Chrome: Das Gift der Musik
Once again I'm in "it's easier to download the album from a sharity blog than to find it on my shelves" mode, which is how I ended up with a digitized copy of Chrome's Raining Milk album yesterday. Hearing Chrome's cyborg metal for the first time was a revelation; their 1982 six-album box set was the best ten bucks I ever spent. The box set was initially the only way to get their two-album set The Chronicles. Sadly, that was the last album recorded by the classic Chrome duo of Helios Creed and Damon Edge. They parted ways and Damon Edge moved to France, where he continued releasing albums both under the Chrome moniker and under his own name. The first such Chrome album was Raining Milk, which was merely an abridged, single-album version of The Chronicles with a new song, "Raining Milk." That turned out to be a two-minute instrumental, so that album was not a very good value. However, I did use "Raining Milk" as the intro music for my college radio show, "Das Gift der Musik." (It sounds like "the gift of music," but it really means "the poison of music," haha. I defend my sophomoric humor by noting that I was a sophomore when I thought it up.)
Wow, that takes me back; I feel like I should be announcing the concert calendar now.
Edge's recordings all lacked the metallic bite of his collaborations with Creed. When Creed finally put together a new band and started releasing albums, they were closer to the "real" Chrome, but still lacking something. After Edge died in 1995, Creed took back the Chrome name and has since released several Chrome albums with varying degrees of success, and none as vital as his work with Edge. What a shame.
