Artist: Running Wild
Label: G.U.N. Records
Released: 2006
Best of Adrian? My ass!!! Pre-Christmas season, the perfect moment to squeeze as many jingling little coins as possible out of the masses’ pockets. Except Running Wild are a tiny, tiny band on the music map these days, one that lived through its glory days of metal ages ago, somewhere between 1987 – 1998. In short, from the album “Under Jolly Roger” up to and including “The Rivalry”, so they no longer rake in any huge amount of cash.
Just think of the stuff Running Wild served up on “Black Hand Inn” (1994), “Masquerade” (1995), “Port Royal” (1988), “Death Or Glory” (1989), “Pile Of Skulls” (1992) and “Blazon Stone” (1991), and your eyes well up the moment you glance at the tracklist of “Best Of Adrian”. This new compilation contains nothing from those “golden era” albums. Which only proves it’s a one-sided, calculated move by G.U.N. Records, one where Running Wild put out their last good album in 1998 with “The Rivalry”, which, by the way, is the last classic album by the band, the last one where Running Wild were still actually a band with a real backbone and the boss Rolf Kasparek – Rock N’ Rolf (vocals, guitar) hadn’t turned it into a “one man band”. The compilation has 15 tracks, and the label cleverly put the running order together. They kicked off with a killer track as bait, Rivalry, marked by a fantastic punchy lead motif – a true metal dream that belongs to the classic Running Wild era. But right after it, things change completely with Draw That Line and Detonator, which come from the soulless “Rouges En Vogue” (2005) and “The Brotherhood” (2002). And yet it’s all on purpose. The point is to fill up the whole running time of the disc with a pretend “best of” that grew in the cabbage patch of the bosses at G.U.N. Records. Now an uninformed listener might take both of these utterly average songs for “holy”, because the taste of the compilation gets rescued by what comes next on the list: Firebreather, Kiss Of Death and the magnificent Ballad Of William Kid (all three from “The Rivalry”). After that we only get two brighter moments, Tsar (“Victory”, 1999) and Pirate Song (“The Brotherhood”), while the rest are false footprints in the snow that lead you down a dead end, and honestly, a compilation like this always does more harm to the music itself than good. It isn’t even a “best of”, let alone a retrospective.
To wrap things up, three live tracks from the album “Live” (2002) are tacked on, and yet between the classics Under Jolly Roger and Bad To The Bone (“Death Or Glory”) they shoved in yet another dreadful, bland Welcome To Hell (“The Brotherhood”), which is already on this compilation in its studio original.
The only real compilation of Running Wild worth your money remains “20 Years In History” (2003), which came out on Sanctuary/Noise Records. That label, by the way, owns the copyrights to the best works of Running Wild and, for inclusion on “20 Years In History”, bought the rights to the tracks Firebreather, Ballad Of William Kidd, Victory, Tsar, Welcome To Hell and The Brotherhood! If we add the originals of Bad To The Bone and Under Jolly Roger, which “20 Years In History” has, unlike the live versions on “Best Of Adrian”, we get a total of 8 songs in common, which is already more than half of the “Best Of Adrian” compilation.
“Best Of Adrian” is a compilation that presents Running Wild in the most ungrateful and pathetic way possible. It presents a band that is completely out of ideas, burnt out, without a shred of creative freshness, and a “one man band” where Kasparek on top of it all uses programmed rhythm backing for the riffs (he’s been doing that since 1999, after all)! “Best Of Adrian” presents a Running Wild who lost the real pirate charm that made Running Wild so recognizable ages ago. G.U.N. Records are actually doing the band even more damage, a band that has already sold off its self-respect with the below-average quality of its last few studio releases.
Those of you who know Running Wild in their best light, take note: just picking up “Best Of Adrian” and glancing at the tracklist is enough to leave you heartbroken. This release is a complete case of throwing sand in the masses’ eyes! Only the clueless, impatient, inexperienced, fired-up young power metal fans who got hooked after a single listen to Iron Maiden or Helloween will reach for it, plus maybe some mad Running Wild fan from Hamburg who doesn’t know what to do with his money. As for us, we’ll stay good, obedient and devoted, with our healthy musical taste, with the compilation “20 Years In History” and the whole legacy of the band that came out on Sanctuary/Noise Roecords. Best Of Adrian!? Worst, guys, Worst of Adrian, my ass!
Lineup
Rock’n’Rolf – vocals, guitar
Thilo Hermann – guitar
Bernd Aufermann – guitar
Thomas “Bodo” Smuszinsky – bass
Peter Pichel – bass
Jorg Michael – drums
Mathias Leibetruth – drums
Angelo Sasso – drums (WARNING! – “stamping” machine)
Production
Rock’n’Rolf
Tracklist
1. The Rivalry
2. Draw The Line
3. Detonator
4. Firebreather
5. Kiss Of Death
6. Ballad Of William Kidd
7. Victory
8. Tsar
9. Welcome To Hell
10. The Brotherhood
11. Pirate Song
12. Rogues En Vogue
13. Bad To The Bone (live)
14. Welcome To Hell (live)
15. Under Jolly Roger (live)
Running time: 75:18
