17. minotauri - 'ii'
At some point, you just want to rock. For all the wonderful creativity, emotion, brutality, innovation or just plain weirdness that we music geeks like to look for endlessly in our piles and piles of precious records, sometimes we all just feel like putting something on that will rock. No frills, no complicated atmosphers, no heavily layered vocals, no journeys into an inner world of splendid depth - just the comfort that there are still people who can call a song 'Doom On Ice' and get away with it, tongue-in-cheek, just because they can. That's when we put on Minotauri. A cool way to look at this Finnish band is to imagine they're a sort of even more stripped down version of fellow Finns Reverend Bizarre. There's the same sort of back to the basics, old heavy stuff worship approach, but without the mysticism and cult leanings of the Reverend. 'II', tragically Minotauri's final album (even on that announcement they're simple - 'now we're dead! fuck off!' at the end of the booklet), sounds dusty but inviting, heavy but never entirely serious, and the balance they achieve with this is brilliant. It's all about the music, really - the one advantage that Minotauri have over, oh, any retro-rock (I do hate the term 'retro', but you understand) band is the songs. Faultless songwriting, perfectly placed instruments and vocals with just the right amount of grittiness, melody and power that will burrow into your brain and stay there, like the best Candlemass or Pentagram tracks. Great music. Sometimes we should remember that that's what it's all about.
Minotauri - 'Hammer Of Doom'
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