30 heavy metal songs to listen to before the planet explodes, part 2
At the rate I’m going with this, we’ll get to the 30th song in this oh so important list by about 2009. However, I know you’ve all been champing at the bit for the second installment in what may well prove to be one of the most important blog series ever written. Oh, you don’t like heavy metal? Oops.
For those of you still with us, this time we’re travelling back to the ancient times (1983) for one of the forgotten (or just plain ignored) sorta-masters of the genre:
Cloven Hoof: “Laying Down the Law”
(from their self-titled 1984 debut)
Cloven Hoof were one of the more notable bands to emerge after the first romantic blush of infatuation with genuine homegrown talent that was the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, or nwobhm for short. The first era of the nwobhm had pretty much fizzled out by early 1982, when the British music press decided that, since they’d given fame to their own country’s heroes, they could damn well take it away, too. By this point, those bands who had risen to prominence in the heady years of 1979 and 1980, had either self-destructed, completely lost their artistic sense of direction, or clawed their way to international superstardom.
But while the British press had pretty much declared the New Wave dead and buried, and decided that America and its well-funded rockers were the ones to watch, the nwobhm was kept alive by its fanbase, and by a whole new wave of musicians who kept the flame of British metal alive for all eternity … or until about 1985, whichever came first.
It’s important to bear in mind that the evolution of this neglected bastard child of rock was accelerating at a very rapid pace, and the colour and texture of the genre was vastly, vastly different in 1983 than it was in 1980, and here’s why. In 1980, bands like Iron Maiden and Tygers Of Pan Tang had a simple agenda: take the hard rock that they had grown up on — British hard rock, mostly — and re-energize it with a good dose of adrenaline. They succeeded admirably at this, and their infectious new sound galvanized people all over the world, who were themselves inspired to dabble in this adrenalized heavy rock.
By 1983, heavy metal had evolved into an international form, with tons of bands in, for example, Sweden, Germany and North America lending their own sensibilities to what had pretty much been entirely a British working-class musical genre just a couple years before. This new heavy metal standard, although heavily inspired by the nwobhm, was very different: it was faster, it was more aggressive, it was more technical, and it obviously was less idiosyncratically English. 1983 was a watershed year, in which, among others, Dio, Savatage, and Metallica all released their first albums.
And what of other British bands emerging at this time, themselves inspired as much by Iron Maiden and Diamond Head as by Rainbow and Judas Priest? The musical climate was as different for them as it was for bands in North America and Germany, and they too were playing something what was rather different than the first nwobhm bands were playing. In fact, it’s distinct enough, and the whole musical climate was distinct enough from the 1979-80 scene that it’s sometimes called the 2nd New Wave of British Heavy Metal. It’s a silly name, no doubt, but it’s apt enough, because this second wave of bands were very different indeed from that first, legendary wave. And most importantly, they were definitely thinking internationally in their asthetic, something that would save many from instant extinction (there was nothing like a tour of metal-mad Germany to pay the bills).
One of the bands from this 2nd Wave of British Heavy Metal is Midlanders Cloven Hoof, who’d been plugging away for a number of years before they nabbed a chance to record their first LP, with the ubiquitous Geordies Neat Records in 1984. With their occult name, and pop-Satanic lyrics, not to mention their elaborate stage attire, it’s kind of hard to think of these guys seriously, and even after an objective listen to their album, it’s hardly an instant classic; it would never make a top albums list of mine, or most other metal fans. However, these trappings aside, there’s a bit of a gem hidden among the grand occult gestures, and it’s a good ‘un.
Take the anthemic strutting of Judas Priest. Add a long and varied guitar solo ripped right from the best German power metal. Coat liberally with the vocals of a singer who somehow manages to pull off hoarse and gruff with melodic and spirited. Complement with a lyric that straddles the line between typical tough-guy heavy metal and just plain ridiculousness. And you get Cloven Hoof’s great classic contribution to metal, “Laying Down the Law”.
“Laying Down the Law” is classic, straight-on, no-farting-around anthemic heavy metal in the grand Priest tradition: catchy, instantly memorable, with the delicacy of a pneumatic drill and the emotional sensitivity of a debt collection agent. It locks into third gear right from the start and barrels forward with the measured ease of someone who’s strutting his stuff and in no particular hurry to get where he’s going (which is probably the pub, or perhaps prison, anyway). It doesn’t concern itself too much with throwing in lots of variation or experimentation, and it doesn’t need to: the band knows they’re on to a good thing and they’re going to work it.
A few minutes in it’s guitar fiddling time, and while this one doesn’t win any awards for awe-inspiring technicality or astonishing blasts of afterburner-fueled speed, what makes it cool is that it’s long enough that it gets the whole band in on the act, with these really cool riffs that bounce off the bass and drums in pure classic let’s-be-a-team headbanging. The solo is less about getting thirty seconds to wow the audience and more about taking a minute to go on a kind of journey, working its way down and around and up and through a whole structured segment of the song, weaving in and out of some interesting rhythmic changes that the drums undergo into a kind of semi-melodic mini-epic, but never ever disrupting that easy mid-paced strut that makes this piece of leather-bound metal so classically Priest-derived anthemic.
Another solo starts in at the end after a number of refrains of the “sing-along, mates!” chorus-line, the repeating chant of “Laying down, I’m laying down the law!”, just as the fade-out kicks in, as if to suggest that, man, if they had the time, they could have kept this up for another ten or fifteen minutes at their mid-paced swagger and still kept the audience chanting along.
But what’s it all about? Actually, it’s somewhat of a little-used bit of theme this one is based on: Prohibition-era Chicago, where the singer casts himself in the role of a policeman patrolling the streets, itching for the chance to rain punitive justice down on hoodlums, gangsters, and other scum…
You say I’m dreaming to believe in a better way
For this rat trap we call home
I’m the enforcer making sure crime don’t pay
and I’m not alone…
Anything written from the perspective of law enforcement is pretty unusual in metal. Most bands tend to cast themselves in the role of the outsider or the hunted, the victim of the law, either warranted or otherwise. But this is kind of a good example of why Cloven Hoof are subtly unique, and why this song in particular manages to stick its head above all sorts of other mid-paced anthems from the 80s — it’s just got something subtly unique about it.
But let’s not get above ourselves here: the reason this song makes the list is that it’s so damned catchy, so classically and addictively tough and swaggery, and just so damned fun. Cloven Hoof had their dreams of elaborate stage shows and nine-minute epics about battles between good and evil, but here in “Laying Down the Law” they forgot all of that and just got down to the business of blasting out one classic piece of tough, strutting heavy metal that never fails to coerce the listenger to chant along, “’cause I’m laying down, I’m laying down the law….”
Technorati tags: heayv metal, nwobhm, Cloven Hoof.
I am not concerned about others but it is good that you mention Judas Priest. Simply because I really love this metal band.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:09 pm