Guilty as Charged!

Culprit – Guilty as Charged


Shit! I got this album a couple of months ago and hadn’t listened to it until now. It’s great! Culprit are a straight-up, no-nonsense heavy metal band from the notable north-western music-producing (aside from Nirvana) city of Seattle. This is their only full-length, but luckily they have a smattering of other minor releases to supplement it. Pretty energetic, early style metal retaining touches of that 70’s Riot-ish type sound. Top marks to whoever submitted the band to the archives.

Anyway, the title track of this one is the long, drawn out and guitar lead heavy ‘Guilty as Charged’, an ambitious affair bringing to the table some real talent. Theres plenty of pace here and the variety of different stuff done in the one place makes for more interesting listening. This is much the style of Culprit – like other bands from around this period, they enjoy these extended guitar parts – which is fine.

The heavy metal track ‘Ice in the Back’ is solid as fuck too. Vocals are great, and remind me of the dude in Lizzy Borden. In the verse lyrics, there’s some great moments particularly this: in the bit where he says this (“hell is but a flame - The trouble it shows
And everyone knows you to blame!”) the vocalist does puts screaming emphasis on the words flame and blame, a very menacing banshee-like screaming quality that sends chills down your spine – fantastic. Interesting choice of song title for the track too.

The slower number ‘Same to You’ is well executed, with a NWOBHMy feel and plenty of emotion. The intro scream that gets faded up louder and louder is a great touch and sounds like something out of Grim Reaper or their German equivalents. This gallopy power metalish track is epic with excellent vocals and some simple yet fucking great guitar. Kind of Riot thing going here, with tinges of 70’s rock in the mix.

Altogether this one’s a scorcher from an unknown act that deserves a lot of respect. The addition of the live tracks is a plus too, adding some length (and girth?) to the release, which is already considerable due to the extended guitar leads and riff varying approach taken. Fucking fantastic album with some real good numbers. These guys have a great feel – very ‘metal’ with dirty, aggressiveness coming through and those aforementioned 70’s rock bits coming through due to the early date of the release. Well worth searching for – this release should be appreciated by anyone. “Back of the Net!”

-DeathRiderDoom