Maniac - Maniac (Full Album) 1985

Maniac was a heavily expressed live band, which shows its mark in that the songs are designed with crowd sing-alongs from the very start. They even prepared cheer lyrics and stage talks. Then again this was an eighties release when metal pretty much lived on stages and in tour buses. The self-titled album is short and varied enough to keep the listener’s ears and interest throughout the album, and good enough to attract it in the first place. There’s plenty of classical speed metal here, sounding a lot like Running Wild, Loudness and Vampyr. A lot like Savage Steel would do a few years later. The drums are the classic ones, no double-bass but an undenying rhythmic beat that often proves so much better. The guitars sound like one part Judas Priest-worship, one part Exhorder-worship and a pinch of sludge. You could say they use Running Wild-riffs with more space and time for each chord to sink into the brain tissue. Bands from the eighties always had one slow song on the album. Maniac con