CROM (Hot Sumerian Nights) CD
Normally I'm no big fan of so-called "fun-records", except for extreme cynical and sarcatic humor. And there you can't find nothing better than Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention, who once asked:"Does humor belong in music?" Maybe Phil Vera, who was part of the line-up of -16-, asked himself the same question when he recorded the second CROM album together with members of 400 Blows, because one shouldn't take the concept of 'Hot Sumerian Nights' not too serious. Fans of the legendary Conan-movies will be familiar with the name and the script nameplate of CROM, while the nice cover-artwork also take reference to the movies/books. Probably here are more hidden links to the books of Robert E. Howard, but I was never really into 'Conan the Barbarian', so I can't report about more details here. Well, whatever, the music is more important, and for my taste it's a little bit to short although one can find 22 song-titles on the backcover.
Admittedly most of them are just short samples from several flics or from other records. CROM have (ab)used short sequences from Overkill or the legendary opening from Bad Brains' 'Soul Craft', where H.R. is only singing. This are only a very few examples and it's up to you to discover more splinters. The bottom line is that the real tracks are very short and that's a bummer, because actually CROM is playing some kind of tasteful sludgy thrash metal with emphasis on metal. The music can be very good and sometimes I wish that a song would be longer than only a very few minutes. But if you're looking for some musical alternation and if you like to grin whereas listening to music, than 'Hot Sumerian Nights' will hit the spot. This cool musical amusement has been released by Underdogma Records in 2007.
(KK)