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The first few years of the 1980s were massively dramatic for the development of heavy metal as a distinctive genre, as it underwent a startling metamorphosis from a murky indistinct corner of the heavy rock scene into a distinct entity with its own sets of rules, styles, and stereotypes.

Stadium rock ruled the heavy world in the late 70s. Fans of the harder side of things freely moved within a songlist that had nasty rockers like AC/DC and Judas Priest, and larger-than-life mega-rock gods like Queen and The Scorpions. Heavy metal, as such, was really just another term (allegedly American) for what the British liked to call heavy rock. In other words, here was music that was simply a heavier, nastier version of what lots and lots of bands were doing at a variety of levels of nastiness. Blue Oyster Cult, for example (I can’t be bothered to type in the stupid umlauts), often gets lumped in with the heavy metal genre, but I challenge you to find virtually anything in their mid-70s catalague which is remotely heavy in any kind of more modern sense.

Denim-clad scruffs yearning for the hard stuff in the latter half of the 70s had to be content with a much broader definition of the term heavy metal, and if you look at heavy metal listening charts even through to 1980, you tend to find lots of appearances put in by groups rarely included with the genre today, such as Heart, or Rush. Even AC/DC, with their high-voltage trappings, are probably more accurately termed hard rock, though their popularity was so massive at the time, and their aesthetic so perfectly suited to metalheads, that it’s no surprise they were popular with the metal crowd.

Yet by 1982, and even more so in 1983, the whole hard rock world had undergone a startling transformation, and the heavy metal we know today had been born and reached a certain maturity. What had happened in the intervening couple of years to make the genre coalesce so rapidly?

It was, of course, the advent of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and the rapid dissemination of its updated heavy rock notions throughout the world. The link between late 70s heavy rock and mid-80s heavy metal is almost entirely on the shoulders of the NWOBHM, which partly explains how the term continues to evoke bleary-eyed romanticism in metalheads to this day.

Part of this is a generational thing, as successive waves of young hopefuls hit their late teens, inspired by the past but pushing things along to a new level — the groups debuting their first releases in one year all two years younger than the last wave, each directly inspired by the previous wave, like a tidal movement of successive crests breaking against the musical shores of the rock world. But it’s not just age — Ronnie James Dio would debut the first album of his band Dio in 1983, and it represented just that generational advancement of the genre over his two albums with Black Sabbath (themselves a major development over the Ozzy era Sabbath releases). Yet people were evidently catching musical waves which would break in rapid succession. Ultimately, the rapidity of the change would result in metal’s undoing, as the only path to follow eventually became ever more selective and extreme, driving metal back into the underground and into the hands of ever more selective tastes.

Anyway, 1983 was a real watershed year, with many seminal releases representing the forefront of true heavy metal. The day really belonged to the Americans this year, who had finally come up to speed with the Britons, and were bursting at the seams with their own hybridized sound.

Savatage—”I Believe”
from the album Sirens (1983)

Enter one of the big names of the heavy metal world: Savatage. A band soon to build a checkered, storied, and ultimately metamorphosic story, in 1983 Savatage were one of many fresh-faced kids in America bowled over by the NWOBHM, and by the classic 70s monoliths they’d grown up on, and ready to leave their own imprint on the genre.

And leave it they did. The group that grew into Savatage spent their formative years in Northern Florida in the late 70s dabbling in heavy metal nascently, eventually coalescing in 1981 and eventually ending up in a local studio in 1982 to cut a number of tracks (apparently as quickly and as cheaply as possible on their shoestring budget), the first fruits of which would be their debut album Sirens released in 1983 on the small independent label PAR records (the enduring popularity of this and the second album would result in a much more well-distributed reissue on the bigger Combat Records later in 1985).

It takes all of two seconds of listening to Sirens to realize that emphatically Savatage represent the absolute ideal of heavy metal as a genre circa 1983, and the album stands at the quintessential forefront of the rapidly evolving sound, easily galloping alongside the Dio debut and the Metallica debut as an instant and genre-defining classic.

Boisterous, energetic, nasty, crunchy, distinctive, caterwauling and electrifying, Savatage perfected the heavy metal sound with a hugely unique and impressive frontman, the guitar wizardry of a truly precocious 6-string hero, and a well-honed writing style perfectly suited to create the most satisfaction for the audience’s expectations with the minimum fuss.

Sitting at the flagship spot on this album, and representing for me the highest level the band would ever attain, is the mini-epic that is the enigmatically titled “I Believe”.

Underneath this innocuous little title (a strange one for a heavy metal song, something seemingly better suited to pop or folk rock) lies a five minute science fiction epic about a group of space travelers forced to flee from an Earth rendered uninhabitable by nuclear and environmental devastation, embarking on a millennium-long journey to find a new planet that will be home to the vestiges of the human race. During this uncertain journey, the narrator conjectures about the existence of other life in the cosmos, and whether they will ever meet it –

Where do we go? What’ll we find? Is there life … other than mine?

After a thousand years of wandering space for a new home, the colonists alight on a mysterious world, where they find a black box set in a large green plain. A metallic, alien voice comes from the box (reproduced to cool effect in the song itself):

Welcome to Earth, May we ask who you are? Our race is called Man. The planet is done, done, done, done, done, DONE!

As the strange metallic voice repeats the word “done” with more and more unhinged frenzy, the song itself shifts into overdrive, as the guitar work of Criss Oliva explodes into a kind of tornado of notes over a double-time beat. The next verses are abstract and enigmatic, as if the horrific realization that the colonists’ centuries-long search has brought them back to the very place they fled from in the first place has driven them mad. Each brief little irrational verse is cut off by yet another frenzied guitar solo as the little epic disintegrates into a tempest of insanity, before it suddenly and painfully stops dead, robbing us of a drawn-out and dramatic finale.

I often hold “I Believe” up as a quintessential example of a perfect heavy metal song possessing all the ingredients needed to make the best potion the genre can offer. It’s got a semi-epic tale to tell brimming with excitement, wonder, and eventually madness, it tells that tale in a musical structure that grows and evolves to match the evolution of the story, and it undergoes a metamorphosis of pace and intensity midway in. It also does what all good heavy metal should do: it spotlights the individual talents of each band member, at the same time that no one ego ever sabotages the unified teamwork nature of the piece. Heavy metal should always be about a group of musicians working together in perfect sync and harmony without losing their individuality, and “I Believe” represents that balance to a fault.

Criss Oliva is justly famous for his spastic and unique guitar flamboyance, but I think the band’s greatest weapon lies in his brother Jon’s vocals, which are massively dramatic and wonderfully adaptable to so many moods. Like with the legendary Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford, Jon can alter his voice at whim from strident and high to booming and low to rasping to pure to anything in between, and he doesn’t shy away from swinging wildly in any direction that the music demands. And the man knows dementia. I have never heard someone shriek or cackle as effectively (and without inducing irritation) as Jon Oliva.

Savatage would survive through thick and thin in the ensuing years, reestablishing their artistic integrity after a disastrous and unwanted push into commercial waters, and ultimately earn a devoted fanbase by the late 80s when they developed into a more progressive metal outfit, churning out elaborate (and expensive) rock operas and concept albums. Tragically, genuis guitarist Criss Oliva would be killed by a drunk driver in the 90s, but brother Jon kept the band alive, and it exists in one form or another to this day. Astonishingly, Savatage has survived most of these years as one of the few bands to stay with a major record label, Atlantic.

1983 was a watershed year for heavy metal, and all the exuberance and power that it brought to the genre is never more perfectly and fully represented than in “I Believe”, truly one of the classic tracks of this silly, scruffy-haired bastard child genre of rock.

Technorati tags: heavy metal, Savatage.

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.

Except for a brief period of time in the mid-80s which was, let’s be honest, horrifically embarrassing anyway, heavy metal is by definition a cult genre. The vast majority of bands write a very specific kind of music for a specific group of scruffs, and the adoration of the masses is pretty far from their minds (except, again, during the Embarrassment Era, when pop metal was a big thing and many hours spent primping in front of the mirror — dark days).

So, in that way people have of always obsessing over organizing anything and everything into lists — top ten favorite 70s movies, top twenty favorite episodes of ST:TNG, top eleven and a half favorite spaces at Trader Joe’s — I’ve been thinking lately of a kind of thirty essential list of heavy metal songs that anyone really ought to hear before the world shatters into a trillion pieces and all life on the planet is thrown into the void to suffocate and die.

I should warn you all that it is probably the single most subjective list you could ever hope to see, because it simply has no criterion at all upon which it’s based. It’s just my mind pondering thirty songs from the genre that, gee, it would be a good idea to listen to before armageddon. It does not represent thirty of the most popular metal songs, or the most famous, or the most highly-regarded, or the most lucrative, or even thirty of the most obscure songs (though many are indeed pretty obscure to casual fans), or thirty from a particular era, or style, or … well you get the picture, which is that there is no picture. Casual listing of the undisciplined mind.

And each post I will choose one of these thirty Songs to Hear Before The Planet Explodes and talk about it, and why it rocks out with its cock out, and why its particular fiddly guitar solo is better than other fiddly guitar solos, and why the screaming and raving of the singer is better than the screaming and raving of another singer, etc etc etc.

Oh, and one more thing — there’s no order here. It doesn’t start with the least most important Song to Listen To Before The Planet Explodes, and end with the most important Song to Listen To Before The Planet Explodes, or anything like that. Favoritism wounds tender feelings, so if any song makes it in to the List of Heavy Metal Song To Listen To Before The Planet Explodes, it’s just as important as all the other 29 songs To Listen To Before The Planet Explodes. For all metal that is true and not poseur metal (”True Metal forever! All poseurs must die! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” … erm, ahem) is our children and we cherish each and every one.

Right, then, with that thoroughly unprofessional rambling preamble out of the way, on to number 30 (or number 1, depending on your point of view):

Cutty Sark “Heroes”
(from the 1985 album of the same name)

Cutty Sark (”we’re named after the boat, dude, not the whisky!”) made kind of a strong splash in their home country between their first four-song EP in 1983, and their second and final album in 1985, although I rather think they were virtually unknown beyond their borders at the time, and never broke into the North American market. The story stereotypically ended with a nasty spat with their record label, and then no record deal at all when the only offers came with the usual demands of primping, prancing, and popping up their image. Rather than go glam, they went bust, and that was that. The cool thing is that they were friends at the time, and I believe remain in touch to this day, so at least it’s not a situation of big egos blowing a band apart.

But they did leave two albums and an EP behind, which to the adventurously curious turn out to be this wonderful mixture of great uniqueness and instantly recognizable familiarity all at the same time — and, remarkably, actually in print from German reissue label High Vaultage, albeit not in the most ready supply. You could say that their music typifies a high-quality example of true classic early 1980s heavy metal, but with enough individuality and deft manipulation of the genre’s staples to really set them apart from the crowd.

“Heroes”, eponymous track of their second and final album, ideally represents everything that was strong about the band, which aside from the usual requisites (strong songwriting, tight drumming…) was the unique vocals of Conny Schmitt, and the blazing guitar firepower of Uwe Cossmann.

Any attempt to describe Conny’s singing style is only going to make him sound bizarre, so suffice to say that after perhaps an initial breaking-in period the listener starts to get quite comfortable with his sound, and then to realize that his expressiveness is an integral part of what drives these songs beyond mere copycat conformity.

Uwe, conversely, is easy as pie to describe. You know how Viv Campbell is a huge part of why those first couple of DIO albums rock out so hard? It’s the same kind of situation here — Uwe is just all over this song, which starts with a really a swaggering guitar intro before leading into the vocals, proceeds to shatter hyperactivity records with a hugely enthusiastic and grinding main solo, and then … well, then just refuses to stop, as Conny comes back in for the final couple of verses, and Uwe just keeps plugging away in the background, keeping things intensifying at a steady rate until they literally snap at the end. If you’re a big fan of flashy guitar (especially which puts the quality and variety of sound above pure fiddly neoclassical technicality) then you are immediately trawling ebay for a copy of this, because you know that any band that writes songs in this style is going to have guitar heroics all over it. But it’s not just heroics, because Uwe isn’t playing just so you have to listen to him twiddle — the lead guitar is an essential and almost nucleic part of the song structures on Heroes (and indeed on all their songs), an organic kind of lead guitar which doesn’t sit quietly in the background strumming its chords until its 30 seconds of swaggering allow it stand up and massage its ego, but rather a guitar whose purpose is there to tell the story of the song just as integrally as Conny’s vocals are.

And the story, for the geek inclined, is a really cool one. What I can make out of it is that “Heroes” tells of a man who tries to become a hero and make a positive change in the world around him, and through his own inadequacy and even blind arrogance becomes a failure overcome by the world’s ills. The listener is cast as a spectator, watching this would-be hero amaze everyone with his fearlessness and his selfessness, then watching him defeated and finally broken when he finds his will unable to endure a world that refuses to be healed.

Actually, the lyrics are fairly abstract — this is my own interpretation of what amounts to something very subjective.

The hero in the song is referred to as “a Batman”, but whether or not the song is literally about Batman or if the name is simply a kind of euphemism for all would-be superheroes who try to fix society’s ills remains unclear.

Say, I just thought of something as I was writing this. You know what this song kind of reminds me of? Watchmen. It has that same sense of tragedy that comes from witnessing people who decide naively to confront evil, only to be consumed by it.

“Heroes” is pretty damned near a perfect classic heavy metal song, both exuberant and optimistic and turgid and cynical. Have a listen before the planet explodes. And just try to get through it without throwing a little air guitar. I dare you.

Technorati tags: Cutty Sark, heavy metal

If you want blood (and flashbombs and dry ice and confetti) you’ve got it
—The New Wave of British Heavy Metal: first in an occasional series by Deaf Barton

This article headline, written by Geoff “Deaf” Barton and appearing in the May 19, 1979 issue of Sounds magazine in Britain, innocuously and unsuspectingly kicked off a musical revolution, or to put it more accurately, dug up a proliferating underground, slapped a badge on all its members, and thrust it into the, erm, overground.

Barton credits the invention of the rather less-than-elegant name “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” to his then-editor at Sounds, Al Lewis, who apparently had a predilection for bestowing grand, sweeping statements on the articles in the rag. Elegant or no, the name instantly caught on — it truly was a kind of membership badge for a whole generation of young heavy rock bands throughout the Isles who, until they saw those series of articles in 1979, had no idea they were part of something bigger than themselves.

But they were. There were hundreds of bands, and after that first little article in May (in which Barton reviewed a concert in Camden with Samson, Iron Maiden, and Angelwitch), the floodgates began to open. Article after article would appear, many by Barton, others by people like Malcolm Dome, covering this new “musical movement”. It was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy: they called it a new wave, and a new wave it became.

If the effect of this one article seems too serendipitous to be true, it’s because it is. While the benefits of the new name for the movement probably came as a surprise to all involved, a certain dedicated individual had been working tirelessly behind the scenes for years to get just the kind of press coverage for his beloved genre as this article afforded. He had been courting Geoff Barton for ages, calling him weekly over the phone to pressure him to give heavy metal and his venue much-needed exposure in Sounds, throughout a period when heavy music was almost completely absent from the mainstream papers. It was he who had organized and emceed the triple-bill concert in Camden, the very concert whose review would mark the official beginning of the nwobhm in May 1979. His name was Neal Kay, and he treated the “cause of heavy metal” with the single-minded determination of a holy missionary in a land of cannibal heathens.

Kay had long since created a bastion for hard rock as DJ of the Heavy Metal Soundhouse, a few-nights-a-week disco at the Bandwagon pub in Kingsbury in northwest London. Frequented by dedicated “scruffy longhairs”, with their denims and their leathers and their propensity for headbanging, Kay had bands like Motörhead, Nugent, Rush, and Judas Priest on heavy rotation, played for people who weren’t interested in whether or not heavy metal was fashionable. But Kay was a tireless promoter, and he had already coerced Barton into an article about the Soundhouse way back in 1978, long before anything having to do with new young bands in a new, young movement. Kay organized the show in May 1979 with Angel Witch, Maiden, and Samson at the Music Machine in Camden for just this reason — to spread exposure beyond the limited suburban confines of Kingsbury and, hopefully, into the national consciousness.

Neal Kay was a funny sort of person. He was so serious, so dedicated to this heavy rock lark, that he often came across as pedantic, even ridiculous. In 1980, when Janet Street-Porter directed an installment of the music programme 20th Century Box about the nwobhm movement, Kay and his Heavy Metal Soundhouse would figure prominently. Appearing like a cross between an idiot and a cultish guru, Kay was nevertheless nothing if not sincere in his love for heavy rock. But the way the show portrayed him made it hard to take him seriously. Standing in front of his LP collection, he gave a hard line stance about how the term “heavy metal” was an outmoded American term, and he preferred the term heavy rock, or just rock. All well and good. But it might have been easier to take his words seriously if he hadn’t been wearing a t-shirt with the words “HEAVY METAL SOUNDHOUSE” boldly written across his chest…

Geoff Barton is adamant that, if there can be said to be anyone who kickstarted the nwobhm movement, it was Neal Kay. After all, it was Kay who had engineered the whole backstory which would culminate in that article in the May 19, 1979 issue of Sounds that would galvanize the movement. And his Heavy Metal Soundhouse would continue to be the unofficial capital of heavy metal in the UK throughout nwobhm’s brief little life. When Steve Harris was looking for an opportunity to gain exposure for his East End rock band Iron Maiden, he fished their demo tape to none other than Neal Kay, who grudgingly agreed to play a track or two. By the end of 1979, the tracks from that demo tape would be in the top fifty most-requested songs for the entire year, published in bold ink in Sounds for all to see. Harris freely admits that the support of Kay and his Soundhouse was one of the critical steps which would lead them to their ultimate success. And Kay would have a major role to play in assisting other nwobhm bands, such as Praying Mantis and Def Leppard, find public exposure and record deals.

By late 1979 and into 1980, regular articles on the nwobhm were appearing in all the major weeklies, and dozens upon dozens of formerly obscure rock bands were finding themselves thrust into the spotlight through their unwitting participation in this grassroots movement which was fast moving to replace the void left by the carcass of punk rock.

It was only natural that in the wake of this frenetic interest, the record labels would come calling, sniffing for the next big thing, or at least the big bucks from the next quick come-and-go fad. Bands like Iron Maiden, Tygers of Pan Tang, Girlschool, and others landed major record deals and debuted their first long-players deep into the Top 40 charts in 1980 (Girlschool hit 28 with their debut “Demolition”).

But let’s back up for a moment, and shift all those major label releases aside. Because, the essence of what made the nwobhm unique has nothing to do with EMI, or RCA, or whatever. It has a lot more to do with deciding not to wait for the labels to come calling, and do your thing on your own and just get it out there, and the hell with the mainstream. And, despite the protests of the bands themselves (who want nuffink to do wiv it), this is where punk rock and nwobhm really join forces.

If you glance at a list of any amount of nwobhm releases in 1979 and 1980, two major points will become obvious: firstly, that many of these releases were self-financed records produced on homegrown labels; and, secondly, that most of them are singles.

Consciously or unconsciously, the nwobhm bands of the time, realizing that nobody was going to come knocking and just do things for them, took their cue from the revolutionary industriousness of punk rock — typified by Johnny Rotten’s statement to “fuck off and form a band” — and scrounged together a few quid to record a track or three in one of the little studios peppered throughout the country and knock out some vinyl on their own little invented label. Armed with a thousand copies of their new 7- or 9-inch disc, they would cart them around and sell them after their shows, ship them off to reviewers at the papers, or wrangle them into the shops. Romantically, they took their destinies into their own hands, went all entrepreneurial, and produced.

Diamond Head, who for a while were simply assumed to be the next big thing, released their full-length LP “Untitled” (AKA “Lightnin’ To The Nations”, AKA the “White Album”) to major acclaim (and an ultimate place as one of the movement’s seminal releases). Okay, so they forgot to put their name on the sleeve, which was actually totally white — on later copies they simply pencilled in the tracklisting.

Def Leppard released their own EP “Getcha Rocks Off”, on their Bludgeon Riffola Label early in 1979, another seminal release, and long before they scored any kind of record deal.

Tons of other bands either produced and released their own singles and EPs on their own pence, or produced them at their own expense and released them through tiny little labels.

Very, very few of them would ever make it to the full album stage, either self-financed or on a major record label. To a large degree, the archaeology of the nwobhm rests largely in the world of the single. The nwobhm is one of those movements where many of the finest bands contributed just a lone, solitary — yet explosive and unforgettable — track to the catalogue.

This entrepreneurial, independent spirit is one of the most endearing foundation stones of the nwobhm. Here, for a change, it was more about the music than cashing in. These were not half-assed musicians who happened to look good, packaged together by managers and record execs and farmed to gullible kids to make a killing, their music heavily doctored and manipulated by armies of engineers into a kind of aural cotton candy. This was all about honing your craft in the pubs, getting cheered when things worked and booed when things didn’t, and then getting four hours in the studio to cut five tracks and ripping it loose essentially live, and then farming them out to a crowd of punters who knew the genre and knew what they liked (and what they hated).

Of course, before long a number of small labels had gotten wind of the heavy metal fad and started signing bands in the hope of cashing in. One of the most important of these was Newcastle’s Neat Records (who had their own recording facilities). Drawing on the immense local Northeast scene, Neat began releasing a spate of singles and then albums that would rival the output of any other company, putting their stamp on Fist, Raven, Warfare, and Venom, just for starters. In fact, the output from the Geordies was so prolific that the press soon began rather absurdly referring to a nenwobhm, a “North East New Wave Of British Heavy Metal”.

So, throughout the UK, at the turn of the Eighties, an entire world of heavy rock bands found exposure, and the tide of interest turning their way. Circumstances would be such that their brand of rock, and the independent, underground nature of the way they cultivated their music, would garner a name, and be dubbed a movement.

But did they really share a unified musical vision and style? Were they all united together by the same aesthetic, the same taste? Or were they lumped together by circumstance and geographical proximity, given a tag by the press which they had not invented, not been a part of, and which meant nothing to them? Were these hundreds of bands scattered throughout the UK all playing the same types of music?

Many people expect the term “nwobhm” to refer to a musical style, like “thrash music” or “lo-fi”. They pick up bands linked to the movement expecting everyone to sound like Iron Maiden or Diamond Head. Unfortunately, perhaps, the truth is that there is no musical genre called “nwobhm”. Instead, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal is really a cultural term. They were united by time and by a similarity of instrument, but not necessarily by taste or sound, not with the specificity that some would like.

Loosely, of course, they sounded similar. They were mostly drawing inspiration from the same groups of sources, the same classic bands of the previous generations. And they were largely playing with the same setups of instruments (of course, so were the punks, so that really doesn’t count for much). But as anyone with even the remotest understanding of rock music can attest, you can play with an electric guitar or two and call yourself a hard rock band and sound like anything. Two “rock” bands can follow each other on the same stage and play the same rigs and sound nothing alike. The first can be aggressive and speedy and rough, the second sedate, sentimental, and smooth. Both are still rock, or even heavy rock, but in terms of taste they’re worlds apart.

The bands affiliated with the nwobhm ran the gamut of rock music, from the kind of heavy metal that would make Metallica fans proud to the kind of hard rock music which has “love” and “baby” as every third word. For every Blitzkrieg you have a Black Rose.

In part, I think we’re spoiled in 2006 by what the term “heavy metal” came to represent after the nwobhm. Bands like Metallica and Megadeth, and eventually all the death and black metal and all that crap were taking the aggressiveness factor and notching it up level after level, to the point where now we have things like brutal technical speed death, which is so fast and so aggressive that it makes the heavy metal bands of 1980 — even the famously speedy ones — look like the tortoise in the tortoise and the hare race. Positively plodding. Although nwobhm bands were widely-regarded as infusing the old heavy metal standard with the exuberance and pace of punk rock, to our much more jaded ears many of them are naively tame by modern standards. “Heavy metal” in 1979 was a much looser and simpler term than it came to be later, ironically enough, thanks in large part to the influence of the nwobhm itself.

But there’s something else about this musical style issue that must be noted. Whereas we might now think of many of these nwobhm bands as incompatible musically, at the time the general fanbase seemed to accept them together much more readily, despite the gulf in taste. Where the truth of the nwobhm as a bona fide movement becomes most obvious is in the countless concerts and gigs throughout the nation in 1979 and 1980, gigs where mega-headbangers Iron Maiden easily shared the stage with crooning hard rockers Praying Mantis, where boogie rockers Vardis would be attended by the same scruffy longhairs who had just seen quasi-Satanic doomers Angelwitch or Witchfinder General. Or you can take a look at any of Neal Kay’s weekly heavy metal charts from late 1979 or 1980 which appeared in Sounds (tallying up the audience requests of the week at the Bandwagon) to see the breadth of what these kids considered “heavy metal”. Young upstarts like Iron Maiden, Trespass, and Praying Mantis coexisted alongside the real heavy stuff like AC/DC, proggy stuff like Styx and Rush, and southern boogie stuff like Molly Hatchet. The kids at the Bandwagon were looking for stuff to headbang to, and stuff to play air guitar to — I suppose that in the end, that’s what makes heavy metal, stylistic niceties be damned.

So, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was a cultural blink in the eye of the British music scene, a moment when heavy rock music returned to the consciousness of the mainstream world. Heavy rock and heavy metal may never have gone away in the first place, as people like Paul Samson were quick to point out, but despite Samson’s protestations to the contrary, what made the nwobhm a genuine movement was that a new generation of journalists were united with a new generation of bands to bring a whole new generation of fans together, across the UK. It was the participation of the press, the creation of terms and the cross-communication of once-isolated groups of rock bands in isolated cities and towns, that transformed a disparate underground into a genuine national movement. Without that alchemical combination of band, journalist, and fan, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal never would have existed. It’s a lesson in strength in numbers.

Just as Bruce Dickinson of Maiden has often said — he didn’t know he was a part of anything until he read about it in the pages of Sounds, just like everyone else. Fan and musician alike.

For heavy metal fans, the nwobhm continues to appeal because of a slew of factors, all of which have been hinted at. For one, it’s a critical step in the evolution of heavy metal, a bridge between the dim, hazy creation of the genre in the early Seventies, and the global maturation of the style with Iron Maiden and Metallica in the mid-Eighties. Metallica, perhaps the most legendary of all heavy metal bands, was born in the mind of a Danish teenager taking in Diamond Head and Mythra concerts before he relocated with his family to the San Fernando Valley, where his love of the genre led him to form his own band. Metallica’s debt of gratitude to the nwobhm movement is popularly cited to this day because it’s such a perfect example of how a musical movement apparently confined to the British Isles sent shockwaves across the globe nearly strong enough to spawn whole musical industries. Long after heavy metal fell out of favour and back into obscurity in the UK, new young bands in Continental Europe and South America were picking up the mantle and writing music inspired by the nwobhm bands they had loved. Magazines in Germany and in Greece would hunt down their heroes, who had long since forgotten their brief flirt with music stardom, for interviews and retrospectives. Bands were invited to reform and play before thrilled audiences at Summer festivals, alongside younger bands who were playing music inspired by their original releases decades ago. Without the nwobhm, heavy metal probably would have ceased to exist before the Eighties ever got started.

But there’s another appeal to the nwobhm, a cultural appeal. There’s a kind of innocent naivete and simple love of music which permeates through the whole movement. For a brief spell, these bands were releasing their own material on handmade labels, playing to audiences night after night that were so familiar they were practically friends (and often were). And while the big money came knocking and sundered the nwobhm into those that failed and those that cashed in (effectively killing the movement altogether), there was for that briefest of moments a sense of self-fulfilling independence, in an industry that’s all about deceit and fabrication and corporate manipulation. The grassroots underdog nature of the nwobhm holds the same appeal that most grassroots movements do — a whole subculture uniting together whether by design or happenstance to devote themselves to something they genuinely love.

Is this entirely accurate? Probably not. There doubtless was greed and competition and backbiting and backstabbing and all the rest of it. But we’re not talking about individual specifics here. We’re talking about an overarching feel that the nwobhm communicated, in its all-too-brief heyday. For a time, in early 1980 and thereabouts, it just felt like the nwobhm would conquer the world.

There, I think, we find the nwobhm mystique — a grassroots movement that wasn’t, a musical revolution that wasn’t, a world that no-one realized they were a part of, or working for, or contributing to. Something that took everyone by surprise.

Until they read about it in Sounds.

To Be Concluded…

Tags: nwobhm, heavy metal, Iron Maiden.

Ah, that unpronouncable acronym of acronyms, the nwobhm, holds a most special place in the hearts of heavy metal fans. No other term, perhaps, holds as much reverence, as much awe, as much sheer mystique, to those who follow the path of the heavy, than the nwobhm does, and not without good reason. For it was in the nwobhm, in that swelteringly-hot, clanging forge of music alchemy, that much of the foundations of the genre were formed, and to which virtually all who came after were forced to pay homage.

NWOBHM stands for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, a term coined in a weekly music paper in 1979 to describe a grassroots, groundswell movement of heavy rock bands bucking the tide of punk rock and new wave. But, in an interesting twist, it was the article itself which served as the catalyst for the movement, and helped to thrust the New Wave of British Heavy Metal into the limelight, and a few of its most fortunate into super-stardom.

As with many fads, within a year it had lost steam, and within a few years it was gone, an entire network of like-minded groups in a whole nation ceasing to exist altogether. It arrived with a bang, left with a whimper.

Gone but not forgotten, however. As the 90s progressed, it soon became apparent that there was a whole world of fans who loved that strange, brief British fad, fans in Europe, Japan, America, as well as back home, who clambered for used copies of old vinyl, the relics of the age. A collector’s world was born, and with it the good and the bad that comes from collecting. Long-defunct bands were invited to re-form and perform again at the Summer European festivals, sometimes to audiences many times as large as any to whom they had originally performed.

It turned out that for many, the nwobhm mystique had not in fact worn off, even after so much time had passed.
But what is it about this strange, brief music movement that holds so much special magic for the heavy metal fan? Why does it continue to entice, why does the name itself seem to evoke such awed whispers?

To find the answer, we have to travel back in time and become familiar with the world in which the nwobhm was born, as well as the people who contributed to it, not just the music itself.

Hold on just a sec while I get out my map of time portals (stolen from the Supreme Being), and …

To the mainstream music companies and press, hard rock was dead in the late 70s in the UK, replaced by the edgier punk rock and New Wave movements (by the end of the 70s these would in turn be replaced by Ska and other forms of pop). Hard rock bands — especially the up-and-comers — found it hard to book gigs, and even harder to make record deals in a climate which had apparently moved on to other genres. Steve Harris of Iron Maiden has often recounted how one brief manager of the band could have gotten them a record deal … if they agreed to cut their hair short and put on leather and safety pins.

Heavy metal was a term for heavy rock that had come into existence around 1970, used to define rock bands who used distorted guitars and brisk tempos, bands such as Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. But by the late 70s most of these monoliths had lost a great deal of steam. Their output dwindled, rosters disintegrated. The perception was that these groups and the sound they represented had had their day and run their course, and it was time to move on.

There were exceptions. A very few groups, such as Judas Priest and UFO were able to sell out the larger venues and release major-label records, as most nwobhm participants were quick to point out, but the general momentum was against this type of music. If nothing else, it certainly wasn’t fashionable anymore.

Yet, throughout Britain in the mid- and late-70s, dozens, probably hundreds, of bands cropped up of young hopefuls who had grown up listening to the heavy metal greats and wanted to make their own music in that style. Generally, their aspirations were small (get local gigs, maybe pull some birds). More importantly, they had no clue that other young bands with similar tastes even existed outside their narrow little sphere. Because this style of music was not receiving any kind of media attention, nor did any kind of national network exist as such, these bands drilled away in complete isolated obscurity.

By and large the activities of these bands consisted of pursuing local gigs for little or no money at pubs and building societies, and hanging about trying to put together their own material to record demo tapes to send off to the labels (who promptly threw them in the trash).

Iron Maiden provides a quintessential example of the average activities of bands who would eventually comprise the nwobhm movement. Formed in December 1975 by bassist Steve Harris, and comprising at the time an almost endless revolving door of other East Ender players, Iron Maiden toured the local pubs in East London looking for an opportunity to play to a few punters, while they built up their homemade material, perfected their sound and their technique, and tried to develop a stage persona. They trundled around with their equipment in the back of a washed-up old van they dubbed the Green Goddess. Money was not their goal — they all had dayjobs (Harris was an apprentice draftsman). Gigs would on occasion net them the princely sum of 15 quid, not even enough to cover the expenses of their burgeoning pyrotechnics.

But money wasn’t the issue. What bands like Maiden were pursuing was the opportunity to perform music in a genre they loved in front of an audience. Not necessarily a very big audience, but an audience nontheless.

Suddenly, Maiden found themselves packing out the pubs, pubs which, like the Ruskin Arms, started inviting them back. They were developing a fanbase, local kids who loved what they were doing and would pop up, over and over, wherever the band played.

It’s important to note that the activities of bands like Maiden were going completely under the radar of the record labels and the press. Really, a little local band with a few local fans was hardly groundbreaking, but what the press (and the bands themselves) didn’t realize was that an entire groundswell movement was growing that would suddenly go from isolated, local incidents into a full-blown national phenomenon.

The dam burst early in 1979, nwobhm’s watershed year. Its catalyst would arrive in Spring 1979 in the pages of “Sounds” magazine (one of the three major national music weeklies), when Geoff Barton wrote an article describing what he called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. In that one article was born not just the inception point of the movement, but the movement’s name as well. It was a rallying point and lightning rod both, alerting all these isolated, local favourite bands to the fact that they were part of a bona fide national movement, as well as their fans to the fact that a whole world had just been created and consolidated.

It was only to be expected that, with a hot new music fad bursting onto the scene, the major record labels wouldn’t be long in coming calling, their fat wallets waving enticingly …

To be continued …

Tags: heavy metal, nwobhm, Iron Maiden

For the metallically inclined, Ronnie James Dio is a name which figures prominently, a sort of godfather of the whole strange genre. Among other (more musical) accomplishments, Ronnie is the man who created the “devil horns” sign (not a Satanic symbol, but actually his Sicilian grandmother’s ward against the evil eye), internationally recognized gesture of metalness.

And for fans of the actual music, Ronnie’s presence as frontman on three legendary records has forever cemented his position in the genre:

1. Rainbow Rising (1976)
2. Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell (1980)
3. Dio Holy Diver (1983)

Each of these three records proved both a milestone for each of those bands, and milestones for heavy metal / hard rock as a whole. (As a kind of rambling aside, ironically my favorite records of each of these three bands are instead: 1. Rainbow Long Live Rock n’ Roll (1978); 2. Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell (1980) — the same in this case; 3. Dio The Last In Line (1984).)

I’ve been listening a lot to Rainbow and the first two Dio (the band) albums of late, and boy have they weathered the test of time well. I’ve often wanted to write up a little post singing forth praise for these records, but have found no catalyst around which to write a piece. Until now.

Yesterday (the 30th of May) in the US (the 29th most everywhere else) Eagle Rock Entertainment put out an extremely inexpensive live DVD recorded at the London date of Dio’s tour of the UK in Autumn 2005. What makes this show so special, and so worthy of a DVD release, is that for these UK dates the band performed the entire debut album Holy Diver, in song order (preceded and followed by songs from other albums, to round out the set length), the first time they have ever done so.

For a DVD which is so surprisingly inexpensive (ten bucks at Amazon), the disc is surprisingly replete. DTS is offered in addition to 5.1-channel Dolby and a stereo mix, the entire contents are in anamorphic widescreen (and thus enhanced for widescreen displays), and a sort of casual interview short is offered as an extra. The performance itself is well-filmed on digital video (though not HD cameras, I’m pretty sure), and edited in a very straightforward, lucid way. I prefer live performances to be edited to offer as clear and detailed a look at the performances, rather than the arty-farty lightning-cut approach of amateurs trying to be MTV music video directors. Fortunately the editors of this disc chose the more subtle approach. There’s even a little photo booklet insert, with brief essay by rock journalist (and metal fan) Dave Ling, something I really didn’t expect given the low price tag.

And the performance itself? Dio, now well into his sixties, has lost none of his energy, enthusiasm, or vocal range. Truly, the man is astounding, bopping around on stage, matching the audience’s devil horns signs, and belting out the tunes with the abandon unmatched by people a quarter of his age. So many rock singers have lost their voices due to the ravages of time and dissipated living: Dio remains at the peak of his form, perhaps slightly more gravelly than on the 80s recordings, but just as impressive and full.

Quick aside: I just love that Ronnie rocks out with out any interest in retiring, flying in the face of any ageist comments, or the cries of “where is your decency?” from those who think that being older means putting on a tie and slowing down. Ronnie is still the diminutive little hippie with the long hair and the fun of rocking out with the headbangers, and for Ronnie, the number of years he’s chalked under his belt simply has no meaning. It’s all about attitude, it’s all about preference. It’s the way it should be, and I really honor him for it.

Current lineup: Simon Wright on drums (really doing a good job matching Vinnie Appice’s awesome, involved drumming style from the albums), bass legend Rudy Sarzo on, ehm, bass (thank god he finger-picks), enigmatic Scott Warren at keyboards, looking like a supreme gothic vampyre type (and the keyboards are doubly important here because there’s none of the guitar-overdubbing to fill out the sound as on the records), and, finally, Doug Aldrich, who looks like he just stepped out of a Z-Boys competition down in Dogtown.

Let’s talk about Doug for a second. Dio fans tend to be divided about whether Doug Aldrich or Craig Goldy is the “better” guitar player to be in the band. It seems that for most, either Doug is a god or he’s “totally wrong” for the band. Without any offense at Goldy, I’m one of the people who likes Doug in the band. His presence on Killing the Dragon for me was a major reason why it was such a return to the vintage Dio sound when it was released in 2002. He has this fabulous capacity to mix insane technical speed with bluesy, swaggery soul. The man is just on fire, and he both manages to recreate the spirit of original Dio guitarist Viv Campbell’s performances, while contributing his own personality. On this DVD, he’s in much better form than on Dio’s last DVD, “Evil or Divine”, and the sense of cameraderie he shares on stage with Ronnie is a treat to witness.

I could go on, but there’s not really any point, except to say that if you’ve never experienced Dio before, or if you’re intimidated or hesitant about trying out classic heavy metal with lots of hard rock vibes, this is a fabulous place to start, and to witness one of the genre’s elder statesmen at the supreme height of his creative and artistic powers. If you don’t want to buy it, stick it in your Netflix queue — it’s worth the look, I warrant you.
We rock!

Gargantuan world success of groups like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest aside, heavy metal as a genre is by definition a cult, niche musical style, most of its contributors forever relegated to obscure or rare status.

I have a personal list of the thirty essential heavy metal releases that I draw upon to make recommendations to the casual listener, or the cautiously curious. Obviously, there’s no shortage of big names among that list — which would appear in anyone’s heavy metal list — including the aforementioned Maiden and Priest, and other biggies like Black Sabbath and Metallica.

But many — perhaps most — of the releases are what could easily be described as obscure, certainly to the general public, but even to many who already consider themselves heavy metal fans.

Towering high among that collection of obscure essentials is Hawaii’s Sacred Rite.

Do you remember that classic Powell-Peralta skater video “The Search for Animal Chin”? Remember the Hawaiian segment, where they skated down the canal before relaxing at a Hawaiian restaurant? If music could be said to capture the ambiance of that whole world at that particular moment in time, Sacred Rite composed it.

Like so many others at the time, the four members of Sacred Rite were high school buddies who kicked together a band to jam out their favorite AC/DC and Sabbath tunes at local parties. But unlike so many others, they leaped startlingly quickly into composing their own material, while at the same time driving each other to achieve the highest level of musicianship they could possibly muster.

Very quickly they were in the studio cutting a demo tape, which equally quickly led to a deal with local label Rendezvous and produce Pierre Grille, and their debut self-titled album, released in 1984. Second album “Ritual” followed in 1985, and the third, “Is Nothing Sacred”, in 1986 (on Medusa records).

Then things turn sour. Sacred Rite, feeling that continued residence in Hawaii was limiting their potential for success, relocated to … Tulsa. A small development deal with Polygram during which they had recorded limp commercial tunes as a demo had led to nowheresville, and it wasn’t long before financial desperation and lack of interest fragmented the band, forever. (I often wonder what would have happened had they remained in Hawaii, where for a time they had the honor of being that State’s most famous rock music group).

The cool Sentinel Steel label out of New Jersey re-packaged, remastered, and re-presented the band’s entire catalogue (including demos, minus embarrassing disco tune made for band member’s brother) in a two-volume set entitle “Rites of Passage”. Thanks to the quality of the remastering (performed from the original master reels) the presentation is nearly as good as any recording heard today, and significantly less “doctored”, thanks to the originals’ lack of Protools and other computer trickery.

It is through these that I know and love Sacred Rite. And when I say love, I mean adore.

Musically, you have a foundation of the most classic of heavy metal type sounds: semi-epic, semi-progressive galloping tracks very much in the 80s tradition of Iron Maiden at their most classic. Yet on top of this solid foundation, Sacred Rite seduces you with an extraordinary palette of eclectic sounds, the most powerful of which is, of all things, very groovy funk. This is most obvious in the guitar solo department, where twin lead guitarists Mark Kaleiwahea and Jimmy Dee Caterine fearlessly meld the style of 80s hyperactive madmen like Van Halen with the lilting, swimmy funk grooves of the Seventies grandmasters.

This delightful melding of sound styles is not limited to the solos, though. Kevin Lum’s unique drumming and Peter Crane’s prominent bass playing (which is an extremely strong presence on the songs, much like Steve Harris’ work for Iron Maiden) also create very groovy, swaggery rhythms that break Sacred Rite’s compositions out of the confines of traditional heavy metal and into something new, broader, funner.

The best way to show what I mean by all this funky groove business is for you to hear it. Check out this two-minute excerpt from 1984’s “The Executioner”:

(click to listen to an MP3 excerpt from “Executioner”)

There’s lotsa funk going on there, beneath the sort of classic metal sounds, particularly with Peter Crane’s bass antics.

Another great aspect of Sacred Rite is the surprise breaks and interludes peppered through their music, thusly:

(click to listen to an MP3 excerpt from “I’ve Seen the Wizard”)

Not bad for a gaggle of high school kids. And, come to think of it, maybe the single most-compelling reason to listen to Sacred Rite is how fun they are. Their youthful exuberance, their sense of adventure and excitement, and the sheer enjoyment you can hear in their playing — you just can’t help but crack a smile and be swept away from all the shit of the modern world, and your modern role as a so-called adult in this modern world. Like the fantasy realms they sing of, you are swept away by their optimism and enjoyment, caught up in the infectiousness of the sheer joy they feel at jamming big time on their instruments.

If you have even the slightest interest in trying classic heavy metal, you could do a lot worse than picking up one of these two volumes. Fun is good. Optimism is good. Sacred Rite serve them both up in spades.

(Image via Sentinel Steel Records) 

Technorati Tags: heavy metal, Sacred Rite, 1980s

Some groups get all the luck — they’re showered with success, everything goes their way, opportunity comes knocking every fortnight. They win accolade after accolade whether they deserve them or not. They play like shit but they’re played forty times an hour on the radio. They blow millions on drugs and booze and they still have millions more than they know what to do with. Lady luck smiles eternally down upon them.

Then there’s Riot.

If the world was fair, if success was granted solely on the basis of talent and skill, cult favorites Riot would have been towering giants in the rock field. But since the world isn’t fair, Riot has instead been relegated to cult status, much beloved by a select few who know they exist, unknown and unrecognized by everyone else.

Riot has been plagued throughout their long career by more than their fair share of misfortune — bad record contracts, lack of funds, mismanagement, a revolving door of musicians, and plain bad luck. On a number of occasions the band has disintegrated apart, only to be born anew by little more than the tenacity of central founding member Mark Reale. Their bravery in the face of music industry adversity is truly inspiring.

Formed in New York City in the mid-Seventies, Riot released three stellar, classic hard rock / heavy metal albums with original vocalist Guy Speranza before Speranza, increasingly concerned by the dissipated lifestyle of touring, jumped ship to raise a family. Two more albums were swiftly completed with new growler Rhett Forrester before the band disintegrated due to slumping sales and apparently some disiullusionment brought on by the poor rock scene in their hometown.

Reale briefly moved out west — apparently to Los Angeles for a time — before returning home to revive his band with an all-new cast and a revamped image, discarding their earlier hard rock sound for the full-on, power metal assault of 1988’s Thundersteel, released on CBS.

Let’s be honest. You have but to glance at the cover to know that you’re not in for an album of gentle ballads. Because I’m a dork, the futuristic setting of the cover is an enticement to me, promising perhaps slightly cheesy but nevertheless engaging soundscapes of science fiction strife and torment. For others less dorky than myself, perhaps the cover art does the album something of a disservice, because the heavy rock, metal cornucopia within is all professionalism, polish, amazing musicicanship, and some of the finest writing in the field, far more “mature” than the comic book-like cover suggests.

I won’t quibble. Thundersteel is easily one of the top 30 heavy metal albums ever released, effortlessly covering all bases, fulfilling all needs, and annihilating the listener under a barrage of expansive riffs, blistering solos, double-bass pattering, and soaring vocals. The craftsmanship of the songwriting reaches its zenith at track six, the classic tune “Johnny’s Back”, a mid-paced bittersweet track with some extremely catchy guitar work, and a memorable melody.

Special mention has got to be made of Mark Reale’s amazing solo guitar work. Rather underrated for his guitar skills, Reale here shows an infectious combination of Michael Schenker-style Seventies groove and show-off Eighties speed in the Van Halen tradition. He melds the two rather disparate styles seamlessly, creating a unique signature sound that is very hard to imitate, managing to both satisfy the stereotypical demands of the genre while forging new ground.

What’s the album about, thematically? The worthless booklet of the CBS compact disc version is no help, but the sense you get from the album is that it’s — at least loosely — a concept album, a science-fiction story of a future, war-ravaged earth, and the disillusioned warriors who live within it. Actually, add two parts The Road Warrior, two parts Escape From N.Y., and a dash of Robotech and you’re not far from the setting the music evokes.

Riot has always been unfairly marginalized, and Thundersteel is and unfairly marginalized album from an unfairly marginalized group — most fans would pick their biggest commercial success, 1981’s Fire Down Under, as top pick. I think this is a huge, huge shame, because Thundersteel is the album which, more than any of their others, propels Riot into the highest possible position of excellence in the heavy metal genre.

For me, it’s just that good.

Technorati Tags: Riot, Thundersteel, heavy metal, power metal

Hamburg-based Gamma Ray have long been one of my very favorite long-haired freak bands. All of their albums feature strong songwriting, muscular musicianship, and that tricky combination of variety and dependability which is so difficult for most to achieve.

Early next month, the Rays will sweep through So Cal for two live shows; on May 9 they will be in Santa Ana (performing at the Galaxy Theatre) and on the 10th they will settle on Hollywood, at the Key Club. These two dates will mark the first time that Gamma Ray have ever made a live appearance on the West Coast.

Don’t be frightened away — I can’t speak for the audience but I can speak for the guys on-stage. Gamma Ray are energetic, upbeat, bloody nice guys, and about the best musicians you could ever realistically expect to find. If you have even the slightest twinge of curiosity (or even if you don’t) I strongly urge you to stop by and see their show. This is not music where the bandmembers barf on the audience and sing songs about how they love Satan. This is fun, brisk (sometimes intensely brisk) guitar-based jams that should prove entertaining to any fan of rock music.

A quick history lesson: Gamma Ray were formed in the ancient times (1989) by Kai Hansen, who had surprised the rock world by announcing his departure from rising stars Helloween, then at the peak of their popularity. In my opinion, it was all downhill for Helloween from there, but for Kai and his new group, it was the establishment of one of the most enduring and well-regarded of all bands in this little niche of the rock world. Gamma Ray’s most famous album, Land of the Free, was released in 1995, and the following year, the current stable lineup of Kai, Dirk Schlächter, Henjo Richter, and Daniel Zimmermann was formed, the lineup you’ll see on stage in May.

Their newest album, Majesty, was released last year through Sanctuary, an angrier album by the band’s own admission, one which was preoccupied with the war in Iraq and the infuriating idiocy of President Bush. I love the album, and I love how the band stayed within the conventional fantasy/sci-fi/horror type themes established for their genre while still making an effective — and stinging — condemnation of the Bush administration’s international policies.

I’m going to be sitting down for a chat backstage on both Southern California dates for an interview I’ve been asked to do for their official fan club. We’ll be talking about the forthcoming DVD, the forthcoming album, and anything else I can dredge up from the recesses of my addled gray matter. If any of you have any questions you’d like to see answered, drop me an email and I’ll try to bring them up.

But, if nothing else, do make an effort to stop by and see the Rays on their all-too-brief pass through North America (all the cities and dates are at their official website). You’ll be glad you did. I promise.

Technorati Tags: heavy metal, Gamma Ray, Kai Hansen, Los Angeles

“A shout comes from the wizard
The sky begins to crack
And he’s looking right at you — Quick!
Run along the rainbow
Before it turns to black — Attack!”

“Like the sword of the warrior,
we’ll destroy the demons in the end
Like the wings of Pegasus,
we’ll fly to Hell and back again”

“You heard about me in the Frontier Wars
Psionic menace carrying alien spores
A living legend in the asteroid mines
Avoiding tariffs and Imperial fines”

Those lines above could all be spoken by a million gamemaster/dungeonmaster/highlords the world over, but none of them come from the gaming table.

Instead, they’re song lyrics from three different heavy metal bands’ tracks (Dio, Sacred Rite, and Slough Feg, respectively). With musical subject matter that could spring from any role-playing game setting, most gamers probably listen to this kind of music, right?

Wrong. The fact of the matter is that most RPG and gaming fanatics — at least in America — don’t listen to this kind of music, despite the overt parallels. I for one have yet to meet a single one.

I’m not alone. Last Autumn I talked on the phone with Mike Scalzi, singer/guitarist/primary-songwriter for the excellent San Francisco-based group Slough Feg, who went so far as to craft an entire concept album around uber-classic sf game “Traveller” in 2003. He told me that he had approached a number of clubs and groups devoted to “Traveller” with the news that there was a forthcoming musical album based on their beloved setting, and was met with stony silence and slightly nauseated disinterest. Like me, he found the whole RPG community just wasn’t interested in heavy metal. There might be the isolated enthusiast of both, but by and large RPGer tastes run in other directions musically, leaving this niche genre — which writes so much about themes embraced by games — to cry alone in the corner, unwanted and unloved.

The question that follows, is, why?

Don’t have the answer? Crap. Neither do I.

But it is a question I’ve long pondered. I’ve come up with all sorts of possibilities, some of which are:

• Metal as a genre is now probably more popularly equated with the metal shows on Fuse, and extreme bands like Slipknot and Cradle of Filth, than with the old-fashioned or classic bands like Dio, who wrote music that could fit in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with nary a tweak. Maybe gamers now are repulsed by this extreme metal (what a surprise) and don’t want anything to do with a genre which includes bands that vomit on their audience, wear silly costumes, and belch satanic lyrics into their microphones.
• Perhaps role-playing has grown past the confines of its early heyday, finding popularity and sustained interest while fads change, while heavy metal in the classic sense has been stranded as a fad of a bygone era, trapped forever as a piece of nostalgia, when you could actually turn on MTV and see Ronnie James Dio confronting mutants with his two-handed sword, while today you — can’t. Like a childhood friend who went to college and discovered Nietzche leaving you to stare longingly at your d20s lying dusty and forgotten on your desk, maybe role-playing games once were played by people who listened to heavy metal, but they’ve moved on now to other places, other sounds.
• Perhaps most gamers don’t want to spend 24/7 with their head stuck in a fantasy existence, when there’s real life and a real world out there with real things to do. Nah. Didn’t think so.

I’m quite sure that the fact that I write about both subjects in this lame blog probably alienates any audience I could have who are interested in either. To most, never the twain shall meet.

But meet they do, and comingle, and drink soda pop together, and laugh until the pop fizzes up into their nostrils, at my house.

Technorati Tags: heavy metal, role-playing, games, Slough Feg, Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller