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Holy Moses > Queen of Siam > Reviews
Holy Moses - Queen of Siam

Queen Sabina - 74%

Felix 1666, April 26th, 2016
Written based on this version: 1986, 12" vinyl, Aaarrg Records

Everyone is replaceable. This is not only the motto of every human resources manager. It also guided Holy Moses through the decades. Hundreds of musicians came and went, even Sabina took a break; she did not contribute to "No Matter What's the Cause". Yet now we are in the mid-eighties and the capricious career of Holy Moses cannot be foreseen. The Berlin Wall is still standing, Chernobyl sends nuclear greetings and nobody has ever heard the word "internet". I am still 17 years old and don't have a clue. Today I am 47 years old and still don't have a clue. Tremendous development!

Unlike the equally enthusiastic but pretty amateurish competitors, Holy Moses were kings of self-marketing. In order to appear very dangerous, they addressed to the Metal Hammer and every fanzine slightly carbonized letters with their promotion material. Bombastic idea. Furthermore, they called their music black metal, although this kind of metal was already sidelined by the exploding thrash movement. Anyway, the debut was located at the interface of black and thrash metal, but the latter retained the upper hand. Nevertheless, Holy Moses did not serve Bay Area influenced thrash like Destruction and unlike early Kreator or Sodom, they also did not play the poltergeist of rumbling metal. Their metallic hybrid could not be easily compared with other albums of this time, and Sabina's female vocals were not the only reason for the band's high degree of individuality. Did I say female vocals? We could not believe that a girl caused such a demonic noise. The utterly uncouth style of Sabina led to the conclusion that masculinity and femininity were closer to each other than we had ever thought before. Sabina made us forget the forced squeaking of Doro or Girlschool's polished chirping on "Play Dirty". Her style was innovative and became one of the few innovations I really appreciate.

The newcomers presented tracks that commuted between extremely slow-moving rhythms ("Don't Mess Around with the Bitch"), mid-tempo ("Devil's Dancer") and high velocity ("Necropolis"). Holy Moses worked cleverly so that each and every tempo had its own charm. The atmosphere was also varying. To make it more concrete, let's come back to the aforementioned songs. "Necropolis" had an unholy aura and represented the black side of the band, while the track about the bitch thrived on its shabbiness. Irrespective of the Motörhead cover (with an animalistic performance of Sabina), the variety of the song configurations made it difficult to figure out obvious influences of the band. Maybe we can agree on the lowest common denominator that they released one of the first black thrash works. But do not draw hasty conclusions, its aura was not comparable with that of the debut of Iron Angel, another German black thrash band of the pioneering days. Anyway, the overall impression of "Queen of Siam" did not lack of coherence and worked as a whole, although the production was anything else but flawless - just listen to the creaking guitar sound.

Frankly speaking, some tracks did not deliver fascinating moments in abundance. For example, the title track scored with a good solo, but the other parts failed to convince. "Walpurgisnight" was the highlight of a solid B side, because its stormy riffing and the Sodom-esque chorus ("Witch bitch") left its mark. However, the band did not annoy us with half-baked tracks. All songs achieved a solid level. Hence the first step was made. Okay, a clear direction was not yet defined. But this was and is no big problem. I know this situation since 47 years.

Demoted to handmaiden of Siam - 60%

autothrall, January 6th, 2011

Queen of Siam is one of those records that seems to downgrade in quality over the years, especially when you compare it to the band's next few, but seeing that it was released in 1986, it represents a few elements that were unique within the German scene of its day. For one, Holy Moses was already around for years, releasing a string of demos from 1980-1984 that saw them shift into more aggressive territory. In fact, by the time Queen of Siam emerged, bassist Ramon Brüssler was the only founding member left, though he was joined pretty early on by Sabina and Andy Classen, who were by this time married. So, not only did you have one of the only married couples in thrash, but one of the few notable female vocalists in the genre...

Not only female, but actually pretty damn aggressive, which for 1986 was insane. Sabina's vocals sounded here like a witch shouting orders to her swamp minions, or a leper giving his last rites on a street corner to any that would listen, his throat peeling off mid-oratory. Holy Moses also had a pretty unusual name. Destruction, Sodom, Kreator, all pretty recognizable as sadistic and metallic, but Holy Moses? Was this some sort of Christian metal? Apparently the name is based more in the cliche exclamation than the 'historical' entity. They also had far better cover art than a number of their peers, and a slightly different style, at least on the debut. Blunt, brute crunching thrash metal which had more akin with US mosh-hardy bands than most of their razor fast German peers. At the same time, the music does not reach quite the same level of what we were hearing from that section of the world by the mid-80s, and when compared to an album like Pleasure to Kill, Eternal Devastation, Zombie Attack or Obsessed by Cruelty, there's not a lot to revisit.

The primary issue is just a lack of worthy riffs throughout many of the tracks. No amount of Classen's oozing and growling can slather enough personality onto a track like "Necropolis" or "Don't Mess Around With the Bitch" to make it more than base level thrash, and the songs feel like just about anyone could have spent 5-10 minutes learning some mutes and power chords and voila. It can become such a drag that the album seems to become noticeably improved wherever it picks up even a sliver of speed, which is not very often. Tracks like "Dear Little Friend" and "Torches of Hire" are impossible to salvage, and even "Devils Dancer", "Bursting Rest" and "Walpurgisnight" throw away their momentum on uninteresting notation. The cover of Motorhead's "Roadcrew" doesn't help, since it feels distinctly different than its neighbors, and instead of just using Sabina's normal vocals, the band attempted to imitate Lemmy almost too directly.

I can remember at some point enjoying this record, but these days I find it difficult to listen beyond a track or two, especially when I can spin the impressive sophomore Finished With the Dogs, which is faster, crueler and superior to this in every single category. At best, Queen of Siam has a decent, polished mix and a style which slightly deviates from their contemporaries, clearly with more of an appeal for fans of simplistic American thrash, low on menace. A few of the leads are decent, and Sabina's vocals are impressive if only for their relative novelty in 1986, but the cumulative qualities of the album would be average in any year, especially one which saw the arrival of Darkness Descends, Master of Puppets, Reign in Blood and so forth. This is by no means bad, and at least it would only take Holy Moses a year to make it up to us.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Not really a flying start - 77%

Agonymph, January 1st, 2007

There's a Dutch saying that says that every beginning is difficult. And there is of course a lot of wisdom in those words. While Holy Moses grew out to be one of my absolute favorite bands in the years to follow, their debut 'Queen Of Siam' wasn't all that impressive. Most notable about this album was the lead singer, a woman named Sabina Classen. She still is today, by the way. At a time that females in Metal bands were highly unusual, her vocals could be found somewhere in the middle between Celtic Frost's Tom G. Warrior and Motörhead's Lemmy.

Musically, that comparison is quite fitting too. Holy Moses is quite obviously aiming at a Thrash audience, but the playing and production are a bit too sloppy to be interesting for a Thrash audience. Once again, that goes for this album. Sabina Classen still sounds a bit weird and her then husband Andy Classen is still far from the skilled rhythm guitarist he would turn out to be later. Venom seems like an obvious reference on 'Queen Of Siam'.

However, the album starts quite okay. 'Necropolis' is quite a good song with a nice structure. It builds up nicely and Andy Classen's lead fills are pretty cool. It's still nothing special when you compare it to the band's later work, but on its own, it's not bad.

And there are more songs of that level on the album. 'Devil Dancer' and the title track ain't bad at all, I just think Sabina doesn't sound as sincere and inspired as later on in Holy Moses' carreer on this album. Most notably, this is on 'Don't Mess Around With The Bitch', which is, in my opnion, a horrible track. The playing is sloppy, the structure a mess and the vocals leave a bad taste in my mouth. Therefore, the first half of the album leaves an impression on me that is nothing more than "okay".

But just when you decide to put off the album, there's some stuff that sounds pretty good. 'Roadcrew' is a track which is sung by Andy Classen and he does that quite well. If you don't know the re-recorded version on 'Finished With The Dogs', which is far superior over this one, you'll probably enjoy that one. The title kind of betrays a little Motörhead influence and I don't think the band is ashamed of that. Very funny are the lyrics in the booklet, which are spelled in phonetical German.

'Walpurgisnight' is once again not bad at all, I hear a little Iron Maiden in the structure of the song. Same goes for the following 'Bursting Rest'. While 'Dear Little Friend', in my humble opinion the highlight of the album, is a NWOBHM party itself. Quite positive lyrics, which may be something people frown upon, but it's good. Very good. I'd like to hear this one live or re-recorded someday. Andy does some nice lead work on this track as well. Which also goes for the following closer 'Torches For Hire', which is an instrumental frenzy in the 'Transsylvania'/'Genghis Khan' style. I like it a lot! It's a nice way to close an album which stands on the border of mediocrity furthermore.

On the 2005 re-release, you will also find the 'Walpurgisnight'-demo tape. The demo was recorded with one microphone on tape in the rehearsal room, which results in a terrible sound quality. It's fun to have for the fanatic Holy Moses fan, but it makes the overall quality of the CD worse rather than better.

Concluding, I'd like to say that even though this started the carreer of Holy Moses, this is probalby not the right one to begin with if you want to know what the band is all about. Even though all the albums sound a little different, this one is not really representative of what the German Thrashers are about. True fans might find something of their liking here. People who are looking for quality Metal could better try 'The New Machine Of Liechtenstein' or 'Finished With The Dogs' first.

Fantastic debut - 85%

Warpig, April 15th, 2004

Sabina Classen wrote about this album, that in 1986 it was important to finish first or last in the soundcheck of German magazine Metal Hammer, cause either way, it meant to sell a lot of records. Well, they achieved their goal … and finished last.

Holy Moses were really lucky that the guys at Metal Hammer were probably the only ones who didn’t realize what a great album this was, and so “Queen Of Siam” sold really well and all the people who bought it could assure themselves of the quality of such soon-to-be-classics like “Roadcrew”, “Walpurgisnight” or the title track.

Although this album is full of great Speed/Thrash Metal songs, it was Sabina’s voice that stole the show and made this such a controversial and extreme output. Remember this was 1986 and there weren’t too many men around who “sang” like that, but it was unimaginable that a woman would be able to produce such sounds. Her singing is also the reason why this album qualifies for one of the very early Death Metal releases.

After this album Holy Moses would go on to play more technical thrash, while guitarist Andy Classen would become one of the hottest producers for Death and Black Metal bands.