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Forget your Trivia and your Metallicas. Okay, so that's a bit harsh. Matt Heafy and his fellow parvenus are a talented bunch while James Hetfield & co showed that you could make heavy music and sell squillions, but it pays to remember where they, and everyone from Alice In Chains to Orange Goblin, came from. Ladies and gents, I give you Trouble.
For those unaware of these Chicagan cult legends, it was Trouble's amp settings that Metallica tried to copy in order to replicate their then unique, heavier-than-thou guitar sound, it was Trouble who inadvertently co-created doom metal (are musical genres founded any other way?), and it was Trouble who, with their first two albums' Sabbath-influenced sound, managed to keep Ozzy and chums in people's consciousness long before Sharon Osbourne was plastering her face all over billboards.
In fact, with his round glasses and large cross hanging from his neck, Trouble's vocalist Eric Wagner could be Ozzy, only with curlier hair and a heck of a lot more compos mentis. But that does Mr Wagner a disservice for Ozzy can't hold a light to his voice while Trouble's perpetually evolving mix of doom, psychedelia and kick-ass melodies was and - with a new album on the way - is better than most bands could ever hope to achieve, including Sabbath.
I kid you not and watching this show recorded in Stockholm in late 2003, it's difficult to come to any other conclusion. How many more genius riffs has the world thrown up than the one that propels Come Touch The Sky? Could two guitarists be more in tandem than when Rick Wartell and Bruce Franklin (oxymoronically) solo together on At The End Of My Daze? Do choruses come much more anthemic than the one on Memory's Garden? Could you get doomier than Psalm 9 or The Tempter, more musically eschatological than Revelation (Life Or Death), or as eerie, sobering and horrifying than The Skull?
These are rhetorical questions, of course, but ones which Trouble have all the answers to, as they clearly enjoy playing together after years apart and perform contentedly and note-perfectly to a pleasingly packed Stockholm club.
The 40-minute interview "extra" is also better than usual, at least for those interested in Trouble's, erm, troubled history. Conducted in somewhat "I'm a fan!" fashion by Candlemass's chief songwriter Leif Edling, he nonetheless uncovers that it was Wagner lending vocals to Dave Grohl's Probot side-project that precipitated Trouble's recent resurrection.
So discerning metal lovers around the world have someone who's duetted with Norah Jones to thank for the return of a seminal band. Sometimes the world doesn't make sense - if it did, Trouble would already be massive.
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