Unknown Soldier

Their No Rest for the Wicked album was stronger than the one you've put above and even that in the end missed this year's list. There's just too many good albums to fit into a top 20 and I have no plans top increase the lists to 25or 30, as it defeats the object of the journal.

Bathory (?) I've no idea with what I doing with that yet, Ratt for my fondness of them should be on there, but Dokken is going to be a struggler for the list given the competition from not just other albums but also from other hair metal bands, but they could well make it given that it sounds like an AOR album.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

The good, the bad and the downright hungry!

The Lowdown
There have been a number of albums so far on this year’s list that have featured what could be coined as thrash metal, but Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All would make the biggest splash of all. Fellow thrash rivals Slayer had displayed a dark and insidious sound on their debut (see review) on an album that had been built from the b-movie rantings of Venom and like Venom they would go onto become not just a huge source of inspiration for fellow thrash acts, but also for extreme metal as a whole. There has also been albums from bands like Savatage. Raven and Exciter, bands that showed that they were heavy metal or speed metal bands first and treated the thrash angle to their sound as a secondary feature rather than their primary goal. In fact a number of songs or albums from bands would come under the thrash moniker at this time, but many of these bands would soon move into other territory, as they seemed to treat thrash as more of a passing fad instead of a completely new genre, but unlike all these previously mentioned bands San Francisco’s Metallica were something very different. Metallica completely embraced thrash metal as their core sound with little room for anything anything else and what made Metallica special, was that they had not only taken their cue from the likes of Motorhead and Venom for example, but had created a completely new template of what thrash metal should embrace as its own unique genre (in my 1984 intro I’ll be doing a thrash feature, so won’t being going into the main espects of the sound here) which was certainly a major decision by the band. This template though wasn’t overly original but its execution was, as the album’s template had already been laid down on Diamond Head's Lightning to the Nations, the band most influential on them in the first place. The band’s initial line consisted of James Hetfield- rhythm/vocals, Dave Mustaine- guitar, Ron McGovney- bass and Lars Ulrich- drums, but both Dave Mustaine and Ron McCovney would soon fall by the wayside. Ron McCovney had constantly clashed with Mustaine and Ulrich, whereas Dave Mustaine’s ejection from the band would be one of the most infamous in the history of rock and the colourful account of these incidents can be found in about a zillion places on the net, literature and other media etc so I won’t go into it here, but it’s safe to say the he vowed revenge on Metallica and would go onto form Megadeth. His replacement was Kirk Hammett and Cliff Burton came in for Ron McGovney and we now had one of the most revered line-ups to ever hit metal. The band’s chance came when they appeared on the Metal Blade Metal Massacre comp (I’ll be doing a feature on these soon) and they would soon appear on numerous other demos, as well as opening for Saxon on their US tour of 1982. Their big chance finally came when with their Paul Curcio produced seminal debut on the small Megaforce Records label and as they say the rest was history. The album tracks fall into two types here, those recently written and those made up from re-worked earlier tracks by the band, and the latter includes tracks written when Dave Mustaine was in the band (the most contentious) and those written from previous excursions by the band members and the album starts with two such tracks in “Hit the Lights” and “The Four Horsemen”. “Hit the Lights” introduces us to the world of Metallica and plays like one of the band’s straightforward trademark thrash efforts, while “The Four Horseman” co-written with Dave Mustaine, kind of foreshadows the extended and technical direction that the band would soon take, and the song’s extended middle section plays like a technical metal gem. Much in the same vein as this is the epic “Jump into the Fire” another track co-written with Mustaine and the song’s masterful malevolent and catchy chorus make it pretty timeless. Two other similar tracks with Mustaine also appear on the album “Phantom Lord” another fav of mine and album closer “Metal Militia” and in my mind these tracks are consistently the strongest on the album. The rest of the album is made up of further extended classics like “No Remorse” amd the seminal “Seek & Destroy” the latter one of the band’s early legendary tracks and both display the impressive tempo changes of the band. There are no really poor tracks on the album, but there are a number of what I call linking tracks, meaning tracks that they're shorter and link in-between the best songs on the album and these include tracks like “Motorbreath” the bass player’s delight “(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth” and the best of the three in “Whiplash”. What makes Kill 'Em All such a classic album is its combination of NWOBHM inspired catchy riffing, supreme power, malevolent aggression and blistering speed, which is all further enhanced by the technical playing of guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett who at times are right up there in the stratosphere, along with the aggressive drum beats of Lars Ulrich and the bass playing of the band’s most revered musician in Cliff Burton. Then added to all this is what I always think of as the trademark band sound and that is their stop-start-dynamics which effortlessly seep throughout most of the album and these stop-start-dynamics are pretty awe inspiring at times and second to none. Strangley enough for such a revered thrash album, James Hetfield actually described Metallica’s sound at this time to be ‘power metal’ and I also find it interesting that the band were able to sustain their complete sound over 51 minutes, which was long for an album of this type around this time.

James Hetfield- Rhythm/Vocals
Kirk Hammett- Guitar
Cliff Burton- Bass
Lars Ulrich- Drums

Production- Paul Curcio

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

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William_the_Bloody

Lol, well that's not very nice. Mustaine did make that album so awesome though

Anyhow woe to the man who puts metal light maiden ahead of Metallica. It's all good though, its your journal & taste, cheers

Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
After their less than amicable departure from Black Sabbath due to differences over the recording of the live Black Sabbath album Live Evil. Vocalist Ronnie James Dio and drummer Vinnie Appice decided to put together their own band under the auspicious name of Dio, which certainly made sense given the huge popularity of Ronnie James Dio after his albums with both Rainbow and Black Sabbath, which had very much put him at the pinnacle of the metal world. Now in this review I’ll be referring to Dio as Ronnie James, as Dio here is actually the name of the band and not the vocalist that we all call him by. Similar confusion often took place with Alice Cooper’s early albums, where Alice Cooper was actually the name of the band and not the name of Vincent Furnier, but of course Alice Cooper soon became the name of just Vincent Furnier himself and everybody calls Ronnie James just Dio. The new Dio band would be complete with the recruiting of ex-Rainbow Jimmy Bain on bass and a little known Irish NWOBHM guitarist Vivian Campbell from Sweet Savage who completed the line-up. Now this must’ve seemed like a dream for a little known guitarist like Vivian Campbell who found himself in a band at world level, with three musicians that had featured in two of the biggest bands in the world, but on just one listen to this album you can see why he was chosen as he plays like a talented veteran. The album cover is one of my favourites from this time, which depicts the Devil with a whipchain in his hand whipping a priest to death in a swirling maelstrom with jagged mountains in the background. The album cover was extremely contemporary at this time, as thanks to home video in the early 1980s there were countless films available which had priests like this battling the powers of evil, just think the Omen and the Exorcist sequels amongst many others around this time. Holy Diver opens much like the two previous Black Sabbath albums in a frenetic style on “Stand Up and Shout” then we go into the first of the album’s masterful tracks with “Holy Diver” with its then very contemporary ambient intro and the song moves along at a stellar pace, and it’s a pure mastercraft lesson in power singing, and in that area few could match Dio. A lot of the album is gelled together by the melodic hard rock riffery of songs like “Gypsy” and the wonderful “Caught in the Middle“ a real favourite of mine. The second masterful track is “Don’t Talk to Strangers” a fascinating combination between beauty and brawn, something a lot of bands do, but here Dio do it to the first degree. “Straight Through the Heart” is pure meat and drink material from the band and the album's lesser track might just be the more workmanlike "Invisible". The third masterful track here is the single "Rainbow in the Dark" and I'll admit my opinion here is down to the basic but hugely effective keyboard patches by Ronnie James himself. Album closer is "Shame on the Night" with its howling wolf intro it's the expected power album closer here by the band. Ronnie James conjures himself across the album's wonderful nine tracks and guitarist Vivian Campbell is equally there across these songs as well. Holy Diver was not just a commercial giant of the metal world at this time, but is now recognized as an almost mythical metal album many years later and ranks as possibly the cream of Ronnie James’ illustrious career. I’d certainly rank it in his best three albums along with Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules and Rainbow’s Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll, even though others out there would probably put Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell and Rainbow’s Rising above the two I’ve chosen as they’re even better known albums. Despite the brilliance of Holy Diver, things would gradually go downhill for Ronnie James and Dio after this album, as they were never capable of reaching these brilliant heights again. Sure there are still good Dio albums that will feature on my lists here, but most of his later work would often find him trying to replicate Holy Diver and failing to take on new musical concepts in a very fast changing metal world of the 1980s and 1990s. Overall Holy Diver is one of the very best albums I’ve reviewed on here and my personal favourite of the year, even though the album in number one spot is there from a technical standpoint of excellence rather than being a real favourite. Finally in Spanish Dios means God and Dio’s chosen surname is just one letter short of that.

Ronnie James Dio- Vocals/Keyboards
Vivian Campbell- Guitar.
Jimmy Bain- Bass
Vinnie Appice- Drums

Production- Ronnie James Dio

 

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

He's not whipping the priest. The chain was connected to the chains holding the priest, but the devil hurled him into the water, and now the chain has snapped.

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Unknown Soldier

I never noticed that before, but yer the chain is clearly snapped.

Which now makes the version on wiki plausible, that the priest was trying to kill the Devil by jumping into the water and sacrificing himself, but as the chain has snapped it was all in vain.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

Nah, that sounds like bull****. The devil just straight pwned a priest. Shackled him up, threw him in the ocean, "See ya, bitch!"

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Unknown Soldier

Knowing that the chain would snap, seems doubtful?

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

He's the damn devil. He made the chain snap himself.

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