CJSS Band Description:

 CJSS came out of Cincinnati in 1984, and the name was no mystery once you knew the roll call: Chastain, Jinkens, Sharp, Skimmerhorn. That already tells you more than half the lazy band bios ever do. This was not some polished corporate metal unit built for hairspray and photo shoots. CJSS had bite. The kind of mid-80s American steel that sounded forged in rehearsal rooms, not boardrooms.

 Back when records like this still turned up in import bins for sane money, CJSS always felt like David T. Chastain's rougher, hungrier outlet. The Chastain albums could lean into precision and flash; CJSS usually hit harder in the ribs. Russell Jinkens gave the songs a street-level snarl, Mike Skimmerhorn thickened the low end, and Les Sharp kept the whole thing moving like a chain-driven engine that did not particularly care about your furniture.

 The timeline matters, because the old text mangled it. "World Gone Mad" was the debut, and it landed in 1986, not 1984. Later that same year came "Praise the Loud", with cuts like "Out of Control", the title track, and "Metal Forever" pushing the band deeper into that lean, fists-up heavy metal lane. And no, "Hell on Earth" does not belong to "Praise the Loud"; it belongs to "World Gone Mad".

 After that first 80s run, CJSS did not drift into some tidy museum-label afterlife. They vanished, resurfaced, and eventually returned with "Kings of the World" in 2000. That is a very metal story, frankly: a flash of heat, a long silence, then one more crack of the whip. I still prefer the earlier records, where the riffs feel hungrier and the edges have not been sanded down for anybody.

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