King Diamond - Abigail

Jesus Christ.

Or should I say "Hail Satan!"

Whatever God you subscribe to, the correct answer is that you should be worshipping King Diamond instead.

And Abigail will become your Holy Bible.

Like most non-believers, I dismissed King Diamond records when they were first issued. The falsetto was humorous. The face paint predictable. The music wasn't compelling enough for me to focus on. And on top of it all, there was a guy I used to work with at a radio station that thought the world of them.

Come to think of it, the guy kind of looked like King Diamond, minus the white face and plus a hundred pounds. His hair was receding and he wore these creepy glasses. But other than that, he kind of looked like King Diamond.

And who am I kidding? The guy was a creeper, glasses or contacts, and he said lots of inappropriate things to women.

He was in his early 30's, and what the university would call a "non-traditional" student. He wore sweatpants and track pants a lot, but he was by no means athletic. He drove a brand new Yugo (no shit) and lived in the basement of his mother's home.

If it seems like I'm painting a very unflattering portrait of this man, it's because I am. I invested some time in him and overlooked a tremendous amount of faults in order to be swindled somewhat, and I don't take too kindly to things like that.

Initially, our relationship began with metal. I was coming off of it, but this cat was in the full swing of it. In a way, his advancing age and reluctance to dismiss metal like a proper adult was inspiring. Plus, he had an incredible amount of knowledge about heavy metal and hard rock.

On top of it all, he had a great  radio voice, so I put him in charge of the station's heavy metal program that we had just scheduled into the format for Saturday nights. Prior to it, we had a show called "Saturday Night Live," where we played nothing but live albums for three hours straight. I argued that nobody is going to want to listen to a bunch of live records if they're looking for a soundtrack to their Saturday night.

But metal fans? Fuck yes.

I got a kick of watching him work. He smoked cheap cigarettes, but other than that, he was a teetotaler. He'd shut off most of the lights in the studio, have his entire show booked in advance-starting with a trippy, twenty-minute long mix of creepy metal and sound effects.

It  was cool.

Anyway, King Diamond, Judas Priest, Queensryche, that  kind of shit, typically lead off his Saturday Night metal show.

He'd get animated with his discussion and he rightfully challenged me in my newfound contempt of the genre. He could tell I was cracking, that there was no real logic behind why I turned my back on metal.

And he was right.

Nonetheless, I wasn't ready for King Diamond, and whenever that falsetto hit, any attempt to try and sell me on his art was 86'd.

He'd break out in a  Diamond falsetto at  the drop of a hat, just to get my goat. It was all in fun, and he gave good conversation. As a result, I lobbied hard for the guy, got him out of the weekend schedule and put him on  the sales team during the days-where he began to STEAMROLL some accounts for the station. This success suddenly put him in the position of General Manager to my roll as Program Director-thereby leapfrogging him above me in terms of hierarchy.

Not that it mattered, because we were friends.

The success went to his head, and that's when the inappropriate comments towards women started. Staff members began to avoid him, and their uncomfortableness made me uncomfortable, particularly since I had vouched for the guy, yo.

When I confronted him about it, he shut down. He isolated himself in his office. He went a little bit nutty.

After a few months of this nonsense, I backed a talented young woman to replace him, and this made more of a distance between us. We went for long period of not speaking, and then suddenly his attire began to improve. Before long, he was wearing tied. Crazy shit.

Finally, the mystery was too much for me. I asked him about the getup. He flat out told me that he had given himself "to the Lord Jesus Christ." There was a hint of craziness in his eyes, or maybe it was just that creepy big man fucking with me. I didn't know, by that point.

He told me that he had met a woman at his mother's church. She was an attractive blonde, clearly out of his  league, but she was on the rebound after a breakup, and he put away his crude commentary long enough to string him along into believing he had a shot with her.

But the first thing he needed to do to win her heart was to get rid of those pesky Satanic records.

By the next week, motivated by the time when I finally broke the silent treatment and spoke to him, he called me into his office.

"Todd, would you be interested in buying some of my cd's?"

"Which ones?"

"Oh," he paused for dramatic effect. "All of them."

I asked why. He told me the story. I said, "Are you sure?" It was pathetic as all get out, but this was a time when compact discs were like little pieces of silver, and they retailed for nearly as much.

He was offering sweeeeet deals, so I drove over to his mother's house in Waterloo and he walked me down to the basement where he kept a bachelor pad motif, that is if you can ever really have a bachelor pad in the basement of your mother's house.

He lobbied hard for King Diamond, but I stuck out for a bunch of Marillion imports. This really bothered him, as he searched the synapses of his grey matter to go over the lyrical content of this British progressive rock band.

He determined that there was indeed some evil within Marillion. As well as Aerosmith's Get Yer Wings, Guns 'N Roses Appetite For Detruction (he wanted too much for the original vinyl pressing, so I stuck with the standard cd version) and a copy of AC/DC's Highway To Hell. There were a few other titles as well-more cds than vinyl-and I made my way home with the booty.

Not more than a month later, he was back to wearing sweatpants, bumming cigarettes, and becoming a bit more social. But it was too late. Bridges had been burned. Metal shows hosted by another (not as good) host. Advertising accounts had been left unattended, only to be hustled by other stations.

And religious girlfriends will typically put the dumpy King Diamond guy out to pasture, the moment their ex-boyfriend calls again, promising to conform.

"Hey Todd," the deflated man said before he exited my life for the final time, "Would  you ever consider selling back those Marillion albums back to me?"

I'd actually be quiet interested to see how he's doing, but I needed to write out this long-winded introduction to a King Diamond review to remind myself why that would be a bad idea.

The stories intersect only on the two minor details that 1.) The radio dude kind of looked like a fat, balding version of King Diamond and 2.) he really liked King Diamond.

I'm sure he told me all about the concept of Abigail, just as I'm sure as I ridiculed it, deeming it not worthy of further consideration. But if the years have made me more nostalgic, they've also made me wiser and more tolerant of such topics as theatrics-specifically, the kind that originate in Europe.

Diamond, a Dane, lifts heavily from classical scales and operatic drama in his work. With Abigail, he creates a lyrical Victorian nightmare-its plot a detailed story arc of murder, ghosts, and some obligatory seven horsemen.

The arrangements are just as detailed, with loads of fingertapping flourishes and speedy scale runs, all punctuated by drummer Mikkey Dee's impressive kit work.

But it's Diamond's vocal strategies-alternating from a metallic bark to an operatic wail, even in mid-verse. His performance verges on pure insanity in some moments, while other times it sounds as those there may indeed be someone else behind the wheel of Diamond's twisted art.

Abigail is straight-up frightening if you let the album take hold and allow Diamond under your skin. To merely point out his attention-grabbing appearance and over-the-top vocal performance is only a lazy observation. The reality is that somebody spent an awful amount of attention to detail to come up with this nonsense, while we let bands with substantially less vision rule the roost in the American arenas.

Abigail proudly uses the metal vernacular to execute a very credible concept album that still sounds like nothing else you've ever heard. It's an album that many generations will continue to namecheck, but very few of its worshippers will be have the same royal bloodline that King Diamond has fathered with this near metal masterpiece.

Saxon Live In Waterloo

Saxon

Live At Spicoli's, Waterloo, Iowa

September 24, 2013

“Who’s up next?” I asked the twenty-something gentleman at the door of the Spicoli’s, a fairly innocuous club off of the main drag in Waterloo. My friend and I had rolled into town about quarter hour before, preparing for the show by hanging out in the parking lot of the venue. The crowd looked pretty good for a Tuesday night judging by the number of cars outside, but it also looked like people were leaving at a rapid rate, compared to the ones who were staying.

The line-up included a pair of local openers as well as Fozzy, a metal band fronted by WWE wrestler Chris Jericho. I’ve never heard the band before, but I had heard of them.

I just never felt the need to explore a band that was fronted by a WWE wrestler, aside from the Honky Tonk Man’s entrance theme from Piledriver: The Wrestling Album 2.

The news about Jericho was interesting to my son, who is currently grounded from watching WWE wrestling because he liked to emulate the wrestlers, trying out moves on his 6 year old sister.

At first, the boy pretended that he wasn’t all that interested in the fact that I would be checking out Jericho’s band, explaining that he wasn’t a fan of the wrestler. Evidently, Jericho is a heel in his latest WWE incarnation, and my son takes such matters seriously. He hasn’t yet developed an appreciation for wrestling heels and he follows pretty close to what the script writers have laid out for him. 

As a result, when I attempted to rub in the fact that I was seeing a show featuring Fozzy was met with his ambivalence. That is, until it was time for my friend and I to leave for the show, then he went upstairs to look for things that he could get me to have Jericho sign. He didn’t completely understand how things like this work, wrongly assuming that I’d be in a position to bring in a shitload of stuff into a rock club, corner the lead singer of the band that was performing at the club so that he could sign my son’s garbage.

He also wrongly assumed that I would even devote a modicum of time to do such bidding.

I was there in Waterloo on a Tuesday night to see Saxton, one of the bands of the original New Wave of British Heavy Metal that’s still going at it, albeit in a somewhat different line-up than the one responsible for their most notable records.

It wasn’t a situation where my friend and I were opposed to seeing Fozzy or any other of the opening acts. We just weren’t concerned with making sure we arrived in time to see them.

But I knew that others would be.

Spicoli’s website was a confusing riddle, suggesting that the doors for the show would open to all ages at 7:00pm with only 21-and-older being allowed in after 10:00pm. My theory was that there would be enough underage wrestling fans like my son willing to spend $20 to be in the same room with a WWE superstar while having no interest in staying late to see Saxon.

When we arrived in Waterloo, I thought that we allowed for enough time to see Fozzy, even though I nearly blew by the place because the venue doesn’t seem to believe in signage. I triggered the anti-lock brakes when my friend yelled “There it is!” as he spotted Spicoli’s in a non-descript location and quickly made the turn into the entrance. It was in a strip mall. At the other end was a rental place. On the side facing the street advertised “For Lease” instead of something that screamed “Metal. In Here”

It was clear that we were in between bands when we parked. The doors to Spicoli’s were open and you could hear the sound of the p.a. music as you walked up. I wanted to see if we made it in time to hear Fozzy, so I asked the young man who took my twenty dollar bill.

“Saxton.” he replied, not knowing-or possibly not caring-that the “t” was silent for the dedicated group of fifty patrons that remained inside.

I didn’t bother to correct him.

Spicoli’s is a nice joint. Good layout. Plenty of space for a rock club in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area, but it looked a bit small for someone of Saxon’s caliber, a band that still regularly performs in front of large crowds in Europe.

"We'd like to thank Fozzy Bear and Dr. Tongue for opening tonight..."

The small stage was literally covered in guitar cabinets while a tidy trap set with double kick drums was nestled in between the amplification. The heads of the bass drums featured the Saxon logo prominently in front with a smaller Fozzy logo directly underneath it. It seemed the drummers for both bands shared one kit, or at least with this date they did, an efficient decision given the small working space.

Our arrival was almost perfectly timed as a quick drink order and a jaunt around the club was all the time needed before Saxon arrived to the stage.

Only two original members remain: vocalist Biff Byford and guitarist Paul Quinn. Both men are in their early 60’s and both men continue to put in grueling schedules, the kind that includes a long list of one-nighters.

The kind that gets them into places like Waterloo, Iowa on a Tuesday night.

The other members of Saxon are by no means spring chickens, nor are they wet behind the ears. Drummer Nigel Glockler has been playing with Saxon off-and-on since the early 80’s.

Bassist Nibbs Carter has been with the band for the past 25 years and second guitarist Doug Scarratt has been on board since ’96. In other words, they may not be the original members of Saxon, but they’ve all certainly cut their teeth with the band for quite some time.

It didn’t take long before Byford acknowledged the close proximity. “Looks like we’re having an intimate gig tonight.” He observed. It was unclear if his words referenced the size of the club, or the size of the audience.

A crowd of 50 people on a Tuesday night would be a very honorable achievement for some bands, but it may have been a bit too small for Saxon’s liking. Byford again tried to play it off a bit by declaring “It doesn’t matter if we play to 100,000 people or 100…As long as we have an audience, we’ll keep playing.”

For my own selfish reasons, this was exactly the size of crowd that I was hoping for. “It’s like having Saxon play in your living room!” as my friend compared it to. Indeed, there is something appealing about having a line of Marshall amps in such a small area, but the real benefit is when the band in front of them is one of Saxon’s caliber.

It seemed that my own joy of the intimacy was shared equally by the other four dozen faithful that remained. I saw men of my age and older, including one gentlemen who obviously had issues in simply getting to the gig. His wife was there to help him to his seat, which he pulled as close to the stage as he could. Unfortunately for him, the small crowd stood directly in front of him, but by the end of the show, I noticed that he was on his feet, fist pumping in time with the rhythm while his wife helped steady him while he was upright.

There were others like him and the vast majority of them much more able-bodied and able to rock under their own power.

The only people I noticed under the age of 30 were staff, allowing those of us who were older to have the night completely to ourselves without worrying about how silly we all must have looked to the bar staff.

Whatever. It's not like they had anything of substance. I caught one bartender gleefully explaining to two patrons how his roommate likes to pee while standing down.

Back in front of the stage, a middle-aged man with long hair and glasses was a fist-pumping machine, requiring him at one point to grab hold of his glasses because he was rocking with a bit too much enthusiasm. He looked like a cross between Garth from Wayne’s World and metal filmmaker Sam Dunn and I can say without any hesitation or sarcasm that this man was my hero throughout the entire 90 minute set.

Another gentlemen in the middle of the crowd established enough space around him to air guitar for the duration. His grin was a mile wide at certain points, and his eyes were glued shut as he shredded on his make-believe Gibson. 

About a dozen or so members of the most faithful audience comprised the entire front row and sang along to every song. Not once did they leave their positions for the entire night, not even for a bathroom break for the new material.

Saxon did not disappoint. They hit every single classic song they were supposed to including the evening’s anthem “This Town Rocks” from 1983’s Power and the Glory and the title track to Denim & Leather was brought out early.

The band was chugging along by this point as the track was noticeably faster than the album version, which speaks nicely for a bunch of old farts.

By the time the band had tackled three or four songs from the setlist, Byford opened it up for requests and received an earful back. Midway through the set, Biff tore up the actual setlist from the floor, admitting “Well, looks like we won’t be needing this anymore.”

He then put the torn pieces into his mouth and pretended to eat them.

In fact, if we were to believe Byford, “This Town Rocks” hadn’t been played live in 4 years, but the band delivered the proto-thrash cliché with enough conviction to fool anybody.

The newer material sounds better live than the studio counterparts, even the songs that featured an inexplicable pre-recorded introduction. I’m sure that such decisions are pretty seamless in larger venues, but for a Tuesday night in Waterloo, Iowa, such pauses seemed silly, considering how the band had nowhere to go when the lights were cut for maximum effect.

At one point, guitarist Quinn mocked the canned introduction by acting as the crowd’s conductor during a recorded choir, pretending it was the audience singing the bit. The band would have been better served by truly leaving the script entirely and focusing on the way things were originally done back in ’76 when the band hit every small joint possible to get their name out, keeping each tune loud and uncluttered.

For the most part, that is exactly what they did.

Early in the set, Byford turned his back to the crowd and faced the drummer, shaking his now-silver mane while Doug Scarratt soloed. When the shredding was over, Biff quickly turned back to face the crowd and looked a bit startled when he faced Scarratt’s back side directly in front of him, evidently forgetting that the other musicians didn’t have far to go during their moments in the spotlight.

"We choo-choo choose you, Waterloo! Here's a song about a train!"

Bassist Carter remained a constant source of joy and enthusiasm throughout the entire performance. As the band’s youngest member at 46 years old, Nibbs wore a smile at every chance, looking like there was nowhere on Earth that he’d rather be than in Waterloo, Iowa playing with Saxon.

All band members seemed to genuinely appreciate the obvious dedication shown by the small crowd, performing a set that hinted at its spontaneity while still remaining tight and professional. What makes this point so impressive to me is, again, the fact that there’s barely an off day in their current tour schedule. They’re hitting nearly every venue that will host them regardless of size with the goal to make this jaunt as profitable as they can. And, let’s not mince words here, they’re old. I don’t think I could handle a schedule as grueling at my age, but here is a group of guys that have even a few decades on me and they’re still bashing out some pretty gnarly speed without a hint of pretention or self-pity.

They are a blue-collar band from England who understand that their line of work still requires a bit of heavy lifting, while still having enough pride to make every gig count. It was an example of self-preservation, but with a notion that they still have a few years left to correct their misguided attempts at a more commercial sound beginning with ‘85’s Innocence Is No Excuse.

From that moment on, Saxon witnessed their fan base diminish and they have been working hard ever since to regain some of those lost numbers by focusing on only the basic elements that brought them notoriety to begin with.

It must be clear to them that they’ve never reach the same levels of popularity like a few of their peers were able to achieve, but Saxon’s salt-of-the-Earth persona is a breath of fresh air in a club filled with cigarette smoke.

“There’s nowhere for us to go, so if you don’t mind, we’re just going to keep playing through.” Byford explained towards the end. “Besides, what are we supposed to do? Hide behind the amps for a few minutes and then come back on stage?”

It was a logical explanation, along the same lines as his earlier comment to everyone who kept screaming for “Princess Of The Night” to be patient. They had the song tucked in at the very end.

For those of you not familiar with the Saxon song, “Princess Of The Night,” it is not your typical heavy metal song. Its pace is quick and its riff is memorable, but what makes the song such required listening is its content.

“Princess Of The Night” is a song about a train.

Let me be blunt and say that while “Princess Of The Night” is sheer perfection in terms of heavy metal’s worth, Saxon was also capable of everything that is wrong about the genre. The band’s entire oeuvre is realistically hit or miss, but for a brief window of time, say 1980 to 1983, Saxon worked a lather-rinse-repeat formula of blue collar horsepower that endures to this day.

They spent an inordinate time gazing outside the van windows and writing about nearly every conceivable amount of transportation. So while every other metal band found solace in a lady’s bosom, bands like Saxon, Motorhead, and Maiden made records about other items of interest in a working man’s life.

For Saxon, that passion seems to lie in the manner in which we get from one place to another.

The next place for the band, by the way, was in Texas, so if anything the Waterloo date served as the gas money needed to get to Dallas with a stop at a Residence Inn along the way. They must have wanted to leave in a hurry, as the band quickly left via the “beer garden” leaving a pair of beefy bouncers to shoo away potential fans who wanted to get close to them.

Still, it was strange that the band didn’t hang for a while after the show, taking advantage of the dedicated crowd. They were loyal to the genre, sporting t-shirts for bands like Accept and Y&T-two outfits also still working the circuit-and they would have easily dug out the wallet for an autographed cd or poster. Why the band left the ‘Loo so quickly while leaving real money on the table is curious.

Again, this is hardly a complaint and I don’t feel guilty that probably the majority of patrons from that Tuesday night had come and gone before “Saxton” hit the stage. Their loss (maybe their age too, all things considered) turned out to make a more ideal setting for old farts at play. Saxon certainly deserved a larger crowd than what they received on a weeknight, but those that did make it will probably count it as a memorable encounter with a still potent old member of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

Black Sabbath - Born Again

Born Again was Black Sabbath’s third (or forth) attempt at rejuvenating the Black Sabbath moniker with a new lead vocalist, this time featuring former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillian.

The pairing sounds great on paper, but Born Again is proof that lightning does not strike twice-even when the men in the clouds are responsible for two of the most important hard rock bands in history.

Born Again begins with “Trashed,” another one of Gillian’s “shit that happened while we were recording the album” lyrics (see the much, much better “Smoke On The Water”). Tony Iommi shows signs of Side One/Track One fatigue (typically, his shinning moment) by lifting an almost identical riff to “Neon Nights,” the first song of Dio's tenure.

“Trashed” details an incident where Gillian arrived to the Manor Studios drunk, took Bill Ward’s car and crashed it on a closed go cart track on the grounds. Before you start laughing that he wrecked the thing on a fucking go cart track, add to your visuals the sight of said car exploding into flames as Gillian walked from the wreckage.

The close encounter with death didn’t seem to impact Gillian, who uses the lessons he learned from the incident to "thank Mr. Miracle" (this is a Black Sabbath album, after all, no thanking the Lord) and getting back to some additional inebriation.

The prose was captured on a napkin, including this intriguing couplet:

"Went back to the bar and hit the bottle again but there was no tequila
And started on the whiskey just to steady our brains ‘cuz there was no tequila.”

Evidently, Gillian was too drunk to realize that he ended one line with the exact same one he just finished.

“Trashed,” by the way, is the best song on Born Again.

When you’re faced with a brush with death, the next thing you do is follow up the song with a song about Stonehenge.

Much has been said about the pointless instrumental track “Stonehenge” and how it inspired the infamous Stonehenge stage set in Spinal Tap, but nobody seems to point out how the other instrumental track “The Dark” features a guest appearance by Chewbacca.

“Disturbing The Priest” addresses an incident where Sabbath received a bunch of complaints by a neighborhood priest while practicing at their rehearsal space. It features Gillian endlessly cackling and wailing "disturbing the prieeeeestyeaaaahhhh" repeatedly while Iommi struggles to find a riff to work with. It’s as if everyone had a good laugh coming up with the song title, but nobody thought about finishing the tune.

That’s a good representation of Born Again, a record devoid of any memorable tunes, riffs, or lyrics. It is an embarrassment to everyone involved and it suggests that all parties involved must immediately forfeit their rights from ever using the name Black Sabbath or Deep Purple again. It is the work of grown men acting like monkeys with Born Again a metaphoric turd being thrown at anyone who bought a ticket to this ammonia scented zoo.

The album artwork has correctly been singled out as one of the worst covers in the history recorded music, but the reality is that it is nothing compared to the horrorshow found on the music inside.

Black Sabbath - Never Say Die!

Things had gotten so bad for Black Sabbath during Technical Ecstasy that the members of the band had decided to replace Ozzy with the singer of Savoy Brown.

Black Sabbath’s management (Sharon’s dad) suddenly realized “Who the fuck is Savoy Brown?” and, in an effort to save their famous client, pleaded to the band to call up Ozzy and reconcile.

While the band agreed, Osbourne proved to be just as unreliable as before, telling the band that he would resume his role in Black Sabbath while having nothing to do with any of the material they may have began with his replacement vocalist.

He also advised them that he had no material of his own to provide them.

The end result is the ironically titled Never Say Die! A hodgepodge collection of spliced together song bits, questionable new musical directions and a general malaise that seemed to take hold of every member that showed up to record the proceedings.

Generally dismissed by Sabbath fans, I revisited the album as the 2013 reunion tour’s imagery utilized much of the same visual concepts of this record, while completely avoiding any of Never Say Die’s material on stage.

Is it different than any other Sabbath record? Definitely. Was this difference a result of the band’s ambivalence towards their management’s demands to shit out another record? Absolutely.

But unlistenable? Hardly.

Never Say Die! Features a very compelling display of the band throwing ideas against the wall…any idea…just so they could get to the 40 minute mark and call it a day.

Further, the band found themselves booked in a Canadian studio in the dead of winter (cheaper rates) with a dead drum room and dead ambitions.

It eerily resembles the same decision that fictional group Spinal Tap undertook when lead guitarist Nigel Tuffnel left due to “creative differences.” Like the Tap’s foray into a new direction (“Jazz Trilogy”), Sabbath hired Don Airey to tinkle some ivories, let Iommi fart around with a few jazz chords and even did the unthinkable by tapping Wil Malone to help out with arranging a brass section for “Breakout.”

The new direction and panic makes for a record that is unlike anything else in the band’s catalog, to the point that drummer Bill Ward admits “All the songs are history now” on Never Say Die’s closing track, “Swinging The Chain.”

You read correctly, Bill Ward ends the proceedings with another track that Ozzy refused to sing.

It actually begins with a rollicking  title track that ranks as good as anything else in the band’s material, and there’s at least two other tracks that will satisfy most fans of Sabbath’s early material.

It’s the controversial mellow cuts like “Air Dance” and the other keyboard-laden titles like “Johnny Blade” that remain divisive among loyal headbangers-and these tracks do require an open mind.

For a record that sounds so tempestuous on paper and so schizophrenic on the playback head, Never Say Die! can be a fascinating glimpse into what Sabbath could have sounded like had they followed some of the new directions they tentatively touched upon.

This isn’t to suggest these would have been good directions, just different.

It has aged remarkably well and is, at least, on par with another dinosaur act that experienced a similar creative dry-sell: Led Zeppelin and their final offering In Through The Out Door.

Bill Ward seemed to foreshadow how the record would be received during his vocal take, declaring “We’re sorry that it ended that way” during “Swinging The Chain.” They may have not liked the end result-and the record’s follow-up with new vocalist Ronnie James Dio is unquestionably the best Sabbath album since the locomotive roll of the band’s first four releases.

But despite its obvious flaws and drama-filled back story, Never Say Die! is an overlooked example of how good Black Sabbath could be, even when they were on life support.

Down - IV: Part One

The idea is intriguing enough: an immediate extended play designed to highlight a different facet of the band’s personality.

Unfortunately, the band in this case is Down and the personality resides firmly on the massive ego that is frontman Phil Anselmo.

Down IV: Part One (The Purple e.p.) represents the heavier side of the band, a mammoth-pace sludgefeast that wears such worthy influences like Kyuss and Saint Vitus boldly on its sleeve.

But while the production deficiencies found within the catalog of both of those bands have proven to be critical to their legacy, it was also created from a budgetary need. Neither band had much money to work with, and what they did have was usually outdated and unreliable.

This isn’t the case with Down, and while there’s nothing to suggest that these New Orleans refugees can throw money around the studio, they certainly should have enough cash on hand to deliver a properly mixed release, especially on one designed to focus on their riffage.

The e.p. begins with the slow fade in of a skull-crushing riff. It keeps building, until a minute in some nifty guitar harmonics arrive. There’s still no vocals in the mix, no bass either, and outside of the dry snare crack and dead thud of the drummer’s bass drum, hardly any dynamics to the drums.

It certainly sounds raw, to an extent, but it isn’t until Anselmo blurts out “One, two, three, GO!” that you realize how fucked up the mix really is.

Anselmo’s always been a one-trick pony when it comes to vocal ability, but on Down IV: Part One, you’d think that he’s fucking Pavarotti considering how high in the mix they’ve put his vocals. After each lazy line, Phil works up some even lazier delivery, occasionally belching out the song title for the chorus, each burp even louder in the mix than the last.

Underneath his dominance is a layer of sludge that carries no real identity or, more importantly, bite. On “Open Coffins,” Anselmo encourages his guitarists Pepper Keenan and Kirk Windstein to “Tear that shit up young son,” with every follow-up bark of “Yeah” and “That’s what I’m talking about” his mouth overtakes the amplifier, defeating any notion that shit was indeed, tore up.

What’s left is a very egocentric project that plods along at a clumsy pace, hardly adhering to its original intent and doing little to suggest that we need a sequel.

Testament - Dark Roots Of Earth

To be honest, I would rather see Testament included in the “Big 4” line-up than Anthrax. The lineage is there and, most importantly, the band has parlayed its third decade into an example that even headliners Metallica should have considered well before the submission that was Death Magnetic.

But as much as I liked Testament’s The Formation Of Damnation, there’s very little on the band’s newest album in four years-Dark Roots Of Earth- that would indicate that the time in between was spent on forging ahead on lyrical matters to match the top-notch thrash delivery.

The theme of war is packed within Dark Roots Of Earth, but good luck finding anything beyond clichéd phrases like “sea of rage,” “crimson rain,” and “raining seas of crimson rage.” Ok, I made the last one up, but just watch Billy use it for a line in Testament’s next release.

“American Hate” sounds nothing more than a ready-made soundtrack for aggro meatsticks who view war as nothing more than video games with little consequence. The inspiration, claims vocalist Chuck Billy, came after seeing video of Middle Easterners burning the American Flag.

It would take Billy just a few seconds of research to discover the similarities between our endless occupation and that of his own well-documented Native American heritage. It’s not a matter of being on the right side of politics either, but to sum up a gut-check reaction to a video specifically choreographed to rile up Americans is just plain lazy.

Almost as embarrassing is the ballad “Cold Embrace,” which was evidently included as some kind of way to break up the record’s non-stop brutal delivery. It certainly wasn’t included to feature Billy’s thin vocal style and he sings some bullshit about a mythical sleeping beauty.

If there’s anything, or anyone, that can save Darks Roots Of Earth from the weight of its hokey hawkish celebration of war, it’s guitarist Alex Skolnick’s incredible soloing. It manages to save the record during points where you become absolutely numb to the countless mentions of “hate,” dim-witted references to “liberty” and “freedom,” and confusing allusions to the American war-machine, which seem to support and criticize it simultaneously.

Dark Roots Of Earth is a lowest-common denominator metal record that places fans in the unfortunate position of having to defend Testament’s narrow-minded jingoism instead of celebrating their unquestionable abilities as one of thrash’s elder statesmen.

On second though, let’s put Overkill on the Big 4 line-up instead.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Japan's Metal Veterans Loudness Inexplicitly Release 26th Album

I don't know what is stranger, that I received this fairly unexcited press release or the fact that Loudness is still making music and set to release their 26th studio album. There is no word on if the chant "M Z A" has finally been translated so that English listeners can discover the significance of those three letters.

Hello Media,

International metal giants Loudness will release their new album EVE TO DAWN on August 14^th via FrostByte Media.  EVE TO DAWN marks the legendary Japanese band's 26^th studio album since their inception in 1981 (Loudness just celebrated their 30^th anniversary last year).  EVE TO DAWN is a spectacularly heavy opus from the "beast from the east" and is Loudness' first North American release in years.

Known for their blistering technical ability, Loudness was formed in Japan in 1981 by guitarist Akira Takasaki and late drummer Munetaka Higuchi.  With four very successful and critically-acclaimed albums under their belt in their native Japan, Loudness became the first Japanese heavy metal band to sign to a major label in the United States.  With an astonishing 26 studio albums, numerous EPs, live albums and videos, Loudness show no signs of slowing down as the band continues to tour the world extensively in support of EVE TO DAWN.  To date, Loudness has sold upwards of one million albums worldwide.   Loudness is: Minoru Niihara (vocals), Akira Takasaki (guitars), Masayoshi Yamashita (bass guitar) and Masayuki Suzuki (drums).

Please consider EVE TO DAWN for feature and album review coverage; I can give you immediate access to the album.  Loudness is available for interviews, please let me know if you would like to set something up.  For more information, please visit: www.myspace.com/loudnessisback.

Testament - The Formation Of Damnation

The reasons why San Francisco’s Testament have never been able to achieve the same notoriety as fellow Bay-area stalwarts like Metallica or Slayer could easily be spun into an intriguing story for VH1’s Behind The Music. It’s filled with medical drama, numerous line-up changes, a revolving door of record companies and more than a few creative missteps. In fact, you could even draw assumptions that the band’s lack of real commercial success is a culmination of these events. But the reality, as pointed out by their latest release The Formation Of Damnation, is that all of these events have seemed to provide the band with a creative spark, motivating the band to turn in what is their strongest effort since their initial offerings some two decades ago.

The Formation Of Damnation sounds nothing like a band navigating through a mid-life crisis. Instead, it sounds like a band believing that they can outgun any metal outfit on the block, regardless of age. Believing that you can shred heavier than everyone else is one thing; being able to deliver that bravado is another, and Testament rips with enviable ease throughout Damnation’s eleven tracks.

From start to finish, Testament takes a deep breath of the wisdom that comes with age while paying attention to how they’ll ultimately be perceived by younger audiences. Metal is a young man’s game, and while those of us up in years stick to the comforts of our familiarity with hair metal festivals in Oklahoma and endless Motley Crue reunions, the real future of metal, those currently sulking through the halls of your local high school, alienated and socially shunned, need every fucking role model they can muster. Make no mistake about it; Testament is a perfect role model, providing the disenfranchised with a blueprint of how metal bands (and fans) should enter their middle ages. And if you follow Testament’s lead, the proper way to grow old gracefully is to bang your head every step of the way.

As long as you focus on this, you may overlook the occasional lyric misfires like “The Evil Has Landed.” It’s forgivable that Testament, because of their inactivity, waited seven years after the fact to give us their 9/11 song…hell, with a great title like “The Evil Has Landed” one has to wonder why nobody has thought of a song title that fucking clever…but with lines like “So many people killed/2,974/Innocent blood spilled/Extremist fighting a holy war,” you start to wish that they’d found a more topical subject matter for their riffage.

That guitar shredding, by the way, is spectacular. There’s enough jugg-jugging, fingertapping, and dexterous tempo changes to please any denim-clad fan and it’s done at speeds that should impress all ages of thrash metal supporters.

Credit vocalist Chuck Billy for bridging the generational gap. He alternates between traditional metal vocalizations to modern death growls, providing Testament with a wide texture of sounds. It’s impressive, particularly considering his age, the polyp-inducing nature of this style, and the fact that Billy battled a rare form of cancer not too long ago that most assuredly took some toll on his energy level.

Let Damnation be considered his declaration of a clean bill of health then. “I stand tall defiantly!” he barks on the title track, and nearly every song afterwards continues with the vitality and terror of a man half his age.

Yes, the middle section of Damnation is as good as metal can get, setting a fairly high bar for the more notable Cali thrash metal outfits, including those that are currently working double-time to return back to a time when their integrity wasn’t questioned.

So let’s not pull any punches here: replace Testament’s name on Damnation with Metallica and we’d all be talking about that band’s amazing return to form. But we’re not; we’re talking about their low-rent neighbors who’ve been through enough drama for their own Some Kind Of Monster documentary and have emerged from it with an album with such joie de vivre that it will be tough to match. 

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Scorpions - Lovedrive

If Animal Magnetism caught my ear, Blackout confirmed the hard rock abilities of Germany’s Scorpions. Of course, this was before I had any knowledge of their 70’s output. This was at the point in the band relationship where one begins the awesome task of digging into an established band’s back catalog.

For many fans, that can only be a rewarding experience if the previous work happens to be good as isn’t too far from the excitement of what caught your ear to begin with.

Thankfully with the Scorpions, you really can’t go too wrong with picking up anything from their older material when you’re looking for further listening. Aside from the debut, which is misguided weak-sauce, the band gets progressively better, and they barely miss a beat when they lost their incredible lead guitarist Uli-Jon Roth towards the end of the decade.

That’s where I started. Under the recommendation of a friend, I was steered towards Lovedrive. I learned later that this was the album that began to get some consistent airplay across America, particularly with the opener “Loving You Sunday Morning” and the infectiously silly ballad, “Holiday.”

I remember thinking that Lovedrive was not as intense as the album’s I had heard, but in the years since I’ve grown fonder of some of the album’s tracks that I wasn’t too keen on upon first listen.

Lyrically, the band continues to string broken English with common themes like loose women, touring, and missing the loose women from back in Germany when they’re on tour. After a bit, the humor of some of the couplets transition from hilarious to hilariously awesome.

Particularly on “Another Piece Of Meat,” an ode to a Japanese fan who told Klaus “I’ve been too long alone/I need hot love, you know/And I need it now.” The entire song plays out like it was written by someone who’s never had sex in their life and the fact that the potty-mouthed chick was from Japan is the equivalent of a thirteen year-old saying that their girlfriend lives in Indiana.

Yes, I want the wallet sized school picture of this woman, Klaus. Prove it.

More incredulous is the part where Klaus tries to make up for the fact that his partner only refers to him as another piece of meat, bragging “She was screaming for more blood/Loved it more than any slut/I couldn’t stand it!”

But you consider the language barrier-a recurring excuse for Scorpions-you begin to see how utterly innocent these songwriters are. The band simply takes their second language (third, maybe, if you consider Tokyo Tapes) and tries to add provocative English words together that phonetically rhyme without fully realizing how utterly ridiculous they really sound  together.

God bless ‘em for trying, and God bless ‘em for coming up with the amount of riffage that they do for such unintentionally funny words.

Lovedrive is a surprisingly tentative affair as the band tiptoes around new guitarist Mathias Jabs, even letting  younger brother Michael Schenker guests as a guitarist for a few tracks just as a precaution.

All of this must have led to an awful amount of ambivalence when it came time to collect enough songs for the record. At one point, even “Is There Anybody There,” a misguided stab at reggae, finds its way on to the album.

They’d get more comfortable with this line-up for the next album, and they’d find enormous success around the corner. Lovedrive is the first Scorpions record that points the way to their commercial zenith while doing little to damage the high reputation of Uli Jon Roth’s era of the band where they used brute force to get your attention.

The cover is certainly attention grabbing to say the least, but there are hints throughout Lovedrive that show how their formula for a U.S. Arachnid invasion is proving to be successful.

KK Downing Quits Judas Priest

Well this is a shocker.

I admit I haven’t been following the news of Judas Priest for a while as I just assumed that everything was ok in their camp and the band would have a few records and tours left in their heads and hearts until it was time to retire.

Evidently, as early as Christmas last year, the band had some inner shake-ups, to the point where guitarist K.K. Downing approached Priest vocalist about retiring from the veteran heavy metal band.

A quick search of Blabbermouth.net revealed a conflicting timeline of the events.

As early as November of last year, KK was announcing that Priest was gearing up for another world tour in 2011.

By December, it was announced further that the 2011 outing would be their final world tour, entitled “Epitaph.” This would have been around the time when Halford and Downing met to go over the details of the tour, the visuals, etc. Downing was also speaking about the anniversaries of Point Of Entry (30 years) and Painkiller (20 years). Why he decided to include Point Of Entry as a point of discussion is beyond me, since that album sucks balls.

On February of this year, Downing was still speaking about the final world tour, proclaiming that the band may continue to release new material after the tour was over

“As for the future,” he explained, “we probably need the help of Nostradamus!” Slyly referencing the shitty double album Nostradamus that Priest released a few years ago and have been hinting that the band would perform the album in its entirety at some point, to the 300 fans who actually believe the album is decent.

But on April 21, KK released a statement on his website stating, “There has been an ongoing breakdown in (sic) working relationship between myself, elements of the band, and the band’s relationship for some time.”

In other words, it’s a conflict over money.

The band went on to further state that would continue with the “Epitaph Farewell Tour” with a new guitarist while still suggesting that a new album is still in the works.

Sorry, but you don’t have Priest without Halford (which they did, if you remember Ripper Owens) and the same goes if you don’t have the twin guitar attack of Downing/Tipton) and you sure as shit don’t book a “Farewell Tour” and sell tickets to it when you’re in the middle of a dispute with one of the original members.

You pull the plug on those plans and address the issue.

And if the issue can’t be resolved, you end the band.

Drummer Scott Harris-ironically a member who replaced someone else-mentions in a quick interview that “the fans want us to continue.” But I can’t think of anyone who is looking forward to an older Priest (who haven’t released a decent album since Painkiller twenty years ago) going out on the road under the pretense of a “final” tour.



That’s not a “final” tour, that’s a “Contractual Obligation” tour or a “Last Dash For Money” tour. It’s certainly not one that enhances your legacy or leaves fans with a good feeling that Priest is nearing the end of their time together on a high note.

Who knows who's to blame here, and there's certainly no chance of finding the answer since it's pretty obvious that the band-including KK himself-have been entirely honest about this whole thing to begin with.

Classical Vocal Instructor Analyzes Five Metal Singers

The list doesn't surprise me much and it explains why I am a fan of most of the singers that she has good things to say about.

The "she" is question is Claudia Friedlander, a New York City vocal teacher who specializes in opera. Her opinions were solicited from Invisible Oranges a few months ago, a summary of which appears below.

The two vocalists she seems most enthralled with are Ronnie James Dio and Bruce Dickenson.

Of Dickenson: "There is a visceral dramatic intensity driving this singing. Many rock and metal singers are tenors who sustain much higher, much longer than operatic tenors are ever required to." and for Dio, she compares him to Queen's Freddie Mercury, stating "This is another very fine singer. His voice is so naturally resonant...Like the first singer, he performs with perfect legato, clear diction, and a consistent, organic vibrancy."

She offered praise for Rob Halford, but admitted he was "the only one I really wish I could get my hands on. He demonstrates several mad skills, but they aren’t well-integrated. It doesn’t matter so much because he is so committed, expressive, and musical, but I could have helped him do it easier and better."

Ha! The metal god needs a vocal instructor!

Actually, the vocal part she listened to is from Sad Wings Of Destiny, probably Priest's best album, but one that was recorded very early in their career.

I'm sure Halford has been through a few vocal coaches since then when money was hard to come by for food, let alone vocal instructors.

But she offers a bit of hesitation for King Diamond, one of metal's premier screamers, suggesting that some of his technique benefits from studio trickery.

And then there's Ozzy Osbourne, a vocalist she's not familiar with and not a fan of. She exclaims how it made her throat tight when she listened to "War Pigs." "The entire range of his singing is contained within a single octave," she observed, "with the exception of the moment when he yells “Oh Lord!” a little higher, in my opinion the only quasi-free vocal sound on the entire track."

While technically misguided, "War Pigs" is pure, throaty brilliance.

I would have loved to hear her take on "Changes."

A nod to Cousin J for the lead and Invisible Oranges for the article quotes.

The Birth Of Heavy Metal

It may not mean anything to you, but today is a very important day to any fan of heavy metal. On this day, forty years ago Black Sabbath released their debut album and with it, invented the genre itself.
Black Sabbath may not be metal’s finest hour and it’s arguably not even the band’s best moment. But when you’re considering groundbreaking achievements and you realize that everything before it were mere building blocks, then you certainly must admire the house that these four young men from Birmingham, England managed to create with Black Sabbath.
When you reside in a dead-end town, the reminders of your limitation become a daily occurrence. Thanks to The Beatles, Black Sabbath discovered that their one chance to escape might come with music. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t very talented and even less good looking. But the Beatles planted a seed of possibility, and that’s all they really needed to get things started.
So after tasting what their future would probably look like while working at local factories (except Ozzy, who would prove to be unemployable), the four young men got together to work out their frustrations of the day through music.
Unfortunately, their music was merely a weak attempt at the blues chords they picked up here and their. It was so pedestrian that people barely took notice.
Until bassist Geezer Butler noticed how the lines at the theatre got a little bit longer whenever they showed horror movies. What if they incorporated some of those very same spooky elements into their music? It was worth a shot and, luckily for the rest of the band, Geezer himself had an affection for black magic, movie monsters, and the dark forests of English mythology.
Also helping the band was a tragic accident involving guitarist Tony Iommi while he was working at the factory. He cut off the tips of two of his fingers, which caused him to approach the guitar a little bit differently. For the first two Sabbath albums, he used a lighter gauge strings to assist with his injury and then eventually began loosening the strings to a lower tuning, giving the guitar a menacing bite.
He remembered a chord progression that he’d heard in church one, applied it to his Gibson SG and created “the devil’s interval,” a musical tritone that they applied to their signature tune, “Black Sabbath.”
All of this talk of things that went bump in the night appealed to Ozzy, who suddenly began to find a muse in Geezer’s dark book collection. Meanwhile, drummer Bill Ward found all of this newfound inspiration as a great excuse to beat the shit out of his drum kit, hitting the skins like they were the skulls of every boss who belittled him, every teacher who said he’d amount to nothing, and every asshole in Birmingham who commented on his haphazard appearance.
I’m sure they didn’t even realize what they’d done after the album was released. Not only were the members of Black Sabbath not the smartest lads on the block, they were immediately met with critical disdain and a bit of dismissal from their own peers.
Lester Bangs strongly panned the effort, incorrectly associating the debut as a mediocre version of Cream. He’d later see the light-or darkness, as it were-but his review began a tradition of making fun of Black Sabbath’s perceived dimness and the fans that flocked in droves to bear witness. The fact is, Black Sabbath were probably awful students, but history has proven their instincts to be a much more worthy counterbalance to anyone with a higher education.
Black Sabbath is the first chapter in metal’s collegiate textbook. It was released on Friday the 13th in 1970 as a simpleton joke created by some “clever” record executive, but its vitality was clearly beyond the grasp of those who saw a quick buck when it was released. Forty years later, it still sounds heavy. More importantly, it still inspires. Not with just those who align themselves with metal’s dark aggression, but to anyone who dreams of escaping a dead end job, a limited town, or the elite oppressors who feel lineage prevents others from obtaining similar opportunities.

These Go To Eleven

I recently did a review for a newly acquired purchase of Rhino’s Heavy Metal Box. The review is over at Glorious Noise, but I wanted to do a little companion piece here, sort of an “it’d be cool if the box set had this” list.
Without getting into the usual suspects (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, etc.), I thought it would be good to throw out a couple of tracks that would have added to the set for me. Consider that these tracks are by no means scientifically considered; I don’t imagine they would have much relevance for anyone except me and my reasons for inclusion are entirely superficial.
Motley Crue “Shout At The Devil”
I didn’t even notice the Crue was missing until I got the thing and started listening to it. I kept expect to hear something, fuck, even “Home Sweet Home,” but no. There is not a goddamn Crue song to be found here and those pieces of shits should be ridiculed for not being included. I can only imagine that it has something to do with money as they obviously parlayed financial struggles into a superficial reunion tour, even though they had to prop up Mick Mars throughout the entire run.
Seriously, you can’t discuss 80’s metal, include a piece on the entire Sunset Strip scene and not have a fucking song by Motley Crue! I remember Brad Brode coming to school in ’82 and showing a bunch of people at lunch a rock magazine with an ad for Too Fast For Love. It was based on the same picture that they used for the record sleeve: the one where all the members are dressed up all leathery in front of a huge pentagram. That image alone was enough for Brad to go “I’m going to get this” and, true to his word, he did. We went over to his house after he got it and I think I may have been the only one turned off by Vince Neil’s voice and Roy Thomas Baker’s strange production values. It sounded much weaker than I expected. When you have pictures of the band posing in leather, fire and pentagrams, you logically expect them to be totally brutal and not glammy. They won me back with Shout At The Devil and I did eventually come around to Too Fast, but Shout remains the band’s pinnacle and is deserving of some inclusion on Heavy Metal Box.
Autograph-“Turn Up The Radio”
I know, I know. Its total cheese and very little meat. This hard-rock anthem was (obviously) a one-hit wonder, but it was one of those songs that, when you heard it, you knew it would be huge. I went to a kegger once during high school out at this place called the sand pits just south of town next to the Des Moines river. It was like that kegger scene in Dazed & Confused except Autograph’s “Turn Up The Radio” was playing as I walked up to the party. Regardless of how stupid this song is, you’ve got to admit, that’s a near-perfect celluloid moment.
Helix-“Rock You”
See “Turn Up The Radio.” Another kegger, another anthem. This time it was indoors and someone had the good sense to throw in a Helix cassette. Perhaps a little more rockin’ than Autograph, but just as stupid. With it’s moronic chant of “Gimmie an R-O-C-K! Whacha got? (Rock!) And Whatach gonna do? (Rock You!),” and a name that’s equally stupid (Helix? Like a three-dimensional twist or a DNA helix?), you get exactly what you’d expect with a song called “Rock You.” I vaguely remember the video for this and, if I recall correctly, the lead singer had a tooth missing.
Def Leppard-“No No No”
I’d even take “Let It Go,” “High ‘n’ Dry,” “Lady Strange”…but “No No No” reminds me of yet another party (see a pattern?). This one was Bobby H.’s, a next-door neighbor that loved Kiss and other things metal. His parents were out of town and his older sister “supervised” a makeshift drinking party. For one partygoer, I’ll never forget this, the sound of Def Leppard’s High ‘n’ Dry album was enough to get him to sit on the couch in his denim jacket and bang his head in time to the music. Bobby was playing the record version, and at the end of “No No No,” there was a lock-groove where Joe Elliot’s yell of “No!” is repeated over and over, without stopping. This didn’t stop our drunken metalhead from trying to match him, stopping only when someone removed the needle and replaced the record. I think they replaced it with Kiss’ Lick It Up and I left the party as a result.
Kix-“Midnite Dynamite”
If you’re going to include fucking Poison in the Heavy Metal Box then for fuckssake, you’ve got to include Kix. Those guys completely lifted Kix’s stage show, which sucks because Poison couldn’t hold a candle to Kix musically and the only thing that brought Brett Michaels more notoriety than Kix vocalist Steve Whiteman is that he was cuter. So while Poison moved to L.A. to get closer to the major label’s tit, Kix continued to tour up and down the East Coast, endlessly and thanklessly paying their dues with little national recognition. A few of us did notice, particularly after one of the music channels played a Kix club performance during their support of Cool Kids. That album doesn’t rock as hard as Midnite Dynamite, which should’ve sold more copies than Look What The Cat Dragged In.
Any one of those songs would’ve appeased me more than, say, Manowar which is blessed with a spot on Heavy Metal Box with a song that contains the line “May your sword stay wet/Like a young girl in her prime.” Horrific. And metal shouldn’t be horrific. Stupid? Sometimes, but never to the point where the band is trying to convey some kind of Medieval imagery and is forced to include a line like that.

Jake E. Lee Live At Guitar Center

Thanks to YouTube and the watchful eye of a GloNo regular, some ingenious dude has matched guitar heros with recording of awful soloing. Masterfully dubbed, may I suggest the triple-neck work of Steve Vai? The Eddie Van Halen is delightful! But for my money, the Jake E. Lee performance (and Ozzy's lone clapping above a recording of an indifferent audience) is my personal favorite.

Watch The Damned!

I don’t care what you think: Accept’s song “Balls To The Wall” is fucking awesome. It’s the video that nearly eliminated the song, and perhaps the band’s, credibility.
The notion that a short, fat, and ugly German leading a few additional ragtag Krauts behind him could possibly create one of the decade’s balls-out metal songs is pretty unbelievable.
But if you’re able to suppress the image of a cheap dummy riding a makeshift demolition ball into a Styrofoam wall, then you might actually hear the smart and brutal metal within.
Instead of subscribing to the formulaic metal themes, Accept decided to tackle a heady subject matter such as the oppressed rising up against the establishment
For them to actually make such an epic statement, the band had to enlist two important ingredients to make it work.
The first is the riff. Guitarist Jörg Fischer creates a memorable riff that it’s hard to remember what the solo sounds like. To remind you, it’s a brief and spastic series of quick trills and exploding rushes that is neither linear nor well thought out. Immediately before it folds on top of its own expectation, Fischer cuts the shit and begins riffing the memorable rhythm part over again.
Then, in an example of one of the best production tricks in all of metal, a chorus of Germaine bass and baritone vocals slowly rises up through the mix. It’s just a simple, repetitive “Ah ah ah,” but there’s so much reverb caked into the chanting that it sounds as massive as Hitler youth rally.
Lurking over everything else is Udo Dirkschneider, a vertically challenged, chubby dude with close-cropped blonde hair and a penchant for camouflage clothes.
Udo sounds utterly menacing, alternating between screams (“Watch the damned!”), hoarse whispers (“Make the world scared”) and primordial grunts. The way he matter-of-factly declares “Lets plug a bomb in everyone’s ass” was perfectly nihilistic and it worked nicely against a Ronald Reagan backdrop, and it works even better in the Bush II era.
It’s that video. That fucking retarded video. It completely erased every positive memory that you may have for the music and it happened to be the one format that most people remember the song from.
But give a chance to listen to it again, as loud as you can and witness how one of the most visually unappealing bands in metal made one of the most perfectly adorned song in metal.