Description

Polish pressed music cassette. Clear cassette with printed Takt labels.

Poland is probably the country that had the most record labels in the world that only released cassettes. But even though there were lots of labels the market was still small as they only printed these for their own market inside of Poland. And a label in one town maybe lacked the distribution for another town and so on. A Warzaw or Krakow label might print more copies of a tape then labels from a smaller town. So even if there are thousands of releases you will notice how rare some are if you start to try to list the catalogue number of one particular label. Some cassettes just rarely shows up. One of the bigger cassettes labels were Takt Music in Warsaw. They started in 1990 as Tact then changed name in 1991 to Takt Music who existed up until 1994 before becoming a major pressing plant in Poland and changing the name to Takt.

Before they started incorporating hardcore punk and rap into their thrash sound, Anthrax pumped out Iron Maiden-inspired metal that only hinted at their future. With the album split between vocalists Neil Turbin and Joey Belladonna, one can see why the latter got to keep his job. Turbin’s high-register yelp is an acquired taste, lacking the emphasis that the material needs. He can hit the notes, but he lacks the presence that would make Belladonna more effective. Luckily, he is only present on the last two tracks, which were not originally on the album but made it onto the cassette release. Belladonna’s clear wail would be more suited to power metal à la Helloween, but it was his voice that also differentiated Anthrax from their thrash contemporaries. This is his first recorded appearance, and he displays more personality and range on his five songs than most of his post-1986 output. Giving the cover of God Save The Queen a sarcastic snarl, unleashing his banshee wail on the title track, making the remakes of Metal Thrashing Mad and Panic twice as good: these are the reasons why he was the obvious choice for their ’80s material. It would be years before the band’s direction clashed with Belladonna’s abilities, but here they found the perfect singer for what they were doing at the time. It may not be their best work, and they may have even started the annoying trend of heavy metal Sex Pistols covers, but Armed And Dangerous was the first sign that the band was going to be one of the major forces in the emerging speed metal scene.

Track list:
1. Armed And Dangerous
2. Soldiers Of Metal
3. Howling Furies
4. Raise Hell
5. God Save The Queen-Sex Pistols cover
6. Metal Thrashing Mad-live
7. Panic-live