evil, and it doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to figure out that the oddly spelled Mpire is an anagram of “prime,” so the band is almost still called Prime Evil. Also absent, but should have been included: “Harder Than Ever,” “Tribes” (with it’s excellent starting sample and bass slide!), and “Cursed.” Considering that this is only 42 minutes long, there would have been plenty of room for those and more on a CD. I’ve been informed that the Japanese pressing has two bonus tracks, possibly live covers of “Black Metal” and “Witching Hour.” I’d like to check those out, but they admittedly don’t fit with the D-Man era concept of the rest of the selections. But why re-record these songs at all? Why not simply re-record all three albums in their entirety? Or re-release the originals? From what I understand, these new recordings only exist because there is some type of copyright issue preventing the reissuing of the D-Man era Venom albums. No idea if it’s a problem with record labels, or Venom’s Cronos, or something else entirely, or some combination thereof. In any case, we do get two great “new” songs, that were previously available earlier this year as a very lavishly packaged 7-inch vinyl EP. The Venom re-recordings are fine, I guess, but now that this review is written, although I was excited to hear these new renditions, I’m likely never going to listen to them instead of the original versions, although in some cases they are a little different. Other than for completists (like me), I think that this collection’s real value is for people who don’t have those Venom albums, but for some reason still want to hear these songs, just not badly enough to have ever done anything about it before now. I don’t know who fits that description, but what I do know is that I’ve mentioned Venom quite a lot, and if Mpire of Evil ever wants to be taken seriously as a legitimate band, and not a couple of ex-Venom guys with a drummer-for-hire (Jackson is their second skin-smasher in three years, following none other than Cronos’s little brother Antton) living in the past (their 2011 debut EP, Creatures of the Black, was also almost entirely cover songs, of various bands that time), they need to concentrate on writing new material. That said, I was looking forward to hearing what they’d do with this old stuff, and it’s an interesting enough, enjoyable novelty/nostalgia listen.
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