Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shellshocked from OCReMix

When I was younger, aside from video games, one of my youth passions were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I built Ninja Snowmen, had the toys, colouring books and my dad even made me wooden Sai's, Bo Staffs and Swords. But no nunchucks as my parents thought they were too dangerous. I even played the occasional Turtles game such as the Manhattan Project on the Nintendo and Fall of the Foot Clan on the Gameboy. I even got to try the Arcade beat em up on occasion.

Sadly, I never really got to play the Super Nintendo game, Teenage Mutant Ninka Turtles: Turtles in Time when I was a younger because there were no dedicated game stores near my home and the game itself was a bit of a minor rarity in my region. So I never really got to play the game until the advent of emulation. The game is an enjoyable beat em up and I know I would have loved the game even more growing up.

The reason I am talking about Turtles in Time today is because the good artists over at OCReMix has released their 47^th album; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shellshocked.

I do have to comment about the way that Shellshocked starts off. Instead of a basic song, remix group Alan Grant and the Velociraptors (made up of OCReMix veteran DusK and newcomer Brett Martindale) begins the track Heroes in a Half Shell as someone channel surfing before settling on April O'Neill of Channel 6 News describing the events that start the game. After that quick bit of expository dialogue, the actual track starts. The song is a cover of the original 1980's intro theme and while it is not an exact replica as the original, the two still do a great job covering the nostalgic track.

There are plenty of great songs on the album and the artists covering the tracks do a great job. I think one of the best songs on the album would have to be Viking Guitar's cover of Bury My Shell at Wounded Knee; Trail Dust and Turtle Wax. The song starts off as a homage to the old spaghetti westerns before picking up and it works wonderfully.

The album is great, but I have two minor issues with it. The first issue is that they seemed to be favouring heavy metal covers. I have no problem with metal music and the people here did a fantastic job, I just wish there was a little bit of variety. There are tracks that utilize different genre's at first, but soon move into the metal genre. Again I must reiterate that I like album, I just wish that there were a few more genre's present.

The other issue is far more minor compared to the first and that is I would have loved to have heard someone cover Vanilla Ice's infamous Ninja Rap. There is probably some legal reason why they didn't but I still think it would have been a nice easter egg.

Aside from those two issues, Shellshocked is a wonderful album and a breath of fresh. Between this and OCReMix's Bubble Bobble album, I believe this will be a great year for the artists over at OCReMix

If you are a longtime fan or new to the Ninja Turtles, you should give it a listen. You can find the album at shellshocked.ocremix.org.

This is Daimo Mac and I am lost in the music.