MALTEZE Count Your Blessings full album

Malteze was a pure female fronted “heavy metal” band based out of los angeles that was formed in 1985, although “barbara maltese” grew up in “new york state”, and later studied in “boston” to become a music teacher. She also played the piano, and later started to sing. Her first band audition was in time square where she covered heavy metal songs. Later she moved back home and joined the band “shiver” and also worked in a recording studio. The producer John Pillay then asked her to record some songs with him in l.a, and so she moved over there to start her singing career and put together a band.
Barbara decided to call the band “malteze”, using her name but with a cooler spelling and sound. In 1987 they recorded the album “we came to rock”. Unfortunately there were only 500 copies that were made from this record and it is a rarity to find or much less own now. Later barbara realized that she wanted to make more HEAVY songs and hired a new line-up. The band’s initial line-up featured “bryant simpson” on [bass] and “steve swartout” on [drums] sadly thing’s didn’t end well and the whole band was re-vamped. The NEW members of the band were “kris marxx” on [bass], “mike voss” on [drums], “masami fujimaki” and “steve cenkeron” on [guitars].
Now for the review in 1990 the album “count your blessings” was finally released and has 8 tracks of good head rockers on it. Malteze’s sound is closely matched to band’s like “betsy from bitch”, “crystal viper” and “crystal pride” in terms of vocals and sound. Malteze in terms of playing their instruments are fairly adequate and make good records however the song’s doesn’t always leave you with a lasting impression when certain song’s are finished. The guitar playing isn’t all that great, the riffs were quite minimal to none existent at times, the bass were minimal as well but decent to the ear, the drums was the greatest part but what got me was how the whole album was composed. There was a whole great deal of structure to the song’s being made which made for a solid release, hence the 4 star rating. Sadly due to the release of this album it didn’t sell well at the time because the “heavy metal” scene in the u.s. was dying out and the rise of the “grunge” scene began. After the release of this album the band suddenly disbanded and went their separate ways. Overall this album is worth the recommendation to serious vinyl collectors and “traditional heavy metal” lovers world wide, to which this cd edition is NOW released.

[@valdirfernandes324]

What an album, Mr. Fujimaki! \m/