St. Madness

For the uninitiated, the dark, evil metal cult phenomenon of St.Madness can only be described as hard-edged metal with an evil vein of twisted perversion. This, their fifth album, is no exception. The twenty tracks are made up of releases from their previous albums, live tracks from their numerous tours and six new offerings. To the newly converted, your soul will be raped and sold with no mercy. The worthy followers are to be rewarded with an unsurpassed offering, bringing with it the most outrageous lyrics, heaviest sounds and darkest themes. It’s hard to choose highlights from an album of such quality and substance, but “When The Terror Comes” and “God Bless America” are two favourites. For the deviants out there, “sexual abuse” is a must, and “We’re All Going to Hell” is a forgone conclusion. Play loud, mosh your pit and book tickets now – St.Madness are the 21st centuries version of Sabbath, The Animals and Slayer all rolled into one. Buy this album or fear the retribution from beneath. Find them now at www.stmadness.com

Find this review at: http://www.ftang.co.uk/html/issue1/frame1.htm - Ftang Magazine/UK

St. Madness came like a hurricane, released four albums in a short time and disappeared. Now, after three years, the band is arranging its return with this collection that has, besides well-known songs, unreleased and alive tracks. The band became famous because of its thrash – which, sometimes, comes near to crossover – made with fantastic guitars and an angry singer. And it’s one of a few heavy metal bands that do very tough lyrics, focused on social and political affairs – Bill Clinton had a bad time with these guys... Well, introduced the band for those who didn’t remember it, it’s time to talk about music. And what a music! Heavy, tough, technics and a lot of ability are the main characteristics of this five-piece band in every moment of its life. Beside anthems that became classical, like the superb God Bless America (name of its last album) and St. Madness, the album has covers from Hey Joe and Wild Thing, which certainly would earn applause from Jimi Hendrix himself.

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http://www.rockbrigade.com.br - Rock Brigade/Brazil, S.A.

St. Madness Interview with Vocalist Prophet

By Brett Van Put

Through the years of doing Transcending the Mundane, the best aspect has been finding people like St. Madness vocalist Prophet. He has become a good friend and is one of the nicest people you will find in the music world. His band St. Madness is one of the most underrated metal bands in the world.

Over the course of four studio albums, including the excellent God Bless America, St. Madness has restored the faith of many metal fans. They have recently issued We Make Evil Fun, a compilation of favorite tracks and seven unreleased songs. Here is Prophet.

TM: Why did you choose to put out We Make Evil Fun at this point in your career?

PROPHET: After my father died in February 2000, I went into a tough depression and after seven years of being in Crown Of Thorns/ St. Madness, I needed a serious break. The band members all decided to go do other things, musically and otherwise.

In July of 2000, Randy Ax and I joined forces with Wiley Arnett (guitar player formerly of Sacred Reich). We founded a metal band called The Human Condition. Randy Ax stayed in The Human Condition for about a year, and then exited the band. We picked up Scott Twitty from the death metal band, Bludgeon as his replacement. The Human Condition and I wrote seventeen songs. Wiley is a great guy, and great guitar player. The whole time though, I was missing St. Madness. I guess you can take Prophet out of the circus, but you can't take the circus out of Prophet.

In May of 2003, I called Vampierce 'Em and we were both expressing how much we missed St. Madness. We decided to come back home where Prophet and Vampierce 'Em really belong. We put together We Make Evil Fun right away, so people would know we are back. Now, at the same time we are writing the songs for the new St. Madness CD called Amazing Grace.

TM: How did you go about choosing the songs which would appear on this compilation?

PROPHET: We chose fan favorites. Someone is always coming up and saying "I really like the record, but you forgot this song, or that song-. It was very difficult because we had over sixty songs to choose from. The CD is still over 78 minutes long. We Make Evil Fun is a best-of, but that's not all, it also has seven tracks that were never released on any St. Madness record. The unreleased tracks were songs that were either written or recorded with Dr. Frankenshred sometime from 1998 to 2000. We did the best we could to include songs that would give the listener the St. Madness experience, even if they've never seen us live. I wanted to give the fans more than just a best-of record.

We found this incredible graphics artist, Eric McFarlane, and the artwork on the CD is bad ass. The more you look at the album art, the more things come out at you. He managed to do graphically what we do musically. St. Madness has always layered stuff into the music- Eric hid stuff in the art.

TM: Tell me about the unreleased songs - are they new tracks or ones which for one reason or another did not end up on an album?

PROPHET: Most of these unreleased songs were already slated to go on the follow-up to Scare the World. The songs are as follows: Track #2 ("No Mercy"); Track #5 ("Rage"); Track #9 ("Dark Night of the Soul") Track#10 ("Wild Thing"). "Wild Thing" was a hidden track originally found on the God Bless America promotional cassette from 1998, and was never formally released; Track #17 ("Hey Joe"); Track #18 ("Evil Elvis"), and Track #20 ("We're All Going to Hell").

TM: Looking back on your career, how do you feel about what you've accomplished with St. Madness?

PROPHET: I feel incredibly grateful. All I ever really wanted to do is be an entertainer and, because of the people who support St. Madness, I have been able to live my dream. I still have a lot more dreams to live and that will come when it does. Looking out in an audience and seeing people singing our songs with me is an awesome feeling like no other. I write lyrics often with the fans in mind, because I love singing with them.

TM: What would you consider to be the highlight of your career?

PROPHET: In late 1997. John Baxter (Rob Halford's manager) approached me at one of our shows. Few people are aware that Rob Halford sang in Black Sabbath for a brief period of time. John Baxter said "I'm looking for a vocalist." I asked him why, and he said "to audition for Black Sabbath." I was floored. He told me that Sabbath had been auditioning guys for the previous six months, but didn't care for any of them. He told me that my performance on stage reminded him of Ozzy. He said "I think you would be a good guy for the job!"

Mr. Baxter asked me to call him in a couple of days so he could try to set me up with an audition. When I called him back two days later, he said "You're not going to believe what happened. After twenty years, Ozzy is rejoining Sabbath." Of course, I was very pleased because we a - Transcending the Mundane

ST MADNESS: "We make evil fun" (Nasty Prick Records)
St Madness are offensive people and I dunno know whether they take themselves as seriously as let’s say Manowar but I hope not. Myself I can truly enjoy this, knowing that they just goof around as much as The Mentors used to do in their time. Besides the odd lyrical suckularity they have actually nothing else in common with The Mentors. St Madness have released some pretty terrific records, especially "Spiritual Visions" and "God Bless America" and this "best of" is simple proof. Why this fact hasn’t rung a bell with any of the German true metal labels, I dunno.

I mean these guys could sell shitloads of records in Deutschland, while thousands raise their horns filled with beer.

The guitars pump out hateful riffs and the rhythm section keeps things evil. This is a band with an attitude as big as The Misfits and with hooks as big as Kiss. The insanity of punk boasters Cocknoose somehow also comes to mind

These are obviously not guys who enter a party through the backdoor, "No mercy" sets a formidable standard and most tracks excel in catchy choruses (listen to "Insane"). The crancked out guitar on "God Bless America" and the sleazed out drawled vocal by Prophet on "St Madness" are very powerful. These are not just merely paced hard rock songs. These are beefy balls of unstoppable murderous rock!

If you wanna have your own personal bedroom party with lots of beer, evil women, headbanging and good but not so clean fun, then St Madness is your host!

Zimmershole already made it over, St Madness should now follow!

88/100

- Concrete Web - Belgium