To their credit, Star Song Records gave it the ol' college try when it came to metal compilations. More so than most collections I've run across. Although the title seems a tad grandiose for its own good, I'm rather pleased with this effort.
Start to finish, there's some really good classic metal here: Mastedon's "It's A Jungle Out There", Shout's "Faith Hope & Love", Sacred Warrior's "Sword Of Victory", Scarlet Red's "You Live Fast", Whitecross' "Living In A Lost World", Vengeance Rising's "Burn" (the fact that they didn't regurgitate "Mulligan Stew"- no pun intended- says something), and Rage Of Angels' "Do You Still Believe In Love". Of particular interest to the astute collector, there's a Messiah Prophet song on here, "Blinded", that was recorded for the Master of the Metal project but never found its way on the album. And just for the sake of useless trivia, the Neon Cross song "Heartbreaker" was included here without the band's consent. Woopsie.
And, just to prove that misfires happen even with the best of intentions, Petra somehow made its way onto another metal collection here. Sheesh. At least their cut, "All Fired Up", was a little more guitar-driven than say, the Petra song on the previously-reviewed Righteous Metal compilation. Blues rock band REZ shows up with "Shadows", and punk thrash favorites One Bad Pig's "Let's Be Frank" ends the CD.
More of a solid line-up here. Old school metal heads, check it out sometime. . .
6.5/10
Other coverage for this album
Heaven's Metal #23Reviewed by Doug Van PeltI would shy away from using the word "ultimate" to describe this album, but I think it is better than any of the other Christian metal compilation albums released. I mean, any compilation album with "Burn" by Vengeance on it gets my thumbs up. The only shortcome I see is including Petra (who, by the way, appear on three of the four Ultimate Series albums: metal; rock; and dance??). Where is…
