Unknown Soldier

So that's why you've got so much knowledge of the lesser known metal bands from that time. It always surprises how alert you are to nearly all the NWOBHM bands from that time.

As always your band choices are quite zany I see that you really like the Praying Mantis debut, but to call it the best NWOBHM of all is a bit far fetched even for you! Personally I feel that the Angel Witch debut is a couple of notches higher than the Praying Mantis one and ranks in the best top 10 NWOBHM albums ever, and whatever made you choose Trespass. Interestingly a lot of the stuff that you've said, I would've put into my reviews had I not reached my word count limit, for example you're spot on with the Praying Mantis and Asia type album covers, even though Asia would never have gone in for the b-movie floating skull.

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Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Urban Hat€monger ?

And that Lars Ulrich NWOBHM compilation that came out.
Also having an old biker as my next door neighbour helped too.

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Trollheart

Did I? I must re-read that article again. As for Trespass, I heard "Storm child" on the "Metal for muthas Vol 2" album and it instantly became one of my alltime favourite metal songs from a band that you'll never ever hear of again. Love love love that song!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Unknown Soldier

No matter what decade it is, there's always an old biker somewhere into metal

Yer "Storm Child" does the business, sadly I'm only doing albums so they won't feature anywhere.

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Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album
Derbyshire’s Saracen were one of the numerous musical assemblages to make up the NWOBHM spectrum and they were also a band that had their feet firmly planted in the progressive rock camp, as opposed to a pure metal one. Saracen also differed to other metal bands with a proggy slant, in that istead of just trying to include their progressive rock influences into their sound, Saracen were more inclined to actually mold those prog influences instead, which raises the question over the band’s true musical identity! One of the most noticeable things about this album, is surely the quality of production on offer here and it’s the vital ingredient that makes the album, as the low budget feel often associated with NWOBHM debuts, just wouldn’t have delivered the proggy-laden style of the band as it should be heard. The opening track is “Crusader” which of course was the historical foe of the Saracen and this is one of several tracks to come in at over 6 minutes of playing time and it immediately harks back to 1970s Uriah Heep in both feel and style. The second track “Rock of Ages” no not the Def Leppard one, is one of those straight forward rock-out tracks, but the heavy use of pomp-rock style keyboards again raises question marks over the correct label for this band. Then there is also a song like “No More Lonely Nights” which is a melodic hard rock track that could’ve been recorded by any number of hard rock acts out there with commercial ambitions. But the real highlights of the album are surely its two progressive gems “Horsemen of the Apocolypse” which has a keyboard lead that any number of up and coming ‘New Romantics’ bands’ would’ve been proud of and this gem is followed by the superb album closer “Ready to Fly” an exceptional 8 minute track that was once described as a heavy metal version of Pink Floyd! The big letdown on the album though is surely the title track “Heroes, Saints & Fools” which is something of an anamoly given its glorious musical arrangements that should make it the album’s killer track, but it’s really letdown by the secondary vocals that are employed on the song and also the instrumental “Dolphin Ride” doesn’t fit much either. Singer Steve Bettney is very reminiscent of Rob Halford on practically every song on the album which of course is a positive. Overall Heroes, Saints & Fools is one of the most diverse offerings of 1981 and the band really tinkered with their track selections at strategic points on the album, and without doubt it’s the lengthy prog-laden material that wins out overall here in terms of quality. Whenever I listen to the Saracen debut, it often reminds me of America’s Legs Diamond not in actual sound, but more in overall feel, as Legs Diamond were a band that covered similar territory a few years earlier (see 1977 reviews) and in songs like “Rock and Roll Man” they certainly matched or if not surpassed what Saracen were putting out.

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Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album
In the past I’ve often thought of the solo career of Ian Gillan as being about as exciting as that of both Robert Plant and Ozzy Osbourne, his two nearest counterparts in terms of both prestige and era, but since starting this journal I’ve now rejected that opinion completely. Because given the amount of Ian Gillan post-Deep Purple albums that have been featured here, I’d now say that his solo career is actually head and shoulders above the other two quality wise, even though he doesn’t get enough credit in this respect. Future Shock is also his seventh album would you believe it, since his Deep Purple days and also one of his very best. Prior to this he had done three studio albums with the jazz-fusion inspired Ian Gillan Band and then reorientated himself back to his hard rock roots under the Gillan moniker, where his second album Mr.Universe (under the Gillan name) had been his best album so far. Its follow-up album Glory Road was a more mediocre effort and given the quality on offer in 1980 it never even got a look in! But on 1981’s Future Shock Ian Gillan bounced back with one of his best albums to date and it was also an album that also contained his stable backing band of Bernie Torme-guitar, John McCoy-bass, Colin Towns-keyboards and Mike Underwood-drums. Future Shock as an album is an all round great listening experience of strong hard rock/heavy metal tracks, which came out when the NWOBHM was in full swing and as an artist Ian Gillan was one of the most revered vocalists around when it came to inspiring that movement. The bulk of the material here initially comes across as no frills hard rock, but on further listens the songs offer so much more and have an interesting change of pace, a great volume level, varied instrumentation, changeable vocals and pumping riffs. The album is largely dominated by its sheer speed and energy, which is always great coming from a veteran artist and in a track like “(The Ballad Of) the Lucitania Express” Gillan puts out one his fastest ever tracks. “No Laughing in Heaven” is one of Ian Gillan’s most humorous tracks and a track like “Sacre Bleu” combines both speed and humour in just 3 minutes and keeping in line with these tracks is a cover of “New Orleans” which either does it for you or not. The rest of the album is made up of great pumping melodic rock issues like “Future Shock” “Bite the Bullet” and “Don’t Want the Truth”. But the best two tracks are surely “Nightride Out of Phoenix” which revolves around its metal riffola and spontaneous synths and then there is the album closer “For Your Dreams” with its ambient and moody feel thanks to the piano of Colin Towns, and it’s possibly my favourite on the album. A large chunk of the songs sound like Ian Gillan has recorded them fully charged up on something, so much so that the normal sounding “If I Sing Softly” actually sounds like an album oddity here. Overall 1981 was a good year for Ian Gillan, as he also released the double studio/live album Double Trouble as well, which despite being a good album didn’t get included here because of the amount of already strong albums on the list. Future Shock ranks in the Rock Hard’s “The 500 Greatest Rock and Metal Albums of All Time” book and it’s a book that I’ve never read, but should do so to see what they say about these albums.

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Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

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Album
Fair Warning in many ways the find of the year for me, of course it’s an album I’d heard numerous times over the years, but it was an album that always failed to ignite any real excitement in me, so why the sudden change of heart? Well a number of metal listeners have often stated to me just what a treasure this album is in the Van Halen discography and if the competition hadn’t been so hot, it would certainly be an album worthy of a ‘top 10’ position or thereabouts. Van Halen on their first two albums Van Halen and Van Halen II had seen them lay down the yardstick of what defined American heavy metal at this time. But it was on their third album Women and Children First, where the band began to really challenge their early commercial flavoured metal sound with its flamboyant party feel, with a more serious sounding brand of metal. Sure from the word go Eddie Van Halen had orchestrated what metal riffs should be all about, but the music of the band often contained humorous overtones largely due to David Lee Roth’s vocal style, but on Women and Children First, the band had now challenged their own metal ethos with an album that was their heaviest to date. This album had contained both elements of speed metal and proto-thrash that were all set within a darker context, but in all this they still managed to keep the Van Halen flair of the first two albums fully intact (see reviews for these first three albums) So by the time of Fair Warning the band were now looking to push the envelope out even further and here we have probably the band’s boldest ever statement as a band. Album opener “Mean Street” has that typical VH sound and is a heavy grinding opener with the colossal riffs of Eddie Van Halen present, but on previous albums where a song like this would’ve been highlighted by the band’s party tendencies, this song now remains gritty from start to finish and doesn’t give into commercial overtones and this style continues in the same vein on the second track “Dirty Movies” which has some great drumming by Alex Van Halen. There is still plenty of humour around the place as well and it can be found on tracks like “Sinner’s Swing!” and “Unchained” and this second song also happens to be both the most melodic but yet grittiest track on the album! The most interesting track on the album is probably the dark disco overtones of “Push Comes to Shove” and then there is the surprise of “Sunday Afternoon in the Park” an instrumental with murky synths, and this leads into the gooey album closer “One Foot Out the Door”. At just 31 minutes this is Van Halen without commercial niceties, without obvious singles and without their typical humour, and what humour that can be found is most definitely wrapped up in a grinding heavy blanket of metal. Much like the previous Women and Children First album, I wouldn’t call Fair Warning a classic album as such, but its probably the most experimental and certainly the darkest release form the David Lee Roth era of the band.

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Metal Wars

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Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album
Much like Cirith Ungol’s Frost and Fire or Manilla Road’s Invasion, Newcastle born and bred Venom adopted this same down-in-the-dingy-basement approach in recording their debut album Welcome to Hell. The one thing all these bands had in common was their ‘DIY ethos’ and all put out albums that are considered primordial releases for the future extreme metal genres. But this is where the similarities between Venom and their two American counterparts end, as both Manilla Road and Cirith Ungol were somewhat backward looking in terms of their influences which were standard and progressive rock, whereas Venom adopted a far more potent and crueler overall sound and image. Musically Venom took their cue from the so-called satanic preachings of Black Sabbath and even more notably from the visceral approach of Motorhead, in fact if these two bands had got married and had a son, then Motorhead would’ve been the father and Black Sabbath the mother, with Venom of course being that devilspawn son! They weren’t finished there of course as Kiss probably would’ve been the godparents, as Venom had to get their macabre stage show from somewhere and Kiss were the perfect choice in that respect, as was the Witchfynde Give ‘em Hell album cover as well. Welcome to Hell was recorded in just three days for a miniscule budget and it sounded like it as well and the album was basically splatter metal right out of the gutter, which came across as a loud and menacing beast being played at breakneck speed! The production on the album was beyond bad and this was an aspect that future black metal bands would soon turn into a fine-art form several years later! Musically the songs were possibly there, as it usually took great amounts of concentration to follow them through the barrage of noise from the band and the loopy production. Another problem was that band members Cronos-bass/vocals, Mantas-guitar and Abaddon-drums were musicians of extremely limited ability and they made shamming look bloody cool, but it was also enough to turn any metal purists insane! Welcome to Hell is an album that says fuck off to musical conventions and instead just goes for the jugular like a screwed up Motorhead! Now personally I don’t really like the album song for song and I like better production than this as well (I’m not big on black metal for this reason) and therefore would hardly ever listen to this type of album. But what I do like is the album’s manic bestial flow from start to finish, something that the future Slayer would perfect on Reign in Blood. Overall Welcome to Hell is a unique listening experience for its time and if you can dig out the songs then that’s another bonus as well! Finally llittle did anybody know, that Welcome to Hell and its follow-up album Black Metal, would eventually go onto become two of the most influential metal albums of all time! As over these two albums, Venom would effectively rewrite the metal rulebook and in turn give birth to extreme metal, along with laying down and crystallising the complete criteria for the future sub-genres of thrash, death and most notably black metal. Indeed this really was welcome to hell as far as heavy metal was concerned!

Cronos- Bass/Vocals
Mantas- Guitar
Abaddon- Drums

Production- Keith Nichol

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Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History