*** Boiled in Lead -- Old Lead
It took a trip to that liberal bastion of Eugene, Oregon to complete my BiL collection. Taken to a CD shop by a coworker, I was a bit disappointed by the slim selection of progressive, but brought back a bit by the discovery of this. Old Lead is a compilation of the first two Boiled in Lead albums, "Boiled in Lead" and "Hotheads". Similar to the later "Orb" and "From the Ladle to the Grave", this album is ethnic music spiced up with punk influences. However, like those other two albums, this is much more folksy that the last two BiL albums, which I much more prefer (1994s "Antler Dance" made my top ten albums of all time list). One difference this time out is that the majority of the vocals are by Jane Dauphin, who left after "Hotheads", lending this a bit more of a Celtic feel than anything that followed which featured male vocalists. Boiled in Lead is a band that you cannot afford to miss if you have the chance to see them live.
Review by A. D. Jensen
