Midwest Militia No 1

I’m not at all surprised that Rob said that. You simply have to understand that he spoke those words nearly 25 years ago, just after Greg left the band. Rob did and does feel that Frost & Fire is the most commercial thing CU did. Rob and Greg are still friends, and that stuff is all way under the bridge. Time passes and people realize they said things before they thought them out. They grow up! (Rob was in the process of getting over it even several months later in his HM Times interview.) Rob also said in Heavy Metal Times that “I feel that Greg’s music was too introspective…” He hit the nail dead-on as far as why I prefer Frost & Fire over any CU album (although the stuff from Servants of Chaos with Greg on it is also a fave). “Edge of a Knife,” “Better Off Dead” and “What Does It Take” speak to the social outsider like few songs I’ve ever listened to. In my opinion that’s a good thing! Fantasy is awesome, but Greg was making some actual commentary on the trials and tribulations of going against the mindless herd, of alienation. (“They all seem different, but they’re all the same…”) Greg is decidely less into the metal machismo thing than Rob, and I can admire both. If Rob and Tim thought Greg was being “pussy” for writing those tunes at the time, so be it. Greg’s lyrics–pun intended–strike more of a chord with me. “I’d put it down to experience / but I haven’t had any yet” is a profound line, but obviously it’s something Tim probably didn’t feel like singing. Perhaps Greg should’ve stuck to singing it himself! I wouldn’t have minded. It’s definitely difficult when you’re a songwriter/musician in a band and have to rely on a singer to deliver the vocals. I had the same problem…

CU had a backlog of songs from their early years, but they put a lot of Greg’s more introspective “commercial” sounding tunes out first. I don’t feel it was a bad move. “Frost & Fire” and “I’m Alive” are a bit different. The former is more of a Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and Gray Mouser) homage (“the frost monstreme and the fire divine”), while “I’m Alive” sounds like it could be spoken by Moorcock’s Elric himself.

Flint said he “looked up to Greg” and that he saw/heard Greg do things on bass that no one else could. I’ll attest to that! As for “radical” and extremely heavy? If you heard the original rehearsal room recording of “One Foot in Hell” or “Cirith Ungol” c. 1976 you’d shit your pants!