In the early 1980s, in the city of Manchester, New Hampshire, there lived a man named Matthew Brooks, an avid metalhead who played guitar in a band called Hunter. They had music prepared, but no label wanted to sign them. Motivated by a strong D.I.Y. attitude, Brooks decided to cut out the middleman by forming his own record label, which he called Landslide Records. After receiving a $6000 grant from the New Hampshire Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation, he was able to get his business venture off the ground. He then filled the label's roster with his friends' bands. Hunter was the first. Another was Thrash Queen. They were notable for being the world's first all-female thrash metal band. Their only release was Manslayer, one of the worst metal albums ever made. This article is not about them. It's actually about Brooks' other band.
Matthew was friends with two brothers named K.K. and Vivian Fox. K.K. played bass and Vivian played rhythm guitar and vocals. They were soon joined by John Deacon on drums. Together they were known as Killer Foxx, which was officially born in early 1985. Shortly after their formation, Matthew was forced to change the name of his label to Lanslyde Records due to a copyright infringement notice from another company. The band's first full-length album was called All You Can Eat, the cover of which consisted of a man and a woman performing oral sex on each other. For obvious reasons, they were unable to release the album in such a state, so they renamed it to The Night and replaced the cover art with something more modest. One year later in 1986, the infamous Metal Enterprises offered to buy the distribution rights to the album under the condition that it be retitled. The band accepted, and so the album was renamed to Going Under.
The band plays generic '80s speed metal. John Deacon plays a lot of galloping rhythms and mid-paced arrangements that are occasionally broken up by decent fills. His best performance can be found on "Stand Together." K.K. Fox's bass work mostly follows the guitars, so I can't say much about it. Vivian Fox's clean vocals seem to have a strange nasally quality that I find off-putting. His rhythmic palm-muted riffs are also nothing to write home about. Matthew Brooks' guitar work is the real highlight here. His many melodic leads kept me engaged throughout the runtime. His solos are even more impressive. They're not as technical or polished as some of the more famous metal guitarists, but they have an exuberance and vitality that I find admirable. My favorite is the one on "Get to Your Feet."
The music is pretty underwhelming, but it's made much worse by the production. It has the same problem as Thrash Queen's Manslayer. Everything is muddy and indistinct. This can be blamed on the cheap, low quality recording equipment they used, but it has also been alleged that Ingo Nowotny, the owner of Metal Enterprises, didn't bother asking Matthew Brooks for the master tapes, instead ripping the music straight from the vinyl pressing of The Night. Whether it was cheapness or laziness that compelled him to do this, we may never know.
Going Under is not a good album, but despite what most people claim, it's definitely not one of the worst metal albums ever made. It's still leagues better than Manslayer.
Killer Foxx came to an abrupt end in 1987 after the Fox brothers died in a car accident, but that was not the end of the story. There's a reason why I said that Metal Enterprises is infamous. It's because they recorded a series of fake follow-up albums using the names of bands they had previously signed. In other words, they committed the musical equivalent of identity theft. Killer Foxx received that same treatment in 1990, for it was in that year that Metal Enterprises recorded and released Orgasm of Death under their name.
The production here is better than it was on Going Under. I can also hear the bass pretty well, and they even play some nice riffs that remind me of D.D. Verni. Those are the only positive things I can say about this album. The problems begin as soon as you hit play. Close to half the runtime consists of bizarre spoken word sections featuring a distorted voice, telling a story that takes place in the year 40,039. The end product was so incoherent that it was almost impossible for me to understand what they were saying.
The actual music isn't much better. The drum machine was one of the most notorious elements from these fake follow-up releases. They play standard rhythms and fills just fine, but their sound is grating. It's still nowhere near as bad as Mortician's drum machine, though. The guitars play a lot of palm-muted riffs and chord progressions that are generic and unimpressive. They also include some solos that are amusing in how sloppily they are performed. And then there are the vocals, which are the stuff of legends. The lead singer, whoever he is, performs harsh nasally vocals that sound like Bobby Ellsworth's senile grandmother. They also perform high-pitched vocals on songs like "Running Blade" that sound like a cheap copy of King Diamond. They tried to be dramatic, but they ended up being comical.
Orgasm of Death was terrible. The instrumental work was bland, the songwriting was nonsensical, and the vocals were absurd. Despite all this, I can't help but love it. Why? Because it's a masterpiece of schlock. It's enjoyable for the same reason films like The Room or Troll 2 are. It's so bad that it ends up becoming good. Going Under might be more competent, but Orgasm of Death is much more entertaining precisely because of how hilariously bad and ridiculous it is. This album is an experience you will never forget.