ARTIST: Powerglove
ALBUM TITLE: Saturday Morning Apocalypse
RECORD LABEL: E1 music
RELEASED: September 28

By Justin Polak
Co-founder, Ambassador to the Mushroom Kingdom

When you add a healthy mix of power and speed metal to classic video game tunes what pours out of the blender is Powerglove.  Ever since video game cover bands emerged I have always been willing to lend an ear, as I have always been a huge fan of video game music since I was a child.  I was one of those psychos that recorded video game tunes on a cassette tape by putting a boom-box with a recording ability next to a TV…just to give you a rough idea of how dedicated I was.  Bear in mind that the internet was a few years off, so it’s not like I could go download those soundtracks, and the ability to purchase that kind of music was usually out of the question.

Whoops, I seemed to have gone off track!  That’s alright because Powerglove’s second album, Saturday Morning Apocalypse, goes off track as well seeing how it has no video game covers on it whatsoever!  As you might have guessed from the title, Apocalypse deals with TV show and movie themes generally geared towards a younger audience.  Of course, most of these tracks, be it Powerglove’s cover or their original form, are a great source of nostalgia.

In fact, Powerglove has always been a fun band to listen to just for the simple fact of seeing how much they expand on simple tunes with an in your face power metal attitude.  Their sound can be comparable to Dragonforce’s though not as complicated and out of hand.  Fun fact: Powerglove actually opened on tour for Dragonforce before.  I am sure whatever concert venues they visited exploded from too many guitar solos or something.

The first thing that drew my attention on Apocalypse is how much tighter Powerglove’s sounds is.  They mainly show this off by taking more improvisational liberties and double bass drumming this time around.  I already can’t wait to see how another video game themed album turns out with such an improvement in their musicianship.

Photo from facebook.com/pages/powerglove

Though this isn’t exactly Powerglove’s fault, I have to say that I enjoyed their EP Total Pwnage and last album, Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man a lot more.  I am simply too much of a fan of video game music.  While it’s nice to switch over to a different kind of memory lane infused in power metal, I don’t hold that much fondness to TV show or movie themes.  Not to say that I outright wish they would never do anything like this, as I enjoyed their Power Ranger theme song cover on Total Pwnage, despite casually watching the show when it aired.

That being said I enjoyed “X-Men Theme”, “The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest”, “Batman” and “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” the most.  Their cover of the X-Men theme song could have been used in a long action scene in the show, “Johnny Quest “sounds like a missing Metal Gear Solid theme, “Batman” is ridiculously epic, and I have always enjoyed the Pokemon theme song, though I did not get into that show since I was in late high school when it debuted.

I also appreciated covers to much older works like the Flintstones theme and “Heffalumps and Woozles” from Winnie the Pooh.  I know, the idea of those two songs being covered by a power metal band sounds unintentionally hilarious, but they pull it off.

Despite my admittedly trivial issues with Saturday Morning Apocalypse, the album is enjoyable and definitely worth checking out at least once.  I don’t feel like closing out this review with the usual summary of my overall opinion, so allow me to paint a mental picture when I first found out the album’s subject matter.

Imagine yourself as a kid watching your favorite cartoon on Saturday morning.  Picture a character (mine would be Brain the dog from Inspector Gadget) going about it’s business on said show.  All of a sudden your parent’s walk in and tell you to finish your homework and go outside for the rest of the day.  All of a sudden the character’s head turns and looks directly at you and your family, and boy does he/she/it look pissed.  All of a sudden, it jumps out of the TV wearing a headband and wielding a flaming guitar.  It starts soloing like crazy while chasing your parents out of the room.  As your parent’s flee like a couple of cats that had a firework explode near them, it unearths an ear piecing scream that shatters all windows in a fifty mile radius.  The shock wave is clearly visible.

That’s Powerglove.

RATING: 7/10

Front page photo from facebook.com/pages/powerglove.