TOC - "Loss Angeles" Review

Artist/ Band: TOC
Title: Loss Angeles
Label: InsideOut Music
Year of Release: 2004

(click on the link above, for ALL band information on this and the band's other cds)

The Review:

The Finnish band TOC (formerly known as Throne of Chaos), according to their website they started out as a ‘keyboard driven old school black metal’ and were dubbed “Children of Bodom’s kid brother”. So to have their own identity, TOC changed it’s direction with their third album, first for InsideOut Music, called Loss Angeles and is more in the direction of progressive metal style combined with hard rock and pop based melodies.

Personally I find them more in tune with some of the late 80's, early 90's metals than current metal scene, since they tend to tread in areas previously covered by those bands of the “hair metal” era. Now before you go “eewwww”, they don’t fall into the cliches of those bands as their approach is far more interesting than most of those in that era.

TOC really didn’t excite me as much as I hoped when I first got the cd and read about them. I can say that if you’re into that metal based music that sorta treads on progressive turf, then check TOC out. Oh they do a cover song, which seems to be the norm theses days for bands, but their disjointed, thrash-metal version of the classic Deep Purple song, Smoke on the Water could have kept off of this CD and maybe use it as a b-side instead.

Reviewed by Ron Fuchs on May 31st, 2004

Tracks:

1. The Window

2. Mary Lou Is Dead

3. Acid Highway

4. Gothamburg

5. Blue Lady

6. Wait

7. The Blue Lady Suite

8. Break-A-Neck

9. Bite The Bullet

10. Smoke On The Water

Bonus Track

11. Night Crawler