Greg Walls-Walls of Sound; via Amazon streaming, 2022

 

Walls of Sound, the 2022 EP length release from Greg Walls came into Disaster Amnesiac's view by way of a YouTube clip. In said clip, Walls explained how he was present for the initial formation of Anthrax, and about how his contribution, so vital to the early music of the long running Thrash Metal group, has been obfuscated and ignored. At times during its sixteen minutes and change duration, this clip is punctuated by some very noisy and creative guitar sounds from Walls. Additionally, Greg astutely mentioned that Walls of Sound could be heard online. Naturally, I had to check these sounds out. What one finds on Walls is five well constructed Heavy Metal songs, ones that feature plenty of in your face guitar riffage and soloing. These sounds are supported by solid mid-tempo drumming, very non-Thrash in performance from all of the rhythm section parts, and classic Heavy Metal singing. Walls of Sound is proudly Heavy Metal in its delivery; it's a release that would likely please fans of the genre in its sincerity of formulation and performance. Disaster Amnesiac must opine that it's an improvement upon Fistful of Metal, the album that Greg Walls insists that he wrote mostly on his own, for the burgeoning Anthrax. That album was quite confusing to the adolescent Heavy Metal fan that I was at the time of its release. Walls of Sound is not confusing. Its point of view is very clear and that makes it rock. Stream it over at Amazon, it's a release that deserves some attention from attentive listeners of that most pure of genres, Heavy Metal. Greg Walls was on the ground floor of the initial wave of its American wing, and it'd be a shame for his musical contributions to be ignored and possibly obfuscated for too much longer.