Band : Flotsam And Jetsam
Album title : Once In A Deathtime
Label : Metal Mind Productions
Distributor : Bertus
Release date : 16/06/2008
Release : DVD

I have a very weird history with this band: when their debut album Doomsday For The Deceiver came out in 1986, I was in my second year of music journalism, still for my own Metalised magazine (for which I was also chief editor and main responsible guy). Here was a band who dared to combine the power of Thrash Metal with the vocal endeavours of a decent singer who could soar the highest clean notes, and would not just rely on a harsher vocal style! Just before going to press with our 6th issue, which featured a story (by my hand) titled "Metallica watch out, Flotsam And Jetsam is a-coming!", we heard about Cliff Burton's death...a sad fact which we subsequently made room for to announce. By the time the magazine came back from the printer's, F&A's bassist Jason Newsted had been enticed into the ranks of Metallica...something I've always been cross for at "Thrash Metal's Finest"...even more so because they were slowly changing musically into "easier" grounds!

1988's No Place For Disgrace (released through Electra) was still a killer album, but after that...well, I can't say I am the most faithful of music listeners, so I lost track of F&A after that somewhat. Meaning that good albums like 1990's When The Storm Comes Down (the band's first for MCA), 1992's Cuatro, and 1995's Drift (the last for MCA before the band was again picked up by Metal Blade, who had released the debut), as well as 1997's High,completely passed me by. It wouldn't be before I was to make a transcript of a telephone conversation with drummer Craig Nielsen, that I would be re-acquainted with the material of this band...as our editor-in-chief was thoughtful enough to hand me over the band's Unnatural Selection (1999) and My God (then just released) albums as background material to write out the interview. Great stuff, but I didn't go as deep into the material as when I would've had to make a review, see. At the time of doing that interview, things were still hunky-dory within the band, but then it was revealed that as the band was gearing to release the album that May 2001, singerEric A.K. was doin' a club circuit tour with a Country & Western act called The O.K. Corral. He still started a short burst of US club dates with F&A in July, but as August drew to a close the band announced that the singer had left, his replacement for the tour to be James Rivera (of Destiny's End and Helstar fame). Rivera joining Seven Witches after the tour (as well as starting a unique tribute band, in cooperation with his Helstar collegue Mike Heald on guitar, under the monicker of Sabbath Judas Sabbath) left F&A without a frontman, which came somewhat awkward when the band was offered to support Krokus towards the end of 2002. Eventually, Knutson would return to the fold. In May 2004, F&A signed a two-album deal with the smaller Crash Music imprint. The first release would be September 2005's Dreams Of Death, but the album never even made it to the Concrete Web offices! Only two months later, the band saw the release of their first live album Live In Phoenix (the soundtrack of the 2004 DVD by the same title?)...on Belgian cult label Mausoleum! Crash Music followed that up with a DVD entitled Live In Japan in February 2006. Meantime, drummer Craig Nielsen guested on the Modes Of Alienation album by Boston based instrumentalProg Metal project The Alien Blakk, and guitarist Mark Simpson also joined up with Beautiful Creatures. Metal Blade paid tribute to F&A in 2007 by re-releasing the band's first album in an expanded version also containing both the Iron Tears and Metal Shock demoes of 1995, plus a DVD disc including early film footage, interviews and a concert recorded in 1985.

Earlier this year, Polish based Metal Mind Productions re-issued a couple of the old F&A albums (even the last one, 2005's Dreams Of Death was just recently re-issued), an apparently that cooperation pleased the band enough for them to allow the label to record and release a DVD. You see, in March of this year F&A did a burst of European gigs, and while performing at the Metalmania festival (at Spodek in Katowice on March 8) the gig was recorded for posterity. The band opened procedures with "Hammerhead" (of the debut album), and continued full-blast with "Me" (off Drift), "The Master Sleeps" (When The Storm Comes Down) and "Swatting At Flies" (Cuatro), before announcing that the festival organizers had asked them to play quite a few songs of the old stuff, so Eric A.K. and company obligingly continued with "No Place For Disgrace" (off the album by the sam title), "Doomsday For The Deceiver" (dito), and "Hard On You" (No Place...), before returning to more recent material with "Fork Boy" (a cover which they put on High) and "Never To Reveal" (off Cuatro again). The guys then returned to the No Place For Disgrace album with "Escape From Within" and the classic "I Live You Die", before closing off the evening with "Smoked Out" (off Drift). Although the band (who are after all well in their fourties now) had played Vienna the evening before and had come straight over to Katowice without any sleep, their performance was admirably active.

Only hours after the gig, guitarist Edward Carson and drummer Craig Nielsen were pushed into a quiet room for a filmed interview. Well, interview...you can see that conversation mainly as an expansion of the biography which you can also find on the DVD (along with a detailed discography, a photo gallery and some desktop images). All together, you get a total of some 90 minutes playing time. If you've never heard any material of this band before, but àre into classic (and classy) Thrash Metal-with-a-difference, I can warmly recommend the band's first albums, and as both Unnatural Selection and My God also left a positive imprint on my memory nodes, I will extend the list that far. I cannot be sure about the other stuff, and I have to say that the media were not too positive about the band's last (Dreams Of Death, that is). Anyway, if you're looking to listen to some music of the band for free, all you have to do in go to google and enter "flotsam and jetsam myspace"...that'll give you a multitude of sites with a decent amount of different tracks!

As for this DVD...it may be a tad simple, but possibly the price is quite okay (mind you, I ain't too sure about that). It definitely prooves that the band members are still all fired up and ready to go for it the hard way...so now if they could put their heads together to write a decent new album, maybe that might bring them in the frontlight again. There's definitely room for the return of an additional old Thrash glory, as prooven by the recent return to fame by the likes of Testament, Exodus, and more (let's not put Metallica in that line of Thrash Metal acts, shall we? Because those kinda wimped out over the years).

DVD, so no rating...but good job all together, guys!

Tony.