Record Label Review: MASCOT RECORDS

From time to time I will be reviewing the record companies who provide us with the hard rock and metal that keeps us alive. This month we are going to take a look at Mascot Records.

Mascot Records is an independent record company based in The Netherlands and specializes in guitar music, from Metal to (instrumental) Guitar, Hard Rock, Prog Rock and (guitar) Fusion artists.

The label is home to a catalog which is a whose who of rockers over the last 20 years, such as: Sadus, Vicious Rumors, Agent Steel, Volbeat, Lingua, Masters of Reality, LA Guns, Everon, C-187, Racer X amongst others. Guitarists such as Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, John 5, Andreas Kisser, John Norum, Marc Rizzo, Tony MacAlpine, Vinnie Moore, Michael Schenker, George Lynch, Jake E Lee, Steve Morse and many more.

If your into classic metal artists like me, I'm pretty sure you know the majority of these musicians. Mascot Records built their portfolio pretty much as the major labels and other indies dropped artists due to downsizing or shutting down their companies.

This European based record company did not have to suffer from the music industry collapse in Hollywood, or the music biz in general, and picked up some pretty big artists. Their diverse roster also allowed them breathing room going from one end of the spectrum with groups like thrashers Pestilence to guitar virtuoso Paul Gilbert.

Now Mascot is breaking into the U.S. market with artists like Heathen, with their long awaited album of 17 years, Heathen is one of the best melodic thrash bands to emerge out of the San Francisco bay area, named by their fans as the "mighty Heathen".

This label is bringing life to rockers who were on top of their game 10 and 20 years ago and back to release new content. You have to tip your hat to a company willing to make a gamble like that, but with an artist roster like the one they have, I'll take those odds!

Record Label Review Rating
Mascot Records 5*****

Long Live Dio!

I was pumped when I heard about the Heaven and Hell project, bringing back the Dio era Black Sabbath crew together again. It marked the 40th year of Black Sabbath, and 30th year with Dio.

This reunion all comes together with 2 serious bummers behind the scenes, as Ozzy sues Tony Iommi claiming he illegally took sole ownership of the band's name in a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Then during the Heaven and Hell Tour, Dio had to stop the show and headed for the hospital!

Word hit the street Thanksgiving weekend from Dio's wife and manger Wendy Dio, that he was fighting stomach cancer. Since his initial visits to the hospital, Dio has had to endure chemo treatments and even a blood clot issue. Some of the tumors have been cleared out, with some still in process of being destroyed.

Fans from all over the world are in shock and awe over this revelation, but many feel strongly he will recover and return as the King of Metal!

Last Sting For The Scorpions!

Say It Ain't So Guys!

German rock band Scorpions have announced they will break up after a career spanning over 40 years.

Best known for their European hit single Wind of Change, a statement on the band's website read: "We agree we have reached the end of the road."

The group say they will release a final album - Sting in the Tail - in March before embarking on a farewell tour.

The band was founded by guitarist Rudolf Schenker, 61, in 1965 in Hanover.

"We want to end the Scorpion's extraordinary career on a high note", the band said on the website.

"We finish our career with an album we consider to be one of the best we have ever recorded."

The tour will start in Prague on 15 March and go round the world "over the next few years" and the album will be released on 19 March.

The current line-up is Klaus Meine, Matthias Jabs, Rudolf Schenker, Pawel Maciwoda and James Kottak.

Scorpions have released more than 20 albums since they started out.

The end of an era for one of the greatest metal bands of all time!

Metal Is Back Baby!

I've been a metal head since the late 1970's growing up in Chicago suburbia. I learned about hard rock music from 3 sources: radio, record stores, and concerts. The Windy City area had it all when it came to this. I grew up bangin' out to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Nazereth, Montrose, and AC/DC to name a few.

When the 1980's came, I was in head-bangin' heaven! Chicago radio gave us killer stations like The Loop and WMET. Both competed for hard rock listeners, and brought the sounds of Iron Maiden and Judas Preist to commercial radio in Chi-town.

In the mid to late 80's both those stations wimped out for "Adult rock" and shed their metal. So other suburban stations emerged playing real metal! WRRG in River Grove launched a lot of bands like Metallica, Anvil, Trouble, and the like with Metal Mania hosted by Rockin' Ron Simon. I use to listen every Saturday night to his show then head to the Thirsty Whale to see the bands he played.

Then came more metal on the dial with Real Precious Metal RPM on 103FM, which was a haven for nightly hair bands of the 80's like Ratt, Bon Jovi, Winger and whatever that had lipstick. This was hard to listen to at times for true metal heads---until Labor Day 1986!

Adult Contemporary station WYEN 106-7FM dropped Elton John and Madonna for Slayer and Megadeth as Z-Rock 106-7FM made its awesome debut! 24 hours a day of non-stop metal-with no wimp music. I mean Slayer and Motorhead at like 7 in the morning! Awesome--totally awesome!

Great on-air talent like Wild Bill Scott (he was on WMET and The Loop back in the day), Mad Max Hammer, Shelly Steel, Killer Craig, Freeze Disease and lets not forget Boobie Bondage! It was unreal! I heard my first King Diamond song on there. Paul Dianno's Battlezone, Zoetrope (another Chicago fav), Anthrax, Metal Church, Accept--every killer band from 1980's metal!

A little over a year later I turn on my radio and hear Yanni crap! Z-Rock switched to The Wave, some new-age mindless middle aged crappy format. Rockers in Chicago united, staged rallies, bitched to the Trib and Times, just went nuts and into depression! I was sooo bummed! The music seemed like it was over and my main outlet for this lifestyle had just vanished!

I made mix-tapes in my car of bands I knew on Z-Rock and played them over and over again until the tapes snapped! About a year later I read in the Illinois Entertainer that a bunch of former hard rock radio and Z-Rock jocks were starting up another station on 1330AM--later named G-Force 1330. It was like Z-Rock on steroids! They had Z-Rock alumni like Wild Bill & Boobie, and locals like The G-Ster, Rockin' Ron Simon, Jammin' Janet and Scott Davidson.

It seemed like the AM band was the ONLY place to hear real metal on Chicago radio in late 80's and into the 90's. G-Force eventually became Rebel Radio, with Scott Davidson becoming the new voice for metal on the airwaves. Yeah, only a few could hear the station, but they patched a bunch of small AM stations together around town, a somewhat-wannabe network which never quite made it. But at least they kept it going as corporate giants moved into the Chicago landscape and changed radio forever!

Today I have XM and Internet radio to listen to. But honestly it just ain't the same. I mean, going to AM/PM Minimart to get some beer and hear the kid behind the counter crankin' out Slayer on Z-Rock--WOW--I could never forget that!

Metal is coming back into the mainstream these days. Just tune into The Metal Show on VH1 sometime, metal heads are now in our 40s and 50s--finally we're now the baby-boomers of real rock as metal becomes mainstream! We're back baby--so bang your head!