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Oliver Magnum were founded in october 1983 by the rhythm section Dan Kurtz and Curt Daughterty. Soon after that Monte Humphrey joined the band, which at the time started to play their first live gigs as an instrumental trio. In 1984 vocalist Mark Mueller left his old band to join Oliver Magnum.

Rumors say that the band won a "Battle of the Bands" contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma which enabled the band to enter a studio and record their first demo tape. This demo tape entitled 01986 included the 4 songs "Trapped", "Silent Scream", "Old World Nites" and "Fahrenheit 451", which got fantastic critics in all fanzines/magazines. According to the band, "1986" did sell over 2000 times within 2 years, "Old World Nites" later appeared on Metal Massacre IX. About a year later, Oliver Magnum made another recording session and recorded a song called "Metal Cruelty" which was meant to be released on a sampler that unfortunately has never been released.

The first line-up change took place in late 1988 and brought new singer James Randel into the band. At this time Mark Mueller didn't want to play heavy metal anymore. This line-up recorded the self-titled debut album, which actually was supposed to be entitled Metal Cruelty. Metal Cruelty was used by the band as a promo tape to raise interest for a record deal. The band signed a record deal with New Renaissance records which released Oliver Magnum in 1989 and licensed the album to SPV Steamhammer in Europe. The album contains the 4 songs of the demo tape and 4 additional songs. The album track "Sister Cybele" was also released on a SPV sampler called The Future of Metal Is Now. Oliver Magnum also managed to finance a self produced video clip of their song "Trapped". Oliver Magnum didn't achieve much in the way of sales, and they were dropped from their record company.




I thought Power Metal best describes these guys so I put them in here, actually they are a mix of power, speed and thrash metal. They released only one album which was critically acclaimed but they didn't have enough sales and money to continue. Great album. The combination of the thrash riffs and sometimes thrash vocals with the power riffs and solos and the sometimes groovy atmoshpere in their songs deserves a listening. "Old World Nites" is their best song propably.