Nine great songs, but poorly 'remastered'.

Looking back through rose tinted glasses is all well and good, but nine times out of ten you’re left disappointed by what you thought was a good record, movie or book etc. So with trepidation I sat down to listen to what was at the time (1980 by the way) one of my favourite albums of the NWOBHM, namely ‘The Taker’, the first and only release by Leamington Spa’s very own Chevy. Chevy even all those years ago were different from the bands who were part of the new wave of metal at that time, acts like Tank, Raven, Maiden and Saxon were heavy metal with a capital M and were the definers of what that sound was going to be all about. Whereas Chevy harked back to the classic rock of the 70’s, sounding more like Uriah Heep, Bad Company and Wishbone Ash rather than the metal that was doing the rounds thirty years ago.

So does ‘The Taker’ stand up to scrutiny after all those years and is my looking and listening to it through rose tinted glasses justified ? Well I have to say yes, for me the songs have stood the test of time and done so wonderfully well. I loved revisiting once again the delights of ‘Skybird’, title track ‘The Taker’ and the Bad Company like ‘Shine On’, and remembering why I loved this album so much way back then. Yet there is a downside and it’s a big one to this CD, and that is the so called re-mastering by Krescendo, because all this is, is a straight from vinyl recording of the album and it is a poor one to say the least. Whoevers album they used is/was scratched to hell and every pop, crackle and hiss is very audible and very off putting, If you’re going to ask the paying public (and I bought my copy) to fork out hard earned money on your products then it should sound as good as it can possibly be, unfortunately this one does not. I tried to listen to this CD through headphones and it was impossible, even just playing it on the hi-fi was off putting and for me Krescendo should have either tried to get a better sounding copy, or with today’s music technology tried harder to tone down all the vinyl problems.

If you don’t mind listening to something with all those aforementioned problems, then I can still say that this is an album collectors of old style rock/metal will want to have in their collections - because it is still an album with nine great songs on it, just a shame that the source material was so damaged.

Ian Johnson