Album Reviews

[rocking ron]

Please let me know if you like this one, and when you've got interest in bootlegs from this band just let me know 'cause I have over 40 'boots' ( cd's & dvd's ) from this great band!!


"And the bands played on"!!!

[binnie]

Black Breath - Heavy Breathing

Purified metal. Nothing more. Nothing less. Black Breath sound like a cross between The Entombed's death 'n' roll and DRI's hardcore thrash hybrid. A blitzkrieg of dark, early thrash is welded to steel girder riffs forged in hell by some behemoth and propped up by bowel-churning bass lines. The essence here is Venom, Motorhead and The Cro-Mags. It is a LOT of fun, and it's primitive and primal - this is metal not for the naval-gazing techno-geeks, but those who like it raw and dirty. Sure, it sounds like it was recorded in a bunker. But that adds to the atmosphere. As does the fact that they're not taking themselves too seriously: songs about cartoon Satanism, the undead and oral sex with a witch take you back to a time when Mercyful Fate were cool. Most importantly, however, is the fact that Black Breath sound like a BAND: a tight, powerful, unit intent on smashing and wrecking. With songs as good as the stupidly heavy 'I Am Beyond' and 'Black Sin (Spit on the Cross)', anyone in their wake should be scared.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Mudhoney - Under a Billion Suns (2006)

This, in my opinion, is the secret gem in Mudhoney's back catalogue. When the shuffling beats, horns, sombre guitar and downbeat psychedelia of 'Where Is The Future' welcome you into this wearisome journey of lost love, broken ambition and stoner dystopia, you know we're a long way from the power-riffing, free-flowing heaviness of 'Superfuzz Big Muff', the album that broke Mudhoney to the grunge generation. Sure, the appeal isn't as immediate - but growth is the signature of a great band.

The songs here have menace without machismo; power without pomposity. The sound is spare, honest and crackling with dirtworn sincerity. The edges are blunt, but there is an edge - a dark, carefree edge - nonetheless. The songs are perfectly composed around near perfect conceits. 'I Saw The Light' is a perfect example:

'You went down like a nuclear bomb
I saw a flash and bang you were gone

I saw the Light
I saw the Light
It devoured the sky, burned out my eyes
I saw the light

We leveled cities for miles around
Making love on the smoldering ground

Like radiation, love lingers on
Long after the damage is done'

A simple metaphor. But dazzling in its power - when combined with the disenchanted blues which makes up the song's music, the effect is yearning, like someone drowning in air. 'It Is Us' is '50s rock with pschoville menace and claustrophobic impact. 'Endless Yesterday' is a wonderfully understated, heart-wrenching balladry; whilst, converesly, 'Lets Drop In' provides the kind of loose chaos that evokes the early Alice Cooper Band at its most fractured. This is quite a collection of songs: heavy, and emotive, but also dark. Thus the humour on 'Hard On For War' - in which an old patriot explains that his warmongering ways are just a cloak to leave the young girls free of young guys ('Its Our patriotic duty to make love tonight). Genius.

Mudhoney have been heavier. They've rocked harder. And they've made more influential albums. But they've rarely been more perfect.

[binnie]

From the vaults: The Scorpions - Love At First Sting (1984)

In terms of success, the Scorpions were probably at their pinnacle on this record, but for me it is the point at which they began to lose their mojo. The point at which their sound became Americanized (read: simplified and overplayed) and more 'hooky' - traits which proved disastrous for Saxon, but which ultimately worked wonder for The Scorps bank accounts. It's a good record for its time, no question. 'Big City Nights' and 'Bad Boys Running' both feature punchy riffs, plenty of guitar hystrionics and the sort of choruses big enough to smash themselves into your cranium. So far, so '80s. Hell, we even have the 'classic' 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' a song fist-chompingly awful in its cringe-worthy ode to blow jobs: sure, it's a lot of fun, but what separates bone-headed (geddit?) moments like this from truly great rock 'n' roll debauchery is subtlety and tease (its the difference, say, between Bon Scott and Brian Johnson).

In the over-production of the time, the dirty, rough 'n' ready, rock 'n' roll piledrivers which made up 'Virgin Killer', 'Blackout' and 'Lovedrive' were long gone. There are some glorious moments, however: 'I'M Leaving You' is infectious in its Cheap Trick melodies; 'Still Loving You' is a power ballad with feel rather than saccahirine sentimentality; and 'Coming Home' alternates from heartfelt to hedonistic on the spin of a dime. It's just a shame that these songs are packaged alongside blatent filler like 'The Same Thrill' (rampant but aimless) and 'As Soon As the Good Time Roll' (in which ideas are stretched thinner than spandex).

The Scorpions are - no arguements please - one the greatest hard rock bands. I don't think we realize how much we'll miss them when they're gone. But, just like Judas Priest, it's the albums they made on the way up the mountain that contain their best work, not the ones which sold the most or scorred them the most chicks. 'Love At First Sting' is very much of its time, rather than timeless. It takes you back to a time when rock 'n' roll was about fun, pure and unadulterated. But it also leaves you curiously unsatisfied - you want bite, rather than sting. You also want a shot at the girl on the cover.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Diamond Head - Death & Progress (1993)

Few bands have been so influential and sold few records. Few have also been given more second chances. We all know about Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine. But it might argued that, in reality, their fanboy obsession with Diamond Head has given the band a larger place on metal history than they really deserve. No-one could fail to be impressed with the 'White Album' and 'Borrowed Time', but DH sure burned out quickly after that. 'Death & Progress' is a case in point. It's not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with these songs. Indeed, for the most part they're well produced, well written, well played and, well, solid. It's just that they're not exciting. They plod and don't seem to contain any sense of yearning. You get the sense of a band experimenting - with sounds, with tones and textures, with the boundaries of what it was acceptable for rock to be in the 'grunge' era - but at heart, this is fundamentally conservative. We get a lot of Deep Purple. And not good Deep Purple. The fat, pony-tailed, chino wearing mid-80s Deep Purple. A lesson in choosing your muses carefully.

Its starts off well though. 'Starcrossed (Lovers Of the Night)' is easily the best thing here. Somewhere between Judas Priest and Led Zepp, its epic vocal and sleazy riff remind you why you loved this band in the first place. There are some interesting moments, too. 'Truckin' - depsite a rather purple set of lyrics - is expansive, open and poweful. But there are also moments of crippling mediocricy. 'I Can't Help Myself' is preening and pretentious blues rock that would have sat happily alongside Inxs or The Spin Doctors; and 'Calling Your Name (the Light)' and 'Run' try to combine Robert Plant's esotericness with Bon Jovi's hookiness. At that about sums it up. Like the band's previous outing - 'Canterbury', in which they had tried to marry prog and pop - 'Death & Progress' is the sound of a band which doesn't know what it wants to be.

In one respect though, you've got to respect DH for making it. In 1993 when the bands that idolized them were selling millions of records, it would have been easy for DH to have made a ballsy, but ultimately contrived, metal record. It would have been the obvious - and probably the sensible - thing to do. But, they opted to make the record that was inside them. It's just a shame that they weren't all pulling in the same direction; and that their second bite at the cherry came too late. For, in spite of everything, this is ultimately the sound of a band which sounded old. Plenty of death, but not a lot of progress.

[rocking ron]

The Scorpions are a great band, I've 'followed' them from the LP - 'BLACKOUT' (1980) and the album LOVE AT FIRST STING is also a classic one I think but BLACKOUT is my most

favourite 'Scorps' album!!


I also like their LIVE album "WORLD WIDE LIVE" and the studio album SAVAGE AMUSEMENTS (1988) , yeah I know... very very commercial, (too) soft etc.. but it takes you back

to those 'funny' eighties and put a smile on your face

And what they did very well was making ballads, a few of them became big hits everywhere on the planet and made them famouse!!

I don't like those songs at all and only listen to their 'heavy' stuff!!!

[binnie]

World Wide Live is a great, great album.

[rocking ron]

World Wide Live is a great, great album.

Yes it is for sure a very good album!!

From Diamond Head I only know the first album 'Lightning to the Nations' what was a typycal NWOBHM-album , at that time it sounded great but when you listen too it now it sounds a little 'poor' because of the ( thin ) production!!

[binnie]

There's no denying that the first two Diamond Head albums were pivotal releases for Heavy Metal. They've not aged well, though.

[binnie]

From the vaults: Pig Iron - The Paths of Glory (2007)

The name says it all. These tunes are raw, thickset, and HEAVY, taking shape amidst the rubble of jamming. Voracious vocals sit over big Sabbath and Kyuss riffs which rumble with the distant thunder of a forgery. Somewhere low down here Budgie and the Edgar Broughton band are burried, scrambling around to gather their component parts. Sure, its nothing you haven't heard before. Indeed, Pig Iron are from the Saxon school of sophistication: brawn beats up subtlety; power kicks the shit out of pinnache. This is cave man metal for homo erectus, a primitive war lord bellowing to the troops of the metal present to take forth the standard. Black Label Society would kill to sound this vibrant. It's glorious in its limitaions. Despite the ill-advised Skynrdisms of 'Lord Kill The Pain', the free form exploration of the limits of riffs which make up '....And the Bodies Fall' (a behemoth 'n' roll), 'Another Mule' and 'Son Of A Bitch' (a twisted blues assault) deserve your attention.

[binnie]

Soulfly - Omen

Where so much metal looks for power in dazzling complexity, Max Cavalera finds it in blunt force trauma. 'Omen' - album no. 7 from his post Sepultura band - eschews the world music and tribal dabblings of Soulfly's history in favour of some straight ahead, uncluttered and uncomplicated free flowing riffed out fury. Opener 'Bloodbath & Beyond' sums it up: punk rock fury smashing into Maiden-esque melodies as Max's gutteral yelps soar over the top.

It's a patchy affair, mind. Moments of pure brilliance are tempered with those of flabby mediocrity unworthy of the name Cavalera. The school boy gore of 'Jeffrey Dahmer' and 'Off With Their Heads' feel rushed and undercooked. Despite its unimaginative title and subject matter (Nostradamus), however, 'Mega Doom' is a brutal composition of riffage and time changes; and what 'Lethal Injection' lacks in lyrical subtelty it makes up for in the power of its composition. Cavalera here re-discovers the furious rage of his youth. 'Great Depression' could have been on Sepultura's 'Beneath The Remains', whilst 'Rise of The Fallen' (featuring Dillinger Escape Plan's Greg Puciato ripping up the vocals) possesses and immense groove and a huge, Killing Joke-esque chorus. Like Sepultura or Soulfly at their best, 'Omen' captures the essence of Discharge smashing into Motorhead - 'Vulture Culture' and 'Kingdom' are cases in point.

Is it a classic? Probably not. Is it Max's best work? Not by a long, long way. But it reminds us of what Max Cavalera has given to metal over the past 25 years. Has anyone done more to open it up? Whether it be knocking the Anglo-American bias off kilter, injecting a furious sense of politics and protest into the fold, the utilization of unconventional rhythms, or the smashing of hardcore into metal, Cavalera has always been a delight to listen to in what ever form he chooses to 'fuck shit up'.

[binnie]

Saxon - Call To Arms.

There's a case to be made that the albums which NWOBHM bands are making 30 years after their heyday are - if not the most important - then certainly most consistent of their careers. Saxon make that case as strongly here as they have done on 'Lionheart' and 'Into The Labyrinth'. They do it, however, with a different approach. Gone are the hystrionics, the modern metal twists and the 'heavier than everything' approach to songwriting. In their place is a more hard rock, anthemic and hook orientated style of song craft and it works in their favour. This album recalls a time when metal was fun. Slippery, snakebite riffs, big chrouses, defiant lyrics and screeching solos all add up to make a heady brew of anthems which just keep on coming: 'Surviving Against the Odds', 'Chasing the Bullet'. 'Ballad of a Working Man'......it's relentless. The more epic touches like 'Mist of Avalon' (about King Arthur) recal '747 (Strangers In the Night)', and act as proof that Saxon have a hookier, romantic and even (dare we say it) whimsical side. 'When Doomsday Comes', by way of contrast, is a near perfect piece of polished power metal. Biff's vocals have developed a rasp with age, which only adds to their charm, and the whole record has a vintage feel without ever slipping into sentimental. Sure, 'Afterburner' is shit, but it wouldn't be a Saxon record without a dud.......


BANG THY HEAD!

[rocking ron]

Call to Arms is a good Saxon album like
I've said before !!

But for me personally the 3 best Saxon albums are still : STRONG ARM OF THE LAW = DENIM & LEATHER = POWER & THE GLORY

and ofcourse Crusader was a nice album what means that they've had their highlights from beginning till half time 80's !!!

But I hope they will go on 4 many years and "never surrender"

[binnie]

You rate 'Power & Glory' over 'Wheels of Steel'?

[rocking ron]

Wheels of Steel is also a killer album and I almost forgot how many good songs it contains ( and they still play live ) and having less 'fillers' then P & the G !!

But the song Power & the Glory is still my all-time favourite Saxon one and I like the production/sound more on this album and have seen them live during that tour so maybe this is the reason that P & the G has more impact for me personally but okay, I give both a 9 on a scale from 10