N.R.G. - NRG2 - TRANSFORMED (COLLECTOR'S EDITION) (A) Da'Ville, 2001
14 tracks, RT: 47:40
[ http://www.daville.com ]
At last! Getting this CD marks the end of a long, frustrating road for me.
Let's take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?
Back in 1986, like any obsessed Transformers fan, I got my little 10-year-old ass to the theaters to see "The Transformers: The Movie," which at the time, to me, was like seeing the second coming of God...the first coming having been the "Star Wars" trilogy. Hell, to this day, I still love the damn movie and watch my numerous VHS, and now DVD, copies on a regular basis.
As I sat in the theater, my eyes wide, my jaw agape, amid the amazement and excitement I felt seeing Autobots and Decepticons actually being injured and killed in the most thrilling and violent cartoon carnage I'd ever witnessed, the exhilaration at the fantastic animation and the introduction of many new characters, and the pure, earth-shaking shock and glee at actually hearing a cartoon character utter the word "shit," I was hearing some tremendous hard rock songs that blended perfectly with the action unfolding before me.
To this day, my favorite scene in the movie comes early on, as an Autobot (the good guys) shuttle heading for Earth is attacked by the evil Decepticons. The Decepticons blow a hole in the side of the shuttle and board it, guns blazing, and proceed to annihilate the crew. Transformers stalwarts Iron Hide, Prowl, Ratchet, and Brawn are all killed, as a crunching metal tune, "Instruments Of Destruction," provides the score to their demise.
A few years later I would finally get my hands on the soundtrack to the movie and rediscover all the great music on it, including two fantastic AOR tunes, "Dare" and "The Touch," by Stan Bush, a couple of great hard rockers by Spectre General (a.k.a. Kick Axe), a metal version of "The Transformers Theme" by Lion, and finally, the song I had loved all those years, "Instruments Of Destruction," by a band called N.R.G.
From that point on, I was on a quest to find more music by N.R.G., or to scrape up any morsel of information I could about the band. This proved incredibly frustrating, as there was seemingly *nothing* more from them on the face of the Earth, or Cybertron, for that matter. :)
There was no more N.R.G. music. There wasn't even any information about the band to be found! Many false alarms followed, as I thought I found something else by them, only to find out there were several other bands who had used the moniker "N.R.G." over the years. Then a couple of months ago, a friend of mine stumbled across a page by the very same N.R.G. I had been questing after, at MP3.com. There were several songs for download there and each of them kicked major ass, just like "Instruments Of Destruction."
It seems the former guitarist of the band, Ernie Burns (now Ernie Petrangelo), was releasing an N.R.G. album, at long last! The release was in conjunction with this year's Transformers convention, "Botcon," and to commemorate the 15th anniversary of "The Transformers: The Movie."
I was like that 10-year-old kid again, getting Optimus Prime on Christmas morning! Finally my years of searching are over, as I now have the CD in my player, and man, does it rock! Sure, these are mostly demos and the sound quality isn't exactly pristine, but the songs are killer!
The band has a great evil vibe throughout all their tunes, thanks to a great, consistent tone to the music throughout the album and the downright malevolent quality of the lead singer's voice. It reminds me a lot of Judas Priest, with a bit more commercial edge.
Opening track "Fallout" and "Abyss/Come And Get It" recapture that awesome, nasty vibe that always made "Instruments Of Destruction" so damn cool.
And then there's the more mainstream, somewhat radio friendly hard rock of "Lookin'," "Lovin' On Borrowed Time," and "Can't Stop Love," which are all great, and though they're more commercial, they still have the slightest touches of that underlying evilness.
Most of the songs on the album come from a demo N.R.G. had recorded back in the '80s, but there are a couple new tracks, both instrumentals, done by Petrangelo. "Something Evil" is a programmed tune, that doesn't really sound all *that* programmed, which is quite cool and fits in perfectly with the rest of the album. "Angels Live Forever," though, is a quiet classical guitar piece, which I guess is OK, but really is completely out of place on this disc.
And, of course, we have "Instruments Of Destruction." I can just never get enough of this song, and there are three versions of it here. There's a remastered version of the original (that doesn't really sound much different), an unedited version, and finally, a joke version.
The unedited version is very cool, as it features different, and even more sinister, lyrics than those on the soundtrack version.
Apparently the record company made the band tone down the lyrics a bit, as this *was* a kid's movie, after all.
The third version is the unlisted 14th track, which follows an unlisted three-minute 13th track that's nothing but silence. This version replaces the verses with the infamous line of movie dialogue with the S-bomb ("Oh shit! What are we gonna do now?"). The line is repeated over and over--sometimes the whole line, sometimes just the "Oh shit!" part--in between the normal choruses of the song. The first time I heard this, I was laughing my ass off! It's a great inside joke for the hardcore Transformers fans to appreciate. The line is infamous, in that it appeared in the theatrical cut of the movie but was then edited out of every video and TV version of the film for the next 15 years, until it was finally restored in the recent DVD release (though there are rumors that a Canadian VHS release from a couple of years ago *did* include it).
The N.R.G. quest is now over, and I can rest easy...and it doesn't hurt that this is one hell of a great '80s metal disc!
- Craig