I’m switching up my post format for this week only due to both music news and a few scheduling conflicts with myself. There will be no Album of the Week this go around, everything will be back to normal next week.
This week’s song highlight is a single from the second W.A.S.P. album The Last Command. The sad occasion to mark this is the death last week of drummer Steve Riley, which I’ll discuss in more detail after tackling the song itself.
W.A.S.P. had made quite a scene with their 1984 debut record and were primed to keep the momentum rolling on with album number two. One personnel change was made – drummer Tony Richards was out and replaced by the aforementioned Steve Riley. The rest of the band was the same – Blackie Lawless on vocals and bass, Chris Holmes and Randy Piper on guitar.
The Last Command released in October of 1985 with Blind In Texas as its lead single. While the single didn’t make much mainstream chart noise, the album did go platinum and the band was bringing in a little cash to go along with its notoriety as one of the “Filthy Fifteen.”
Blind In Texas is a big and loud song, as huge as the state it’s named for. It kicks off from the first note and doesn’t let up once. The entire thing is about getting hammered and shouting out cities in Texas, there is absolutely zero deeper meaning to this song and nothing to be read into. It was one of many early W.A.S.P. Cuts that translated well live, hard to beat a straightforward rocker about getting messed up.
The song is great and full of energy, but the occasion to bring this one up is rather sad. On October 24, 2023, drummer Steve Riley died at age 67 after a long battle with pneumonia.
Riley got going in the Los Angeles scene in 1984 with Keel and their debut album The Right To Rock. Riley was quickly approached to fill the vacant drum position with W.A.S.P., where he would play on two studio albums and one live record. After departing W.A.S.P., Riley was almost immediately taken on in L.A. Guns. He would hang around that group for quite while and eventually wound up in his own version of the band these past few years. A new Riley’s L.A. Guns release had been planned for a 2024 release.
Steve Riley himself had said he was pretty lucky to wind up in both “waves” of the 1980’s rock and metal coming out of L.A. His contributions to that were immense, as a drummer of good caliber he played on music still remembered nearly 40 years later. While he has sadly passed on, his music will continue to live on.
The live set this week explores a box set released in 2002, but the material itself goes back to the earlier days of the band. The first material is the BBC Archives, which serve as a compilation of a few different early Maiden gigs. This is also the only official full-length live album to feature someone besides Bruce Dickinson singing, though Bruce is also on this one too.
This set was released as part of a 6-disc box set called Eddie’s Archive. The set was released in 2002 and reissued a bit later as the first edition was limited and people were clamoring for it. 4 of the 6 discs featured previously unreleased live material while the other 2 discs were a B-sides compilation. This live set and the B-sides comp are only on offer physically in this box as of now. This is digitally available on streaming services, so no one has to hunt down a collectible box set to hear this stuff.
And, as I was dumb and never bought the Eddie’s Archive box when I had plenty of opportunity to 20 or so years ago, this is the one live Maiden album I don’t own in physical form. I’ve only heard this stuff in bits I’ve played off YouTube or wherever over the years. Now, the Eddie box is not actually horribly expensive, it did not spike in price the same way some other rare Maiden offerings have. I may pull the trigger on one as this is one of my big collecting regrets. It’s always possible this live set gets a vinyl press at some point since it never has and the other live set from the box got one last year, but we won’t know until we know.
This does have some cover art, it is Eddie tearing up a BBC building. Pretty cool stuff. This one has a whole bunch of songs so I also snagged a pic of the back cover for easy reference to the tracklist.
Today’s live set has 4 separate gigs on it so I’ll be breaking each thing down by section.
BBC Radio 1 Friday Rock Show – November 14, 1979
Up first is a 4 song set Maiden did for the BBC. This was just before Maiden signed their record deal with EMI and about 5 months before the release of the debut album. The band played songs that would all be on the record – Iron Maiden, Running Free, the instrumental Transylvania and Sanctuary (Sanctuary was not universally available when the album first released)
Looking through the line-up for this gig is pretty interesting. Steve Harris, the bassist and founding member, is of course around. Dave Murray is in on guitar and Paul Di’Anno is the singer. It is Doug Sampson on drums, who did figure on a few other early recordings but would leave the band before they set out to do the first full-length. Also on guitar is Tony Parsons, who was in the band for about two months, this gig was probably right before he was sent away. Mick Wall’s Run To The Hills biography mentions Parsons as a “temporary guitarist” and says not much more about him.
This is a really good sounding set, the material here doesn’t sound radically different from how it would be presented on the album. The band was pretty well primed at this point even with turnover in the second guitar position. The recording quality is very nice, no shock since it was a radio broadcast. It’s a neat little bonus find from the earlier days of the band, not a ton of stuff exists to document Maiden back then.
Reading Festival – August 28, 1982
We now jump ahead a few years and into the Bruce Dickinson era. This was the band’s festival set and is nearly complete, only a cover of ZZ Top’s Tush is left off. We are into the first “classic” Maiden line-up here, so Harris, Murray, Smith and Dickinson with Clive Burr on drums.
This is a pretty cool set to have, it’s the complete set from the day. It is not a 100% fine-tuned performance in terms of production, it is soundboard level stuff and the music is a bit noisy and all over the place. It’s not bad at all, it’s just not “mixed” or whatever and that may not have been a real option depending on source material anyway. It does document the performance pretty well as it probably sounded then.
Bruce is pretty powerful here, he really stands out in his performance and at a few points is almost too much of a human air raid siren over the rest of the music. He has a pretty funny and insightful rant between Run To The Hills and Children Of The Damned about the Satanic Panic surrounding Maiden at the time, he invites the Vicar of Huddersfield to shove his head into a toilet over comments made about Maiden.
The setlist is nice, at the time the band had 3 albums to work with so they did. It is very heavy on The Number Of The Beast, as 6 songs make appearances here. And, as usual, it’s worth mentioning that Hallowed Be Thy Name sounds especially awesome here. Overall this is a cool set to have for this fan-collectible release.
Reading Festival – August 23, 1980
Disc 2 goes straight back to the Reading Festival, except this time it’s two years prior. This means a different line-up, this is Harris, Di’Anno, Murray and Burr, also with Dennis Stratton on guitar. This is not a complete set, the band played 10 that day but only 6 are on this recording. I assume that CD length is the reason for the trimming.
This is a pretty good sounding set. It is a bit rough in spots in terms of recording quality, but still a perfectly listenable presentation. The more rough and tumble Di’Anno era stuff sounds fine in a less than sterling recording environment so it all pans out. The song list is good, nice to see Killers on there several months before the album released. Maiden were already playing their stuff a bit off the rails tempo-wise here so that was a thing from the get go, apparently.
There isn’t a ton of Di’Anno era live stuff out, just stuff scattered across a few EP’s and single B-sides. Other than this release, it’s all bootlegs for the band’s early years so it’s nice to have this as an official release, even if it’s not exemplary sound quality.
Monsters Of Rock – August 20, 1988
The final piece of this live offering is a selection of songs from Maiden’s headlining stint at Castle Donington in 1988. There are 8 songs presented here, whereas the band actually played 19 that day. It would take 2 CDs to cover just this set and also there’s no clue if the source material allowed for that, so we get a portion instead.
It’s also easier to truncate this since there is a full release to chronicle this tour – this is the Seventh Tour of a Seventh Tour timeframe, so the Maiden England release does cover this material. It does seem more fitting to offer up some stuff from different time periods on this release rather than rehash the same ground again.
The line-up here is the band’s classic formation, with Harris, Dickinson, Murray, Smith and Nicko McBrain on drums. It’s also true that this is their current line-up sans Janick Gers.
Everything here sounds really good, it’s no shock that this is the best-captured performance of this release. It is a good selection of songs, a mix of stuff from the most recent album and stone cold classics were chosen here. Maiden are in top form here and this last portion of the live offering is a real treat to end on.
Overall the BBC Archives offer a very cool selection of material – the only real glimpse of Paul Di’Anno live material beyond early EP stuff, an early Bruce festival and then capping off with the prime performance in 1988. This isn’t the definitive live album by any stretch, nor was it meant to be. This is an offering to fans who always clamor for more and were given a very nice set spanning a few different portions of the band’s career, and some live stuff from band members who are long, long gone. This is exactly what it was supposed to be and it’s a very well-assembled offering. Even if not fully “produced,” it’s easily a good enough sound to fully enjoy.
Next week sees the other live portion of the Eddie’s Archive box, which oh by the way might be the greatest live set of the band’s entire career.
I was just talking about Robert Palmer a bit yesterday so I might as well have at it and go over his best-known song. While this song is well known there is still a fair bit of interesting background to go through on it.
Addicted To Love was the second single from Palmer’s late 1985 album Riptide. The album sold well but that isn’t radically important in comparison to the massive success of this song, which was the driving force behind the album sales. This was a US number one hit and would be Palmer’s only actual chart topping single, though he got very close a few other times. It also hit number one in Australia and charted highly in several other countries.
If you think the band was Robert Palmer with a handful of extremely attractive women dressed as mannequins, well, you would be wrong. A bunch of people worked on the album with Palmer, but he would have some assistance from old bandmates in a group called Power Station. From there on this song are Tony Thompson, Bernard Edwards and Andy Taylor, yes that Andy Taylor from Duran Duran.
And this song was originally conceived as something extra – it was supposed to be a duet with Chaka Khan and was recorded as such. Khan’s management demanded that her parts be removed from the song because she had a few big hits around that time and they didn’t want her being overexposed.
It’s true that Khan had a lot going on at the time, she’d lit the charts up with her own songs as well as a guest shot on Steve Winwood’s hit single Higher Love. But I’d say her management dropped the ball here, as I don’t see the problem with having yet another number one hit to your name.
Addicted To Love is pretty simple to figure out, the song’s theme is spelled out in the title. Being hooked on love is a real thing and songs about love are what move a lot of people to listen to music so it all comes together pretty well. “Love as a drug” is something I guess is established by science but I don’t know much about science so I’ll leave it at that. Coupled with the smooth pop rock of the music, this is a winning formula right out of the gate.
The song did fantastically but many remember the music video. Palmer appeared on stage with a group of models who are acting as his backing band. This got everyone’s attention and Palmer would use the “girls in black” for his next few videos. Also, everyone and their mother either spoofed or copied the gimmick for their own videos over the course of the next several years. This remains one of the most iconic videos of the 1980’s and was nominated for the MTV Video of the Year, but it lost out – that was the same year Dire Straits did the Money For Nothing video and there’s no beating that.
This would be the peak of Robert Palmer’s success, though he’d still be lingering toward the top of the singles charts for awhile. His 1988 song Simply Irresistible was another massive tune but was kept out of the number one slot by some song called Sweet Child O’ Mine. Palmer would go on touring, recording and reuniting briefly with his Power Station bandmates until 2003 when he died of a heart attack at 54.
This song was everywhere just as I was growing up and really starting to pay attention to music. Though to be honest one didn’t have to venture far to find this on a radio or TV. This is truly one of the definitive cuts of the ’80’s and a magnificent time capsule of that period.
Last Saturday I got the chance to do something I don’t do a ton of these days, that is go buy a few records. Thanks to a big sale I was able to get more than a few things for really damn cheap and so I figured I’d post my haul here since it’s the first time I’ve bought enough at once to justify a haul post. I could keep better track of what trickles in over a few months and do them that way, but that would require more effort than I’m apparently capable of.
It’s not all great news, as one of the local stores here has to relocate. I don’t know the full story but it sounds like maybe it has something to do with crazy commercial real estate prices these days, but again I don’t truly know. Heavy Heads Records has been a real good shop for me over the past few years, I’ve scored several of my prize albums like the Japanese Queensryche pressings and the Japanese pressing of Iron Maiden’s Powerslave from there.
As anyone who collects music knows, it’s not at all easy to move a music collection. Especially records, they are pure hell to move. Just imagine having a record store’s worth and needing to move it. To that end, there have been occasional sales of the inventory at extremely awesome prices. I missed a few but was finally able to make my way down to scour the bins.
I’ll go over the CDs first and then get into the vinyl. Also I’ve never done a super heavy picture post before so I don’t know how this is gonna look, we’ll see I guess, lol. The preview looked good, anyway.
First up is Soul Asylum. I covered their big album Grave Dancer’s Union before but beyond that and the one after it I’ve never heard a note of their stuff. They have a bunch of albums and these were sitting there so I figured I’d help myself and see how these are.
There’s also Collective Soul. I remember the album on the top left but I’ve never heard the other two, so again I figured why not? I’m not out much if these don’t move me.
I had these Robert Plant albums in one form or another over the years but I misplaced them along the way. I figured I’d get to replenishing my stock.
Here in the miscellaneous pile – I had been revisiting a bit of Robert Palmer recently so I grabbed this compilation. I knew a fair bit off of it so it hit the spot. I haven’t had a copy of the Mr. Big album since I had it on tape when it came out, no time like the present to give it another spin. I don’t know if I’ve ever owned that Prince album but I do know some of the songs on it and it’s hard to go wrong with Prince.
I snatched up The Joshua Tree since I have no U2 in my collection, it was always my favorite one and I was wanting to hear it again after a long, long time of not. And I’ve always enjoyed Hall and Oates. I honestly have both of these on vinyl already but I didn’t want these CDs to be lonely in the record store.
Up next is the vinyl. I was not expecting to find much I wanted but I honestly had to stop myself after a point, there was more here that I wanted than what I bargained for. And it was a great bargain, so I loaded up.
I could not let the first Georgia Satellites album sit there at a great discount. And I don’t recall this early Joe Walsh solo record much so I thought I could acquaint myself with it.
I covered the self-titled Heart record awhile back. Oddly enough I’ve had a fairly hard time finding this and the other two mega-selling albums after it on record, so this was an automatic purchase. As for Belinda Carlisle? Well, as it turns out she was my first ever celebrity crush, so all these years later she finally came home with me, at least in some form.
Up next is Night Ranger. I’ve had Midnight Madness for a while but I was really wanting Dawn Patrol since it has my favorite song of theirs on it. And 7 Wishes was sitting right behind it so I felt obligated to keep it with its buddy.
I’ve never owned this Rainbow album and honestly I don’t recall it much at all, none of the songs were familiar to me. I’ll get more into my old Sammy Hagar collection in the next picture but I honestly don’t remember if I ever had this one on vinyl. I do now so whatever.
I used to have these two Sammy albums, and a whole lot more. The records belonged to my late uncle and wound up in my possession several years after his death. Sadly through having to move last minute and general irresponsibility in my 20’s, or maybe even 30’s, I was unable to keep the records. I’ve sort of put off really going after them again but I guess the time is now to get that collection rebuilt. Danger Zone isn’t his best solo album, but Standing Hampton is really close to being his best.
Oh, and in the style of every lame Internet presenter since the 2000’s, there’s one more thing….
I’ve been going on a run of these CDs and I’m starting to gain ground, he only released one actual album a year now instead of 12. At some point in the future, and I do mean a ways off in the future, I’ll probably undertake the ambitious task of going through all his studio albums on here. Again, that’s quite a ways off and he’ll probably release 10 more “lost” ones before I get there. But anyway, that’ll be a thing someday.
That’s about all for the record store haul. There’s going to be at least one more sale so I might go rescue a few more vinyl stragglers if they’re still in the bin.
It was 1994 and Slayer were set to release a new album into an uncertain climate. The label was concerned about explicit themes, the band were writing songs more based in the darkness of reality than ever before, and their legendary drummer had quit the group a few years before.
Slayer – Divine Intervention
Released September 27, 1994 via American Records
My Favorite Tracks – Divine Intervention, 213, Killing Fields
Slayer had previously navigated a line-up change at the drum position, but back in 1987 they were able to convince Dave Lombardo to come back. In 1992, Lombardo was gone for real and for a decade, so Slayer would have to replace someone for a recording for the first time in their history. With Lombardo being considered Slayer’s strongest asset, it would be all eyes and ears on the replacement.
That role would go to Paul Bostaph, who had been the drummer for thrash act Forbidden. Bostaph delivered far more convincing performances than others who auditioned and also took the time to practice up the back catalog in the style of Lombardo to ensure fans would get the experience they wanted. He joined Slayer’s usual suspects – bassist and vocalist Tom Araya and guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman.
Slayer had gathered up a new round of songs to follow up their 1990 album Seasons In The Abyss, which was a critical and fan hit. King and Hanneman composed the music while Araya handled a fair share of the lyrics along with King and a few contributions from Hanneman. This time around the themes would be mostly based in the grim facets of reality rather than exploring the supernatural or demonic.
The focus on murder would be an issue as the album was deemed very explicit. It was banned for a time in Germany, who have very stringent laws around that sort of thing. The album’s imagery would fall in line with the brutal themes. While the cover is a well-done piece by noted metal cover artist Wes Benscotter, the CD’s inside tray and CD itself featured the image of someone who had carved Slayer into their arm with a scalpel.
This album is 10 songs that finish in 36:33, a pretty lean effort but fairly typical of Slayer.
Killing Fields
The first thing this song does is allow Paul Bostaph an extended intro to let the world know who he is. It then jumps into a mid-tempo yet very loud affair about killing, which is a theme for the record. This song has a bit more of the subtle dynamics of Slayer than a lot of others here and comes out toward the top of the heap. Good way to open things.
Sex. Murder. Art.
This one is not even two minutes long and sounds like Slayer going back to their speedy past. This is another one about brutality, as a sadist takes pleasure in consuming his victim. This one feels like a blip on the radar with how other songs get a bit more space and tempo to breathe on here but it shouldn’t be overlooked for its throwback to Slayer of yore.
Fictional Reality
It’s a shift now to political and social issues, though of course through the filter of Slayer these are looked at from a grim perspective. This one is simply about how everything is messed up and is going down the tubes, it’s not so much a message as it is an observation. The song works really well as a 90’s era Slayer track, this one fits right in.
Dittohead
The band slams through this one, also a political sort of song. The title is taken from the name given to fans of now deceased conservative media figurehead Rush Limbaugh. The song’s message of how criminals walk free in society isn’t really a diss of Limbaugh and probably more something he’d agree with.
Divine Intervention
The title track cools things off for a bit and gets into a creepy, atmospheric vibe for a bit. It’s a fitting approach as the song is one about alien abduction. This is very well done, hitting on the sheer horror of what that process would actually be like. The one departure from reality here turns out to be the album’s real highlight.
Circle Of Beliefs
Another pretty standard Slayer cut that visits the topic of religon, one of Slayer’s favorites. The lyrics don’t break a ton of new ground, it is mostly a confrontational song and some of the stuff just sounds like words put together to fill the line. It’s not all a lost cause, there are nuggest of wisdom here and the song itself is pretty good.
SS-3
Up next is a song referencing notorious Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. He was the chief architect of the Holocaust and one of the SS’s darkest figures. The song doesn’t get much into Heydrich’s dark history other than to reference his nickname the Hangman of Prague. A lot of the lyrics are about how Heydrich was successfully assassinated by the Czech resistance in 1942, with the song’s title being the license plate of the car he was in when he was attacked.
Serenity In Murder
This song would serve as the album’s single as it was released as an EP and got a video. It is just as the title suggests – another song about murder. This was one of the songs focused on when controversy arose over the album’s dark themes. It is a pretty good song, reflective again of ’90’s Slayer and also maybe a hint of shifts in sound to come later in the decade.
213
With an album centering around murder, nothing would be more appropriate as a centerpiece than a deep dive into the realm of serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, one of America’s most notorious butchers. While a bunch of Slayer songs are words thrown together to compliment buzzsaw riffs, Tom Araya truly delved into this one and delivered a very haunting and specific account of Dahmer’s tortured psyche. The idea of consuming someone to make them a part of you is in vivid detail here and this song was crafted with care and is a standout. Dahmer likely wouldn’t have enjoyed the song as he did not celebrate his terrible crimes and also he wouldn’t have much time to – he was killed in prison just two months after the album’s release.
Mind Control
As I just said above, some Slayer songs are words thrown together over riffs. This closing track is one of those. It’s suitably heavy and brutal but it’s not covering any kind of new ground. It’s just Slayer being Slayer.
Divine Intervention would come out of the gate strong – the album debuted at number 8 on the US Billboard 200, at the time a record high position for Slayer. It would gain gold certification in both the US and Canada and has been one of the band’s most successful albums.
Despite that success, this one is kind of a quiet one when discussing Slayer albums. It doesn’t have the same legacy as Seasons… or other Slayer records. It is a bit of an underrated or forgotten album. Part of that might be down to the production, which every Slayer member has said could have been better. The album was recorded in fits and spurts across multiple studios and producers were changed a few times, so there is something to that. The music still works but it does lack certain sound dynamics, even for Slayer.
I personally do rate this album pretty highly, I enjoyed it right out of the gate in 1994 on release. Sure it’s a bunch of noise, but what else is Slayer supposed to be?
The live series is finally out of the early 1990’s slog and it leaps over the Blaze Bayley years as no official live album was ever released from his tenure. Instead we jump to 2002 and look at the first of many live albums from the Maiden reunion era.
The “reunion” era, which is Iron Maiden’s longest-running time period with a consistent line-up, kicked off in 1999 when singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith rejoined the band. Smith’s replacement in the band, Janick Gers, was kept on and Maiden became a three-guitar line-up. Along with bassist/band leader Steve Harris, guitarist Dave Murray and drummer Nicko McBrain, Maiden reformed their classic ’80’s line-up with a plus one. This line-up is the band’s current formation today, nothing has changed since ’99.
The band quickly set out to expand on their legacy rather than rest on it – the album Brave New World was released in 2000 and was a very celebrated record. Maiden toured behind the album and that’s where we are at – a live album representation of the Brave New World tour.
This release is a single show, taken from a festival performance in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 19, 2001. It was the final show of the Brave New World tour, after this the band would take a break and then head off to record a follow-up album.
This wasn’t just any festival, the Rock In Rio festival is a huge, HUGE gathering in what is summer in Brazil. The crowd in 2001 was 250,000 – this marked the second largest crowd Maiden had played in front of – the first being 350,000 at the 1985 edition of Rock In Rio. It is a mixed genre festival that isn’t held every single year and thus the anticipation becomes red hot, especially among the South Americans who are indisputably the world’s most passionate music fans.
Side note – Iron Maiden have played several subsequent editions of Rock In Rio but attendance figures aren’t readily available for those, so I don’t know if the “largest crowd they’ve played in front of” stats are still accurate.
Let’s have at the tracklist then get into song selection, which isn’t that much of a chore since this is a single performance.
Arthur’s Farewell (intro)
The Wicker Man
Ghost Of The Navigator
Brave New World
Wrathchild
2 Minutes To Midnight
Blood Brothers
Sign Of The Cross
The Mercenary
The Trooper
Dream Of Mirrors
The Clansman
The Evil That Men Do
Fear Of The Dark
Iron Maiden
The Number Of The Beast
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Sanctuary
Run To The Hills
The setlist is nearly identical to what they ran on the general Brave New World tour, it is in the exact same order as the show I saw in August 2000 with one exception – they didn’t play Run To The Hills when I saw them. That song was apparently added in for the special occasion at Rio. They did thrown in a few different songs on the South American stops of the tour so it does track.
There are six songs from Brave New World, which was pretty cool. The new material was well received and allowed the band to present themselves as relevant and current. There are two cuts from the Blaze-era albums on here, one from each album and the two songs that many cite as the best from those records. Bruce didn’t bring an ego back in to the band, he gladly performed the stuff he didn’t sing on and has done so on occasion in the years since. The remaining songs are a fairly standard collection of the band’s biggest “hits,” or at least what you would expect to find in a Maiden live set and many of which we’ll find again and again in sets as we go through the rest of the albums.
The performance here is pretty great, the band is firing on all cylinders. Bruce does sound like he’s at the end of a tour but it doesn’t really come up all that much and isn’t a huge distracting factor, in general he carries on as usual. The songs are performed with the general vitality and accelerated pace of their live shows, though here nothing feels off the rails like the group occasionally finds themselves.
It’s honestly hard to cite one standout track here when the whole album is as good as it is. I’ll go ahead and throw Blood Brothers out there, to me it’s the centerpiece of Brave New World and the song works especially well live too. It’s sort of an unofficial anthem for Maiden fans even though the song’s theme is quite dark.
One note here – generally, Iron Maiden have not engaged in much actual editing of their live albums. They tend to present them as they were recorded, just with production (and occasionally without). But Steve Harris made a call on this one to cut and paste some of Bruce’s vocals over parts that the crowd were left to sing on but didn’t do a terribly great job of. So this is edited in that respect. It’s not a huge deal though it gets discussed in Maiden-centric areas of the web quite a bit. There is actual broadcast footage of the show out on YouTube. I personally don’t worry about it that much.
Rock In Rio was a very welcome package from Iron Maiden. It did reasonably well on international charts, though not so hot in the US in terms of the audio edition. While an actual consensus opinion is hard to gauge based on idle online chatter, this one does rank very highly among fans. While I and many others came up on Live After Death, for a younger generation of fans, this one is the definitive live album that they came up with. And even among older fans it’s not all that hard to find some that prefer this one to the first. No matter exactly where it ranks, there’s no doubt that this first reunion live set is very highly regarded by the Maiden fanbase.
That about covers it for this week, next week and the one after there’ll be a bit of time-hopping courtesy of a limited box set released in 2002.
This week it’s a special one, as we finally have our first taste of the new Judas Priest record. Finally announced for March 8 of 2024, Invincible Shield will be the band’s 19th album. It features the very colorful album cover shown above.
Panic Attack is the first single released from said album, this hit digital airwaves last Friday, October 13th. It does appear to be a digital only single, as most are nowadays. The clip on YouTube has already snagged over half a million views since Friday so this is was a pretty well anticipated drop.
One quick thing before I get further into things – I’ve checked out a fair few reviews and reactions to this song and almost everyone is saying that it’s “very long.” Folks, this song is 5:27. It isn’t some huge stretch to have a 5 minute song, I don’t know where people are getting that this is super long or anything. We aren’t in Opeth territory where 8 songs comprise a double live album, this is a fairly average traditional heavy metal song. That one has been throwing me off and I felt the need to say something there.
This one opens with a synth intro for the first 40 or so seconds. It’s not a return to the days of Turbo or Ram It Down, it’s an intro more reminiscent of something from Iron Maiden’s Somewhere In Time, if anything. The intro is fine and there are small but effective uses of electronic effects throughout the song, like sirens here and there and something akin to the “Transformers” sound at transitions between the verses and chorus. These enhancements work out really well and I think add to the song just fine, the base structure of things is still guitar, bass, drums and Rob Halford’s unholy wail.
The proper song is another burner and in keeping with what Priest have been up to on their past few albums – a more straight-on heavy metal attack. It’s fresh and relevant for a band with guys over 70 years old in it, no small feat when many others fall by the wayside at over 50 years into their existence.
There’s a good bit of guitar soloing here, which you would expect from a band famous for its twin guitar attack. And yes, Glenn Tipton is playing here along with Richie Faulkner. But even when not taking center stage, the guitars are kicking out very nice riffs to move the music along.
The star performer here though has to be Rob Halford. 72 years old and he sounds like this? He is in full voice here and also using different parts of his range. Many singers have sadly fallen off as they hit their mid-60’s, but Halford joins Klaus Meine as those who have kept their power and vitality well beyond that. His stint here is something to behold.
Lyrically, Panic Attack is a direct shot aimed at the culture of the 2020’s. It tackles the misinformation, screeching keyboard warriors, opportunistic politicians and all of the dread and hostility surrounding pretty much everything these days. It’s not common for Judas Priest to take on these kind of current issues so directly, but here they go for it full throat. It’s very impressive and they do very well to avoid the now common trap of simply complaining about cancel culture – instead they really get to everything and all of the various issues that come together to create this shitshow we’re currently in.
The one and only “criticism” I have isn’t even really a complaint, it’s just something pretty funny in the song. At one point roughly 3 minutes in, Rob in full high-range wail belts out “World Wide Web.” I got a chuckle out of that, it does seem a bit out of place but then again it’s kind of what the song is about.
Overall I’m very impressed with Panic Attack, and I’m looking forward to exiting the winter that hasn’t even hit yet to get my hands on the full length Invincible Shield. So far it’s lining up to be yet another nice entry in the Judas Priest catalog.
A young metal band with just one album under its belt gets told by the label to “glam it up” a bit. The results were – well, not quite glam by any real measure, at least beyond the band photos.
Queensrÿche – Rage For Order
Released June 27, 1986 via EMI Records
My Favorite Tracks – Screaming In Digital, Neue Regel, I Dream In Infrared
Queensrÿche were in a bit of an odd position by the mid 1980’s – they had arrived as a heavy metal act with progressive and Judas Priest vibes. Even early on the band seemed too intellectual and sophisticated to truly dive into the glam and hair movement that was taking hold of rock music. Instead we got a grab bag of songs, some having to do with love in some darker aspects and others still getting into sci-fi or AI stuff like what they offered on their first efforts.
The band’s line-up was constant all through the ’80’s – Geoff Tate on vocals, Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton on guitar, Eddie Jackon on bass and Scott Rockenfield on the drums. This one was produced by Neil Kernon, who helmed the studio console for Hall and Oates’ biggest albums and has gone on to record hundreds of albums with everyone ranging from soft rock to death metal.
The production on here is worth discussing, too – in contrast to the thinner and sterile sound coming from a lot of albums in this time period, Rage For Order has a pretty full sound. It’s bright yet also full, it hits when it needs to and lets the album’s softer songs breathe. It is at times clinical, which was probably a goal since some of these songs are about computers and robots taking everything over. Getting this variety of themes and sounds down into a nice listening experience is a pretty nice accomplishment.
There are 11 tracks here that run for nearly 46 minutes, and the variety takes the listener on quite a journey. There was a deluxe reissue that offered a handful of live and demo bonus tracks, I’ll stick to the original album’s tracklist for today.
Walk In The Shadows
The opener is a pretty nice song that walks a line between being both melodic and heavy. This dark love tale was apparently inspired by vampire stuff like the Anne Rice books. The song is fairly quick and simple but does a good job setting the table for what’s to come.
I Dream In Infrared
Up next is something akin to a power ballad. This one starts out soft and lush, then builds into a really powerful surge through the chorus. It’s the earliest hint of how Queensrÿche would approach a more conventional rock song, something we’d get more of from them in 1990. The lyrics have to do with a relationship that’s clearly lost, the narrator is about to split and has pretty profound thoughts about it. As with a lot of Queensrÿche stuff there could be a deeper or more specific song meaning but I don’t know what it is. No matter, this song is spectacular and one of the band’s crown jewels.
The Whipser
The title is misleading here, this song is plenty loud. It’s got a nice and noisy riff with Geoff Tate visiting several parts of his considerable vocal range, and just the right amount of keyboard accents which Neil Kernon provided. The song’s theme isn’t quite clear, someone is being coerced or persuaded to do something likely not good. It could be vampires or robots, either are a fair guess for this album, I personally vote robots as it’s always a safe bet on early Queensrÿche stuff.
Gonna Get Close To You
Up next is a cover song – this was first done by Canadian artist Lisa Dal Bello, who performed as Dalbello. It is a creepy stalker song, and unlike The Police’s smash hit Every Breath You Take, this song is very, very upfront about being engaged in flat out criminal stalking behavior.
Queensrÿche’s cover is honestly not far removed from the original, though it’s also paired with more instrumentation to fill it out. I go back and forth on whether I’m into this one or not and overall I’m kind of not, but I will admit that they did get the sound right in terms of making it fit the album.
The Killing Words
This is another amped up power ballad. Another high quality track, this is about love going down the tubes again but the people are apparently still together, seems to be a recurring theme here.
Surgical Strike
It’s time to kick up the pace and move on from love to war. This one hearkens back some to the debut album but also still fits with the sound and vibe of this record. This one has a really nice solo then a synth transition back into the song. It’s also over as quick as a surgical strike in a hair over 3 minutes.
Neue Regel
German for “new regime” or something like that, this kicks the pace back down a notch but keeps the power going. There’s quite a bit of use of keyboards and other samples here to help create an epic build to this new order, whatever it may be. There’s a lot here but it’s not overdone, this one works great with all the embellishments.
Chemical Youth (We Are Rebellion)
It’s time to get loud again as this one aggros its way through a long and unwieldy rant about rebellion, politics and technology. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about here but the song is still pretty good.
London
Another powerful power ballad, this one is about a tryst with someone in the city referenced in the title. A pretty nice song, quite powerful and moving, though also perhaps a notch below some other stuff here.
There’s an interesting reference to November 4th in the opening line – that day was nothing unusual on its own but is just a day removed from “Guy Fawkes Night” or the Gunpowder Treason Day in England. (remember, remember the 5th of November). Nothing in the song indicates any link to that but I thought it was a neat coincidence, especially given the multiple themes of rebellion found through the album.
Screaming In Digital
Up next is an epic foray into the world of sci-fi and AI, though AI isn’t really sci-fi anymore. This song is an absolute scorcher, with dueling vocal parts representing two characters. It’s not totally clear what’s going on here, though at least one of the participants is a machine and I’ve always assumed both are, the “newer” machine is struggling with the concept of only being a machine. It could also be a human being forcefully “induced” into the robot cult or whatever, I don’t know.
This song is an absolute masterpiece. Geoff Tate is on fire here and the song’s militant rhythm gives a machine-like feel to things to further enhance the cyborg or AI concept. The vocal trade-off can be confusing at first, but repeated listens shine a light on what’s going on, and this song should be listened to repeatedly. One of Queensrÿche’s best songs.
I Will Remember
The album ends on a quiet and somber offering that is also lyrically about AI. This explores the concept of machines “stealing each other’s dreams” and the idea of not having private thoughts that can be concealed from a digital police state. It was sci-fi at one point in time, today it’s reality – just think about buying a couch and look at the ads on your phone. But I like this quieter approach to ending the album and the song itself is quite well done.
Rage For Order was not a huge hit out of the gate – it peaked at 85 on the Billboard 200 in the US and had various other lower chart placements around the world. Critics were kind, they liked the music though found some of the lyrical fare dense. This would get a gold certification in the US and Queensrÿche would land coveted opening spots on tours with AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, Ratt and Bon Jovi.
Queensrÿche have often defied categorization, for good or bad, and in the early days it was usually a good thing. Rage For Order shares the band’s somewhat elusive qualities – it is a lot of things and touches on a lot of subjects, but overall it was a pretty big step forward. This moved Queensrÿche out of the “Judas Priest meets Rush” comparisons and into establishing their own sound. Their signature guitar tone is here, as are knacks for arrangement and lyrical concept. All of this would mesh just a few years later on their magnum opus. Rage For Order may be a grab bag of sorts, but whatever you grab out of it is pretty damn good.
The past two weeks were spent looking over Iron Maiden’s two live albums from the early 1990’s, a period regarded as one of the band’s weaker segments. Today we shift gears and head to – oh wait, this is yet another live album from the early 1990’s.
This one is a bit different, as we get an entire single concert presented on an album. While there are 13 live albums in total, there is only one other that is also a single, complete show presented in full. All of the others are either tour compilations or selections taken from several nights in the same city. It is kind of nice to have a full show on offer.
This show was the headlining spot for the 1992 Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington. Monsters Of Rock had been a huge thing in the ’80’s but was starting to lose its luster in the ’90’s. Maiden was top of a bill that included Skid Row, Slayer and W.A.S.P. The Monsters Of Rock concept had a few more tries after this one but sputtered out, it would be replaced at Donington grounds by the Download festival in the early 2000’s.
This particular show was well attended, with a crowd of around 80,000. Iron Maiden compiled both audio and video from the show and released it, though only in a handful of territories. The video format was only ever issued on VHS, no known official copies of DVD or anything newer exist. The audio portion was released as a 3 record package and a 2 CD set, with a rather plain white cover. The CD was reissued in 1998 and given an actual cover taken from a promo flyer for the show, the cover you see above. This is the version of the album that I possess.
As with other ’90’s live Maiden, getting a hold of this on vinyl is an expensive chore. Prices are in the hundreds. It is one I’ll hold off on until a reissue hits or I win the lottery, I can’t really justify shelling out that much for a damn record. I’m not even sure they will ever reissue it but this era’s vinyl is just too rich for my blood.
This is a monster tracklist so I’m going to just post the back cover then I’ll get into the particulars of the album.
There’s honestly not much to say about song selection here – this is a full concert so there was no picking or choosing for the album. It’s a representative setlist of the tour in 1992, which again is the same tour A Real Live One was pulled from.
Speaking of that live album and its companion A Real Dead One, that’s where we can go to do some comparisons. This album has every single song that also appeared on A Real Live One and all but two that are also on A Real Dead One. Granted, the other albums draw from different performances, but we have three live albums that cover nearly identical ground song-wise. It begs the question – what’s the point of all these albums and which one stands out above the rest? The quick and clear answer is this one.
The sound quality of Live At Donington is fairly good overall. The performances sound like they were captured well, but no effort seems to be in production. Steve Harris is listed as the producer on the audio side of things so he would need to answer questions about it, I don’t think he will given how far removed he is from this era.
The performances come off well – it sounds pretty well spirited and energized. This version of the band maybe doesn’t handle the older material as well as they do the current songs but it’s not anything bad, just more basic than what the classic line-up would have delivered. I don’t have any real qualms about the execution here though, I think this live set works fine.
It is maybe a bit tough to pick out actual highlights, though two stand out. The first is the performance of Fear Of The Dark, their current album’s title track that has become a staple of most every Maiden set since release. It’s definitely worth the price of admission here.
The other true highlight comes at the album’s close. It’s not unusual for Maiden to perform Running Free, but it is unusual for former guitarist Adrian Smith to join them onstage while they do so. This brief “reunion” was a nice tip of the hat to the band’s 1980’s heyday. And while we didn’t know it at the time, Adrian being onstage with his replacement Janick Gers was a preview of the Iron Maiden line-up we’d have from 1999 until the present day.
Overall there’s a lot to like about Live At Donington – it is a rare complete show from a band who releases live albums like water but rarely hands out complete one-night performances. It was a good energy show at the festival and only suffers from questionable production choices that don’t entirely ruin the listening experience. This album is a good summation of Maiden as they were winding down Bruce Dickinson’s first tenure in the group.
The only real question I have isn’t even about Live At Donington, it’s about the two live albums from the same era and mostly even tour that preceded it – with this complete package, why did A Real Live One and its companion even see the light of day? I don’t know, but what I do know is that I’m finally done talking about ’90’s era Iron Maiden in this live series.
It’s spooky season so it’s a great time for a song about spooky stuff.
Metal Church released their second album The Dark in 1986 and today’s song is the title track. This album got a pretty mixed reception from critics, who were more in love with the band’s self-titled debut, but this album and song have its fans and I am absolutely one of them.
Metal Church are more accurately described as a US power metal act than a thrash band, though this song might convince some otherwise. This is a hard and aggressive track with pounding riffs and rapid fire vocal delivery from David Wayne, who is almost rapping through the chorus. There is an instrumental break but not really a proper solo, this song pretty much just slams in and out.
Lyrically the song is about being stuck in a house at night while sinister things are about. No telling if those evil things are real or imagined, but all those noises in the night are making the song’s subject paranoid. He feels like he has to stay up all night to avoid being prey to whatever lurks in the shadows, if that thing is even real. Playing upon that fear of things that may or may not be there, often a childhood thing, can be far scarier than an actual monster on a rampage.
The Dark wasn’t released as a single but is a relatively well-known song from the band’s output. IT doesn’t have the profile of songs like Watch The Children Pray from this same album or a few cuts from the widely celebrated debut, but this one still stands as a signature Metal Church track. It was covered by Stone Sour in 2015 when that group focused on playing several cover tracks.
Metal Church would go on through a lot of line-up changes, hiatuses and tragedies through the years, including the death of David Wayne in 2005. Founding guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof has been the band’s caretaker through the 2000’s. While Metal Church have been through a lot of ups and downs in the decades since their 1980’s breakthrough, they have also contributed a lot to the realm of metal, including this great song.
The Crooked Wanderer 