Grim Reaper – See You in Hell / Fear No Evil

(RCA,1984 / 1985; Collectables, 1998)

Review by Class Warrior

I’m a big sucker for male vocalists with a multi-octave range, especially when they can really hit those high notes. Rob Halford is the prototypical metal frontman with a wide range. If you haven’t done so before, listen to Judas Priest’s early albums. Both Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin feature some outstanding vocal work. When Rob screams “Victim of Changes” at the end of that song, like someone’s squeezing his nuts with a pair of pliers, tingles run up and down my spine. Similarly, when Bruce Dickinson lets loose his howl from Hell about a minute into “The Number of the Beast,” I stop whatever I’m doing and put two fists in the air.

I get the same feeling when I hear the vocals of Grim Reaper’s singer Steve Grimmett when he sings “See You in Hell”. Yes, I’m comparing him to Halford and Dickinson. You’ll get no apology from me! What has led me to make this apocryphal announcement? For one thing, Grimmett screams like a medieval warrior storming a castle who has had boiling oil poured on him from above. In other words, his high range is excellent.

Whenever I play this album, I have to sing along to the song “See You in Hell.” If anyone were listening, they would be treated to my feeble attempts to hit the high notes along with Grimmett. The song is perfect: great chorus, hooks as catchy as norovirus on a cruise ship, fucking awesome lyrics about…well…taking someone down to hell, and the aforementioned excellent vocal work by Grimmett. There’s not much of a solo, but I don’t worship at the feet of the guitar gods, so that doesn’t bother me. Something becomes very clear to me as I listen to this song: Satan was looking over Grim Reaper’s shoulders and nodding in approval when they wrote this tune. Fuck, this is a great song!

The rest of the See You in Hell album is solid (with the exception of “The Show Must Go On,” a long, tedious ballad). It’s filled up with high-quality metal tunes. Nothing, however, is on the level of the title track. “Wrath of the Ripper,” “All Hell Let Loose,” “Run for Your Life,” and “Now or Never” are the songs that stand out, with “Ripper” being a minor classic in the Warrior household. However, the title track is so awesome that I want to be perfectly clear on one point: if the rest of the album were as good as “See You in Hell,” we would be talking about this album in the same breath as British Steel, The Number of the Beast, and Paranoid. It’s that fucking good. One of the five best metal songs ever, in my opinion. It may just be my favorite. Alas, Grim Reaper’s first album is a bit of a letdown after the almost impossibly high level set by the first song.

I wish that Grimmett would use his voice to greater effect on this album. If you have the ability to sing in a high octave, you should do so more often. I’m not saying that he should have sung every song under threat of castration, but in more of a Rob Halford style. Rob, at least in early and mid period Judas Priest, sang low, medium, and high in the same song. Listen to the aforementioned “Victim of Changes” for an example. It sounds great. Most of the Grim Reaper songs have only mid-range vocals. The ones that are more varied, such as the title song and “Run For Your Life,” are the strongest tracks.

Fear No Evil isn’t quite at the level of See You in Hell. As with the first album, Grim Reaper placed their strongest song (the title track) at the beginning, then put a collection of lesser songs behind it. Same formula, but the quality is down a notch this time. The tunes aren’t quite as catchy and riffs don’t grab the listener as easily. Make no mistake, though, it’s still a good record, aside from the embarrassing spoken word intro to “Final Scream.” Not sure what they were thinking there, but it didn’t work!

One last thing about this album: the video for “Fear No Evil” is truly great. It, more than anything else I have encountered, captures perfectly how I have always envisioned heavy metal. It is the definition of heavy metal’s aural and visual aesthetic. It’s hard to describe – you should just watch it. Usually I don’t like music videos, but this one is brilliant. Search for this video on Youtube – you will be rewarded with a metallic feast for ears and eyes.

Speaking of a feast for the eyes, Grim Reaper isn’t it. The members constitute one of the ugliest bands to have ever existed. Grim Reaper could not exist today because of their lack of looks. They could not have been mainstream successes in the 1980s because they came nowhere close to looking glam. They are, in fact, the anti-glam. In an earlier review, Jimmy brought up SoDak’s theory of ugly bands rocking the hardest; Grim Reaper provides strong proof of this theory’s validity. Watch the “Fear No Evil” video and you’ll see what I mean.

These two albums are available on one CD from a company named Collectables (sic). See You in Hell receives eight and a half gore-encrusted swords, while Fear No Evil earns seven bloody blades. If you like solid traditional heavy metal, you will enjoy these albums. The song “See You in Hell” and the video for “Fear No Evil” receive the absolute highest marks I can bestow upon a metal performance: TEN bloody swords raised in TRIUMPH! Hail Satan!

See you in Hell, my friend.