Gotham City - The Unknown (1984)^{Release ID: 10214}

Swedish four-piece outfit Gotham City formed in the city of Umea in Sweden in 1980 & would quickly assume a moniker whiich one would assume is a reference to Batman which is not a particularly metal subject matter it has to be said. It’s certainly not one that does anything for the common consensus that metalheads are generally nerdy pimple-faced virgins anyway… & we know all too well that that idea is long way from the truth, don’t we? Well at least I do.

Gotham City had kicked off their recorded music career with a well-regarded six song EP by the name of “Black Writs” in 1983 which I must admit I’m still yet to hear but from all reports it suffers from a noticeable lack of talent in the vocal department. Thankfully though, that message seems to have gotten back to the band because Gotham City’s lone full-length studio album “The Unknown” features a brand new front man who is apparently a vast improvement on the original. To be fair, Anders Zackrisson does seem to hint that he might possess a little bit of talent. He champions a fairly unintimidating & accessible voice that I’d guess would probably feel more appropriate out the front of a rock band rather than a metal one but I have to say that his execution isn’t amazing here. He’s noticeably pitchy at numerous stages across the tracklisting & these failings go a long way to distracting me from the better riffs on offer which doesn’t help Gotham City’s cause too much.

Musically, this record sits extremely close to the New Wave model of traditional heavy metal. In fact, so much so that you’d never guess that “The Unknown” came from another part of Europe. The production is very raw & noisy which was a very common characteristic of New Wave debuts. Could this possibly be a conscious decision from the band so as to sound as close to their idols as possible? It’s a definite possibility & if that’s the case then they couldn’t have succeeded much better than they have really. Equally so is the instrumentation which sees Gotham City readily incorporating all of the typical NWOBHM tools like galloping rhythms & guitar harmonies. There’s little doubt that Iron Maiden have played a pretty major role in Gotham City’s sound but to their credit the band have steered well away from blatant plagiarism even if they never sound all that original either. I often hear a fair bit of classic Black Sabbath in some of the heavier riffs employed which can’t be a bad thing & although I wouldn’t say it’s all that obvious there’s a subtle punk rock edge to some of this material. Despite that, there’s a surprising amount of compositional maturity here but sadly the band’s technical limitations leave the album sounding a little too much like a cheap home-made demo tape. The drums sound a little loose although definitely not helped by the production & the guitar performances are predominantly pretty weak. Especially the guitar solos which I regard as being well below par by this stage in the heavy metal game. Thankfully for us metalheads, you won’t hear too much of the hard rock influence that was engrained in most of the NWOBHM material over the previous 5 years. This is a pure heavy metal release with a few of the tracks even dipping their toes into genuine speed metal territory & one song “See How It Flyes” even appearing to be one of the earliest examples of European power metal.

There are a couple of pretty decent songs here but sadly “The Unknown” suffers from a real lack of quality in the song-writing, production & performances. It could also do with more of a defined identity as this simply sounds far too similar to the now-waning NWOBHM sound that was quickly being overtaken by the Americans. I guess Gotham City just sound a little safe & tame in comparison. Not to mention a little dated given that they’ve kinda missed the boat with the New Wave sound. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to toss Gotham City into the same basket as their countrymen Heavy Load as simply not being for me.