Tales of Terror

Though it wouldn’t find a wider audience until “Metal Merchants” was included on its <i>Metal Massacre IV</i> compilation, Georgia’s Hallows Eve had culled a strong following in the underground shortly after its 1983 formation. “Plunging to Megadeth” opens sounding less like the tune’s namesake and more like early Metallica’s penchant for importing fragments of punk in the rhythm section. But the band also had a knack for melody, especially in “The Mansion,” where a love for Iron Maiden’s “Prowler” can be heard poking out of the song’s framework. The album’s title track best displays the band’s versatility with an intro of delicately picked arpeggios that dissolve into a collision between hard-throttled riffs and wah-wah–laden leads, before singer Stacy Anderson belts it out like a young Rob Halford over a juggernaut of thrash metal firing on all pistons. Similarly, “Metal Merchants” unleashes a relentless assault of punk-infused metal before downshifting into a slowed bridge where guitarists David Stuart and Steve "Skullator" Shoemaker battle it out.