Description

Reduced price due to a small sticker damage in upper right corner (see picture 3)

The German metal magazine Metal Hammer was founded in 1983 and the first issue was released in January of 1984 and it was printed in 50 000 copies. The Metal Hammer festival that was held on the 14th of September of 1985, at the Freilichtbuhne in Loreley, St Goarshausen in Germany, was the first festival arranged by the magazine and it had approx 30 000 visitors. The line-up for the day included Venom, Running Wild, Nazareth, Warlock, Wishbone Ash, Pretty Maids, Heavy Pettin, Savage Grace, Restless, Tyran Pace and the still little-known Metallica. Its easy to think that the main attraction were Metallica, but thats not really the whole truth. Metallica had released Ride The Lightning a year earlier and was one of the hottest underground bands but there was also another American band, that at the time, were very popular in the European underground fanzines and that was Savage Grace from Los Angeles. The European audience had been introduced to the band through their participation on the Metal Massacre II compilation, The Dominatress EP 1983 and positive reviews in fanzines about their latest 2-track demo that introduced their new singer Mike Smith had also appeared. The band had just finished the recording of their debut album Master Of Disguise, which was released in September of 1985 and the time was exactly right to come over to Europe for the first time to promote the band and their debut album. Their debut took place at this festival and they were also booked for a handful of shows in Holland, among those were a show at the famous Dynamo Club a week later. With Michael Smith behind the microphone, an impressive singer that could do it all from Gary Barden to James Rivera, the band finally had their strongest line-up of their career and the band were touring Los Angeles and the Orange County area and really making an impression on concerts goers. Things were really looking good and Savage Grace could have been the next big thing but things didn’t go as planned and shortly before it was time to fly over to Europe the problems got worse with Mike Smiths conditions where he didn’t care and didn’t want to go to Europe and just wanted to get out of the band. Founder and guitarist Christian Logue begged him to stay and checking if it was any chance they could get Mike through rehab but things didn’t change and the band were in some sort of emergency where they needed a new vocalist quick or cancelling the tour. Replacing Smith wasn’t something that could be solved quick and cancelling the tour was out of the question so they did the best they could. They headed to Europe with Chris himself taking over the role of singer. Chris still feels sorry for those first European shows; I did the tour and I did my best. I know I can not sing like Mike Smith and I apologize to all the people that wanted Mike Smith, but I learned an important lesson in life about depending on other people. However the show went down well and about a three quarter of the set was made up by material from their new Master Of Disguise album (e.g., Bound To Be Free, Sins Of The Damned, Sons Of Iniquity, Master Of Disguise), and from The Dominatress EP Fight for Your Life was performed. In addition to the above, two more new compositions, Destination Unknown and World as One (which eventually became Flesh And Blood), which appeared on After The Fall From Grace a year later, were also included in the program. On this album you can hear the bands first ever European live show without any overdubs and you can hear that after all that happened within short noticed the band were in good shape and good mood and the audience loved the band. Unfortunately the continuing line-up problems over the years would take its toll and stop the band from reaching any higher levels. Savage Grace was yet another one of those bands that deserved so much more than they achieved

Track list:
1. Destination Unknown
2. Sins Of The Damned
3. World As One
4. Sons Of Iniqiuty
5. Into The Fire
6. Fight For Your Life
7. Master Of Disguise
8. Lions Roar
9. Bound To Be Free