Emerald started as early as December 1978, but nothing more than line-up changing happened, until the mid-eighties. They recorded this one record, released in 1987, and in 1988 the band broke up. Now, I believe their mostly famous for once including bass-player Roger Dale Martin as a member. He didn't even play on the entire record, as he left to join the legendary Vengeance Rising.
EMERALD
- ARMED FOR BATTLE (1987, 2001) M8
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Line-up: Larry Philips - Lead Vocals Dave Enos - Guitar, Keyboards, Backing Vocals Joe Palma - Bass (on 2 tracks) Kyle Morrett - Drums, Synthesizer Roger Martin - Bass (on 4 tracks) |
This band escaped my attention completely during Christian metal's heydays. But when I got internet, and discovered BlastBeats (see links page), new bands popped up all the time. Emerald play a pretty straight forward kind of heavy metal, similar to Saint and Barren Cross. I like the album a lot, and think it's an excellent debut album. The production is not all that, but what can one expect from an old non-budget release. My version is a re-release, put out my M8 as a split CD. Emerald share the space with Oracle on it. What puzzles me though; if the 2 last songs are bonus-tracks, did the original release only have 6 songs? Was it a full-length album, or just a Mini-LP/EP?
Killer tracks: We Attack, Judgement Day
A reader of my site wrote to me about my questions regarding this release. Here's what he had to say:
To answer your question you have at the end of your Emerald page; yes, the original album had only the six songs, mainly because some of the songs are so long. The two bonus tracks were from the compilation CD "California Metal 2". Emerald does have another three songs available, "Deceiver", "Battleground" and "King of the Universe". I, for the life of me, cannot recall where I acquired these songs from, must have been another demo or the likes.
Jeff McCormack
Related artists:
, Die Happy, Once Dead