This coming weekend will feature the final performance of Ozzy Osbourne, an event I intend to cover next week. With that I figured I’d get into a song of his as a taster for the weekend.
Bark At The Moon was the title track from Ozzy’s third album, released in 1983. It was also the album’s lead single. The song hit number 21 in the UK and 12 on the US Album Rock Tracks chart. The album would go on to sell over 3 million copies in the US.
The road to Bark At The Moon was not smooth. In 1982, beloved guitarist Randy Rhodes tragically died in a small plane accident with Ozzy looking on. Ozzy would cycle through a few guitarists to replace Rhodes on tour, but later decided on Jake E. Lee for the album. There are some crazy stories from this time, one being how George Lynch was initially hired for the role and was then unceremoniously cast aside in favor of Lee. Another is Jake Lee’s royalty situation – he and Bob Daisley were forced to take buyouts on the album to hand all songwriting credits over to Ozzy. There is of course more to those stories but those are for another time.
Though the loss of Randy Rhodes is immeasurable, Ozzy would be off to the races with Jake E. Lee. Bark At The Moon features plenty of kinetic guitar work, keeping it in line with the guitar god legacy established on the first two Ozzy solo albums. Lee was certainly able to put his stamp on things, even if he didn’t receive songwriting credit for the work he did.
The music video features Ozzy committed to an asylum and being pursued by a werewolf. It’s goofy for sure but pretty fitting of the song and of MTV in those early years. One funny bit of trivia – Carmine Appice appears in the video as the drummer, though it was Tommy Aldridge who played on the album. Appice did not have a long stint in Ozzy’s band – he was dismissed and Aldridge returned for the rest of the tour.
One final bit of lore – Bark At The Moon features in a video game I bring up a lot, it being my favorite of all time – Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Well, at least it did feature for awhile. It was on the original Playstation 2 release of the game. After some time Sony Records had a series of disputes about licensing, and Bark At The Moon was removed from the game’s many re-releases over the years. It was a nice addition to the V-Rock metal station and I do miss driving around Vice City with it blaring on the car stereo.
So all these years later we come to the end of Ozzy’s career, at least in live performances. Jake E. Lee is slated to perform at the event – the specifics of his performance are unknown and it’s very unlikely he’ll play alongside Ozzy. Whatever the case, we should get a fitting final rendition to close out one of rock and metal’s craziest careers.
All right, it’s time to continue on with my long-running series where I pick five of my favorite songs from a year. Not necessarily my five definitive favorites, but five of my favorites. As always.
This year is 1990. We have left the golden decade of the 1980’s in the dust and music was shaping up to be a hell of a lot different. Even though the symbolic marker of the change was 1991, there was plenty of evidence that things were getting really different just a year before. Music was moving into other territories and a lot of the 80’s standards were about to be left behind. I was entering my teenage years just as the decade kicked off so I was in prime position to take in these changes, even if I didn’t quite know what all was going on right off the bat.
That’s about enough of the lead-in, this isn’t a comprehensive analysis of what happened in the early ’90’s, this is just a list of five songs I really like from 1990. Let’s have at it.
Megadeth – Tornado Of Souls
By 1990 I was moving way more into heavy metal as a whole, it was becoming my favorite form of music and that hasn’t changed 35 years later. Megadeth released their magnum opus Rust In Peace this year and it is in my top five of favorite albums of all time. A lot of the album if full of nuclear war and the government sucks kind of stuff that Dave Mustaine is very fond of, but this song is more personal and involves past relationships and rebounding from them. And of course it’s chock full of guitars, the kind of stuff only Mustaine and Marty Friedman could get up to. One of metal’s greatest songs.
Kreator – People Of The Lie
We’ll stay with thrash and this time visit the German titans on their fifth album, the excellent Coma Of Souls. Here Kreator aimed their sights at Nazis, the scourge of their own country. The song is a powerful rant against the shallow stances of Nazi believers. Sadly the song has become much more relevant today, but this was an excellent thrasher with a great message back in the day.
The Black Crowes – She Talks To Angels
Rock was by no means dead in 1990, but it sure was changing. One face of that change was the sudden ascent of the Black Crowes, a blues-based/jam band sort of prospect armed with a cache of catchy, infectious and effective songs. My favorite of the bunch is this somber ballad about a gal who is caught up in a drug addiction. While the song is not based in much reality, it is a haunting and touching affair that rings true no matter what the calendar says.
AC/DC – Thunderstruck
Ok, so not everything changed in rock in 1990. The good old standard AC/DC arrived on the scene yet again, this time armed with the stellar Razor’s Edge album. The opening track and lead single became one of the band’s hallmark songs, yet another addition to their playlist on classic rock radio that is played to no end. It’s easy to hear why – this is one massive slab of rock badassery. It’s guitars upon guitars, pounding drums and screeching, which is just how I like it.
Judas Priest – Painkiller
So Priest didn’t have the best latter half of the ’80’s – Turbo and Ram It Down aren’t “bad” albums per se, but they aren’t highlights of the Priest catalog either. The band reconvened as the decade changed and HOLY SHIT did they find the heavy metal again. Painkiller is a blast of molten hot metal unlike that which the band had even done to this point, despite being one of the signposts of the genre. This song and whole album will rip your face off, and that’s exactly how we like it around here. And by we I mean me, as I’m the only one typing bullshit on this site.
That wraps up 1990. Suffice to say, next week’s post will be somewhat important, as 1991 will be upon us. It was such an important year to music as a whole and my own musical fandom that it might require something a bit special. We shall see next week.
Earlier this month we got a real rarity – a Led Zeppelin documentary with the full cooperation of the surviving members. Becoming Led Zeppelin was filmed a few years back and, after some theatrical screenings, hit streaming services earlier this month.
The film was put together by Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGoutry, who had previously worked on a music series called American Epic. The series had attracted the attention of the former Zep members, two of whom can be famously prickly about discussing their past. But everyone was on board for this specific treatment, which as far as I know is the first and only Zep documentary done with the participation of Page, Plant and Jones.
This documentary is not a tell-all that follows the band’s entire career. This focuses on what the members were doing in the years before Zeppelin and then runs through the release of Led Zeppelin II and a few landmark gigs from that time frame. And I’ll say that I prefer it this way – I honestly was not terribly familiar with Jones, Plant or Bonham’s pre-Zep days and this was a nice deep dive into their early musical forays. Page I had more knowledge of but it was still nice to have the run down.
What we get is the three surviving members saying their pieces in separate interviews. Some people lament the lack of interaction between the participants but I wasn’t concerned about it. John Bonham is represented by archival interview recordings from 1980, not long before his death. While the three living members don’t speak with each other, they do seem to listen to Bonzo’s parts at times.
I don’t know if this film is for people not familiar with Zeppelin – the pre-Zep days are covered fairly in-depth, but then the film moves fairly quickly through the key events of the band’s formation and rise to success. I do feel like some knowledge of the band’s progress might be warranted to fully appreciate this doc, but it’s entirely possible that folks who aren’t that familiar with the band might still get something out of this.
The main criticisms of the film I see are the separate interviews and also that the film ends “abruptly” without continuing on through their whole career. I’m personally fine with how it was done and I don’t share these criticisms. The only negative point I have to mention is that the audio is kind of hosed – the music performances are LOUD and the talking audio is very, very quiet in comparison. This might work well in an IMAX theater setting, but my humble home TV is not an IMAX. It can be a bit tough to pick up what British people are saying when the audio is super quiet, and the subtitles don’t always help because they are white and fairly often display on very light backgrounds, rendering them unreadable. I had to actively work my volume control through the film to keep things on the level.
That is my only real criticism. Beyond that, this is a very well-done film that offers a lot of lore for the pre-Zep days and hits the highlights of their first few years. There are several live clips in the film well worth checking out. I don’t know the ins and outs of how previously available some of the music footage is, some of it is billed as available for the first time (at least officially).
I do highly recommend this film for anyone with any kind of interest in Led Zeppelin. It’s wonderful to hear the guys talk about their upbringing and the band’s formation, especially the interview with the long-departed John Bonham. We also get plenty of Jimmy Page showcasing his drive to push for more success and John Paul Jones being along for the ride despite having a successful career as a session musician. And while Robert Plant has at times been reticent to lean on past glories, here he is fully willing to revisit his early days and the formation of the band. His recounting of his tough go of it before Jimmy Page found him is compelling, and his tales of working with Bonzo despite John’s wife totally not being into Robert is funny and heartwarming.
There isn’t much more for me to say – this is a great film on one of rock’s biggest bands, and we get the most compelling part of the story with the early years. This is well worth the watch.
This week I’m going for a bit of an oddball pick for me. It’s originally from 1990 but the song would gain a second life several years after its release through the wondrous mechanism of pop culture.
Blues Traveler got their start in the 1980’s and would offer up their debut album in 1990. It was a self-titled effort and, while it didn’t light the world on fire, the band did get play on college radio and the ball got rolling for them. But Anyway was the lead track from the record and, at the time it didn’t move mountains but did get some buzz on the independent circuit.
Irrelevant to the song but a fun bit of trivia – Joan Osborne provided backing vocals on two songs on the Blues Traveler debut record. This was all a few years before everyone would get famous.
But anyway, Blues Traveler would release a handful more albums up to their set four, released in 1994. This featured the song Run-Around, which became a top ten hit and instantly made the band a household name. The song won a Grammy and the album slammed sales racks for six million copies in the US.
Blues Traveler were now in demand across the spectrum. Their blend of alt-rock and jam band sensibilities gave them a very wide appeal, and one area they became very in-demand was movie soundtracks. Someone could write a decent-sized book on the number of soundtracks that Blues Traveler wound up on in the middle of the decade. The band was so in-demand that their old albums all hit gold in 1995 and movie makers revisited their old catalog for hidden gems to add to their films. This would give But Anyway a second life in a very memorable part in a fantastic film.
In 1996, the Farrelly Brothers released Kingpin. The movie was a dark comedy starring Woody Harrelson and Randy Quaid as an alcoholic, down on his luck bowler and an Amish bowling prodigy, respectively. It also featured Vanessa Angel as a whore and Bill Murray as a total asshole in a performance that should have won awards.
I won’t get too much into the movie but I will say Kingpin is absolutely worth a watch. I just went back and watched it for the first time in a long time very recently, when I knew I was going to cover this song. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll make damn sure to pay your rent on time.
Blues Traveler and But Anyway got big billing in the film – the band was featured at the end, dressed up in Amish garb and teaching the Amish village how to throw down. Singer John Popper also got a part as the host of the huge bowling tournament that’s pivotal to the movie. As you might have already ascertained from the video clip, footage from the movie is featured in the song’s music video as well.
All this, but how’s the actual song? But Anyway is a fun, upbeat dive into some mid-paced and music-filled blues rock. Lyrically it pokes fun at life’s silly situations in a playful manner. Musically the band shows off some real chops, including an extended breakdown/jam session that’s cut out of the single version. But there’s plenty of bass and harmonica fun to be had on the full studio cut.
But Anyway would wind up hitting the charts six years after its initial release. It hit number 5 on the Adult Alternative chart and 24 on the Mainstream Top 40 in 1996. Blues Traveler would go on to some more mainstream success through the rest of the 90’s. While they are now more of an independent act these days, the band has kept around all this time, including annual July 4th performances at the famed Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado.
Blues Traveler were all over the place in the mid-90’s and But Anyway is just one testament to their infectious hold on listeners’ ears around that time. It took a movie tie-in to bring this older song a new life but it was all pulled off splendidly, and we’re left with both a song and movie worth checking out.
Welcome back to the “five songs from a year” series. Simple premise, as always – I choose five of my favorite songs from a particular year (not necessarily my five favorite, just five favorites). I started at 1967 and will run all the way through 2025.
Today is bittersweet as I’m now 22 entries into the series, which is really good. But it’s also sad since this is the final entry from the 1980’s. I grew up in that decade and it was a wonderland of entertainment of all avenues. It’s an era that hasn’t been, and probably can’t be, replicated.
All things must come to an end though, and here we are at the end of the ’80’s. Let’s get into my five picks from the end of the line.
Mötley Crüe – Kickstart My Heart
The Crüe had themselves a banner year in 1989. Their album Dr. Feelgood was a well-produced and written affair that saw them ride the end of the hair metal wave on top. The album contained this song, which ranks among the band’s very best. This is a total ass kicking burst of adrenaline that celebrates the band’s triumph of adversity and Nikki Sixx’s cheating death a few years prior. It doesn’t get much better.
Neil Young – Rockin’ In The Free World
Neil Young did NOT have a good decade in the 1980’s. He recorded some off the wall stuff and literally got sued for not sounding like himself. He spent the latter part of the ’80’s righting the ship and then lightning struck at the ass end of the decade with what has become one of his most well-known songs. Neil wrapped up criticism of the first George Bush administration in both poignant and noisy form. The political ramifications of the song have lived on for nearly 40 years since and the track is one of Young’s most beloved cuts from a discography that has roughly 9,000 albums in it.
Nine Inch Nails – Sin
The times they were a changin’, and the proof was in the pudding even before the decade turned. One signpost of the change was the advent of industrial and electronic music, and Nine Inch Nails would lead the charge into the next decade. This one has a bit of a dance beat to it, which isn’t really my thing in general but I’m cool with what Trent Reznor gets up to here. The song is about power struggle, control, lust and other cool stuff like masochism. It’s a twisted good time.
Aerosmith – What It Takes
When that gal who you had that crazy fling with in the last song is done with you, you can lean on this somber ballad from Steven Tyler and company to pull you through the tough times. This isn’t just a breakup song, it’s a lament of the most painful kind of loss, the end of that deep relationship that was supposed to be “the one.” The band did work with Desmond Child to craft this one but wanted to capture a different essence than the “big-time” ballad they went for on the album prior. I’d say they hit a home run.
Faith No More – Epic
Another sign that things were about to get a lot different was Faith No More’s 1989 hit album The Real Thing. It was their first with new singer Mike Patton and the band would become one of the harbingers of the coming weirdness of the next decade. This one would combine hard rock and a rapping vocal style, so feel free to direct the blame for nü-metal right here.
But there’s a lot more here than the primordial ooze that Korn and Limp Bizkit would crawl out of. This has pounding verses and a soaring chorus that will get wedged into any listener’s head. It’s full of musical movements and switches, including a moving piano outro that really flips things on its head. Faith No More were out in left field even for the coming alt-rock revolution, and the next decade would have their stamp all over it.
That does it for 1989 and the golden decade of the 1980’s. Next week I press on into the sea of changes that turned popular music on its head.
It’s time to go back to the 1990’s, which I’m known to do a hell of a lot. Today I’m going to look at one now-lost aspect of album releases specific to the CD format – the hidden track.
The hidden track came into life when the CD became the dominant format in music. It was really easy to tack some extra, unlisted crap on to an album. This could happen before the CD of course, but it really became a thing in the early ’90’s. Sometimes these were bonus songs, other times they were epilogues or outro pieces that weren’t “proper” songs. And in some cases it was simply goofing off.
It honestly was pretty easy to identify an album with hidden tracks – many albums inserted several tracks of silence and put the bonus track at a later number, like 69 (nice) or 99. If you put a CD in and the player said there were 99 tracks, you knew there was mischief to be found. Not everyone did this, though – sometimes these tracks were just added on at the end, but would still display 15 as opposed to the listed 14.
Today I’m going to visit a handful of hidden tracks that I specifically remember. I’m not going to do a deep dive on the matter as a whole – there are a ton of albums with this kind of thing. Check out the Wikipedia list for a not-even complete accounting of hidden tracks. Just be aware that the streaming era has essentially “unhidden” these songs, and that different CD reissues have also exposed them on track listings or even removed them in some cases.
Ozzy Osbourne – Hero
This first example comes from 1988 and was honestly just a straightforward bonus track, unlisted but added to the CD and tape copies of No Rest For The Wicked. It is a full-on song that was unlisted for reasons unclear to me. It was written by the same group that wrote the rest of the album so this wasn’t Sharon trying to hide money from people as she loves to do. The song is pretty good, I don’t necessarily get why they did it this way but I guess it came off as a nice bonus when you played the album the first time.
Danzig – Mother
Mother was originally a song on Danzig’s first solo album but it would come back to prominence several years later on the Thrall-Demonsweatlive EP. This version launched Danzig into a brief period of MTV fame in 1993. There is a live version of Mother that is the EP’s last listed song. Then, on certain CD pressings, many tracks of silence played until track 93, where a re-recorded version of Mother appeared.
This one is interesting as this hidden track is actually the version used as the single. The song played on the famous video isn’t the live cut, it’s this re-recorded studio track. I’m not sure how subsequent CD pressings may have handled this odd bit of sequencing.
Danzig would use the hidden track trick on his next album IV – there is an invocation tacked on at track 66.
For more about this EP, check out my past review of it here (oddly, one of my most popular posts).
Sepultura – Clenched Fist
Clenched Fist isn’t the hidden track here – it’s the final song on Chaos A.D. After a quick moment of silence, a hidden gag pops up that is the band members laughing manically. Hearing it for the first time was massively unsettling and it is a vivid memory even over 30 years removed. There were a lot of these hidden tracks that were goof off type stuff, this one was pretty funny and somewhat disturbing.
I know Marilyn Manson can be a heated topic of discussion but today I’m confining the topic to this hidden track, which I believe is significant to this topic. This is another track buried by silence, this is track 99, while tracks 17 through 98 are varying lengths of quiet. This is found on Manson’s 1996 album Antichrist Superstar, which is a concept album and also part of a conceptual trilogy.
This piece is a brief one that serves as both an outro and intro – it opens with an extension of the album’s final track Man That You Fear, then goes into a minute or so of distorted speaking and ambient noise. At the track’s conclusion, it goes into a different spoken sequence that ties back into the beginning of the album with Irresponsible Hate Anthem. It’s not essential by any means to the album’s story but it does provide a nice bit of spice and lore to things, essentially looping everything back around.
Note that this one sometimes bears the title Empty Sound Of Hate and other times, such as on streaming services, is listed as Untitled.
Overkill – Rehearsal Jam
On their 1994 album W.F.O., Overkill tacked on a neat little bonus. And this one is actually a bit of a chore to get to. The album proper is 11 tracks, while tracks 12 through 95 are each a few seconds of silence. Track 96 is also silent but runs for nearly 3 minutes. Then track 97 really screws with you – it’s a whopping 9 minutes of nothing. I don’t know the reasoning behind that, but it’s kind of a baffling thing. It’s not just a hidden track, this stuff is buried in silence.
Track 98 is where the action is. After yet another minute of nothing, we get a rehearsal clip featuring bits of a few cover songs. We get bits of Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell, Judas Priest’s The Ripper and Voodoo Child from Jimi Hendrix.
After this little informal jam, we get the real main event – track 99 with another 4 seconds of silence. Then the album is finally over.
This one is more of an idle curiosity and more so for the bizarre sequencing rather than the actual jam. The rehearsal is fine, there’s nothing special about it and I guess it’s a nice little easter egg. But the mind boggles at how this was laid out.
Nine Inch Nails – Physical and Suck
We get a few hidden tracks on an EP here, that being the hallowed 1992 Broken set which was a molten slab of industrial metal. In keeping with Nine Inch Nails, the circumstances on these are, of course, weird.
There are two hidden tracks that are both cover songs. Physical is a cover of an Adam And The Ants song and is straightforward, nothing weird to discuss here. The other track is a cover of the song Suck by Pigface. This one is a bit odd, as Trent Reznor was once a writing partner for Pigface and was a primary songwriter of the track. There were different versions of the song around, one pre-dating Reznor’s involvement with Pigface, and the inclusion of the song on Broken coupled with Reznor’s writing credit caused some issues.
The really weird part of this is that you get wildly different versions of the album depending on what you buy. If you get this on vinyl, you get the hidden tracks as a separate 7-inch record. On cassette, the tracks are simply listed and aren’t really “hidden.” On CD is where it gets really screwy – first versions of the EP put the hidden tracks on a separate three-inch disc, while later issues put the songs on as hidden tracks with many tracks of silence between them and the EP proper. Some versions of the EP also don’t list the last “real” song Gave Up and it sort of becomes a hidden track on only those oddball copies. And there are other track list discrepancies across different formats that I won’t get into here. It’s kind of a collector’s landmine getting into this one – honestly, just find a version and go with it.
I discussed this EP not long into starting this blog, this blurb I did today is almost as long as my full review earlier. Probably not a good thing but I’m not keeping track.
Cracker – Euro-Trash Girl
Our final entry is easily the most significant of these tracks. On their 1993 album Kerosene Hat, alt-rockers Cracker offered up no less than three hidden tracks. There was an actual reason for this – the record label was concerned about having too many songs on the album, so Cracker chose to do their remaining material unlisted. The song I Ride My Bike is a pretty cool song, then the final bit is a snippet of the title track in acoustic fashion.
But the star of the show is the first hidden track, Euro-Trash Girl. It’s a twangy track about a guy who is over in Europe trying to find his dream girl, but winds up in a bunch of crappy situations instead. This unfortunate story goes on for over 8 minutes and the guy never gets his girl.
Euro-Trash Girl quickly became hot among the fanbase and the song wound up released as a single. It is today Cracker’s third most-played live song, just behind their two singles Low and Teen Angst.
This one is also kind of funny since both Euro-Trash Girl and I Ride My Bike were previously released on an EP the year before. But it took being included as hidden cuts on the album with their biggest hit to get real traction, then one song becomes a beloved fan favorite. Music can be funny stuff sometimes.
Those are a handful of hidden tracks that stand out most to me. I know many of you were into music in the same era and probably have some funny or favorite hidden track moments that stick out for you, let me know below what you recall from the wild and crazy era of CD track sequencing.
Today we have something brand spanking new on offer. Castle Rat are a newer band on the scene and have made a bit of a name for themselves with their fantasy imagery and theatrical live shows. Today’s song Wizard is the first offering from their upcoming album The Bestiary, which is due on September 19th. This is the group’s second record, following last year’s Into The Realm.
Now, the thing about writing this is that I don’t know much of anything about Castle Rat. I hadn’t heard of them until this video popped up in my YouTube feed the other day. I have found out that the band is from New York and that they formed in 2019. The band uses pseudonyms for their credits but their real names are also out there, the stage names are apparently for added flair and not an identity concealment device. And that is about all I know, beyond the album information in the first paragraph. But we do have a song and video to dig into, so let’s do that.
Castle Rat are employing the tried and true doom metal/stoner rock formula here. It isn’t purely doom, though – there’s a fair bit of NWOBHM influence thrown in here. This is definitely a sound straight from the old times, not something merely built upon that. The production grants a decidedly retro feel as well. I’m not a knob geek by any means but I am curious what methods were implemented to achieve the old school feel on this.
The vibes from yesteryear don’t stop with the music. The video is a throwback to days of yore as well. Castle Rat stick with fantasy themes and the song’s battle with a wizard plays out in vintage fashion here. Sure it’s cheesy and goofy, but it’s done in a tone that can also be taken seriously. I’m sure Castle Rat, as an emerging band, do no t have unlimited access to money. But it’s plain to see that the video was filmed intentionally, it is not an old-school metal video that looks the way it does because the band’s budget was a six pack of Old Milwaukee.
So here we have Castle Rat in all their glory, openly wielding their swords and fantasy influence and playing metal so old-school that even old people think it’s old. While the band do have some detractors, it seems a fair few are enjoying what they see and hear. There’s nothing “original” or innovative here, but if that’s all anyone listened to we’d all only listen to the same six albums. Sounding good and being entertaining is quite enough, as entertainment is the point of all this, and Castle Rat have that down.
I know I will have my Dungeons and Dragons books and dice ready for the new album later this year, and hopefully I’ll be able to catch their signature live act at some point down the line. Wizard is a promising offering from Castle Rat, who seem poised to gain a fair bit of buzz in 2025.
We are now to 1988 on this long-running series where I pick five of my favorite songs from a year. Yes, this will run all the way through this year. I imagine this will bleed into next year at this point since I took a good chunk of the early year off, so I’ll go ahead and pick five from ’25 as well.
But we’re a long damn ways away from that. Today we head to 1988. Rock was still running strong in its hair phase, though time was running out on the art form. Things were getting heavier and heavier on the metal end of things, as what we now know as extreme metal saw regular releases in ’88 and beyond. While I do love some 1980’s pop, I had kind of moved away from it by this point and was far more entrenched in the rock and metal end of things. By the time we get to the 2000’s, many of you may not recognize anything I post. But, again, we’re not there yet.
It is 1988, at least for a few minutes around here. Here are five of my favorite songs from the year (as always, not necessarily my five favorite, just five of my favorites). Enjoy.
Queensrÿche – Eyes Of A Stranger
Starting off with the final track of what is my favorite album of all time. Operation: Mindcrime is a metal “opera” with a ton of political intrigue, murder and suspense, and Eyes Of A Stranger wraps up the album better than pretty much any ending to anything in history. The main charcter Nikki is locked up in a prison mental institution, left to recall the sordid events of the album in a drugged-up haze. The production on this song and album is absolutely perfect, and the song’s drive and melody are otherworldly, as is of course the vocal performance of Geoff Tate. There are few finer examples of a song around.
Death – Pull The Plug
Death metal had been on the scene for a few years, and by ’88 it was really getting into gear. Leave it to the namesake band to deliver an all-time classic. This “thrash on steroids” delivered a savage beating to the eardrums of metalheads brave enough to move beyond the mainstream. While Death would go on to become a technical powerhouse, Pull The Plug is some good meat and potatoes, basic death metal.
Bathory – A Fine Day To Die
From Bathory’s fourth album Blood Fire Death, this saw Quorthon blend his now patented black metal with more melodic influences, eventually coining the term Viking metal. This song is an epic journey told through a group who are facing their likely end in battle. It’s a massive song that inspires even my sedentary ass to get up and strive for Valhalla.
Candlemass – Mirror Mirror
And now time for a little doom. Candlemass of Sweden had cut their third album by this point and were in the middle of an arc that is now considered hallowed in the pantheon of doom metal. While doom is traditionally slower, this is one of several Candlemass songs that runs at a faster clip at times. It’s an enchanting track about a cursed mirror that swallows the souls of whoever peers into it. The song is aided immensely by the power and range of the “mad monk” Messiah Marcolin, a true treasure of metal vocals.
Iron Maiden – The Evil That Men Do
And we wrap up with another Iron Maiden song. This one hails from Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, which as I’ve relayed in the past is my favorite Maiden album. The song itself has a few complexities musically but is honestly one of the “simpler” tracks from the album. It is a forward, speedy driver and doesn’t let up throughout. Lyrically it is quite complex, as it deals with the album’s story of a child born of the Devil who gets up to some shit. This song is just before the child’s birth, if I’m recalling the story correctly.
That covers 1988. We are only one year away from putting a bow on the grand decade of the 1980’s. Things really do switch up after we enter the next decade.
And before I go, another quick programming note – I will continue this weekly posting format for what seems to be another four weeks, if I’m counting right. It’ll be a song and also this post, and perhaps another post in the middle of the week. I will run like this up until July 5, which is slated to be Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert. I do intend to livestream that event and I will provide a recap of it that following Monday. The week after that I will return to posting albums on Mondays, and I actually have a backlog going at this point so I should be able to keep up. ‘Till then.
Today I’ll actually look at something from the 21st Century for once and also have a look at what, in general, stands as the final recorded track of one of death metal’s most legendary acts.
Bolt Thrower got their start in England in 1986. From then to 2015 the band cut a blistering course through extreme metal with eight albums entirely centered around the concept of war. In 2005 the band released Those Once Loyal, which stands as Bolt Thrower’s final album, though at the time the band’s demise was not at all known.
Many extreme metal acts don’t sell enough to be concerned about charts and certifications. But this album did crack the German 100, coming it at 76.
When Cannons Fade is the final track on Those Once Loyal. There are some versions of the album with a bonus track, but in most cases this standard edition would be considered the definitive tracklisting, so we’ll just go ahead and call this Bolt Thrower’s final song. That’s of course purely a matter of sequencing and may not reflect how the album was recorded at all, but it is our listening experience when the album is played in order so it’s fair to go with this concept.
Today’s song is mid-paced though perhaps on the quicker end, with a consistent and grinding rhythm throughout. We get some flashy guitar work in spots, as is common with death metal. Lyrically the song is very much about its title – the artillery rains down and then is done, leaving a scorched earth behind. The memories of the insane shell pounding remain long after the battle’s close, as is narrated in the final verse.
In the song’s final minutes the rhythm switches up as we outro to a very fitting fade out. This is a long one and the final thing that can be heard is the drumming of Martin Kearns. It would prove to be tragically fitting that Kearns would ring out Bolt Thrower’s recorded career.
Again, the end of Bolt Thrower was not right after this album or planned at all. The band made the call in 2008 to hold of on recording music but did continue to tour in occasional fashion. The band were rehearsing for an Australian tour in September 2015 when Martin Kearns died unexpectedly at age 38. This would be the end of Bolt Thrower, as a year later the remaining members announced they would lay the band to rest. The group did consider doing something in terms of a reunion show or release in tribute to Kearns but nothing has ever come about.
In the years since Kearns’ death and Bolt Thrower’s demise, the band has remained at the forefront of death metal. A new generation of bands and fans have come into the scene, and a renaissance of “old-school” death metal modeled on the early 1990’s heyday has emerged in the 2020’s. Bolt Thrower has remained a prime influence among both new fans and old heads, often the subject of discussion, memes and the like. It’s possible that their status has even improved since the end of their playing days, though of course such things are difficult to rate.
No matter the specifics, Bolt Thrower remain one of death metal’s biggest forces, even a decade past their end. When Cannons Fade serves as a fitting and perhaps eerie end to their run.
And now we’re on to 1987. This was a massive year at the top end of rock. It’s pretty crazy – the albums Hysteria, Appetite For Destruction and The Joshua Tree sold a combined 75 million copies worldwide. Two of those albums didn’t really gain steam until a year later, but that’s a different story.
Things were moving on musically in the later 1980’s. A lot of bands seemed to be chasing the brass ring and not quite grabbing it. Acts that had vital, fresh albums a few years back were now stagnating. There’s still plenty of good music to be found, but in retrospect, the signs of the coming nuclear assault of 1991 were already there by ’87.
But there’s no need for massive analysis of everything. All I really need to do is pick five songs I really like from 1987. Not necessarily my five definitive favorites, simply five of my favorites. This is a fast and loose exercise so let’s get into it.
Mötley Crüe – Wild Side
The Crüe got back to form after a bit of a letdown a few years prior. Wild Side is a heavy, pounding track that outlines the sleazier part of life. Not everything was fast women and good times in the ’80’s, there was a seedy side to things and Wild Side captured the grit and grime of the streets at night. This is one of my very favorite Crüe songs.
Guns N’ Roses – Welcome To The Jungle
1987 was the year GnR were thrust into the wider world. It would take them a bit to break, but break they did, to the tune of selling 30 million copies of Appetite For Destruction. The tune that really gets me going is the album’s opening track. It is a monster song, and much like the one from their bitter rivals above, relays how the big, bad city can swallow you whole. This threw a whole new level of intensity into the rock scene and made titans out of Guns N’ Roses.
Whitesnake – Still Of The Night
David Coverdale was not to be left out of the big winnings of 1987. Gambling his whole fortune on the album he’d just crafted, he would be paid back in spades as his album sold 10 million copies. While honestly just a song about a romp between the sheets, this is laid out with great care, featuring movements and interludes and the dynamite guitar of John Sykes. This song could be considered Whitesnake’s greatest triumph, though that’s not a question I’m here to discuss today.
U2 – Where The Streets Have No Name
U2 were big winners from 1987, bringing in a haul from their 25 million plus selling The Joshua Tree record. I’m not the band’s biggest fan but there’s no doubt that the album is a piece of work and that this song is absolutely stunning. This is simply a massive rock song packed with emotion and imagery that is too vivid to escape.
Dio – All The Fools Sailed Away
By 1987, Ronnie James Dio was operating without his wunderkid guitarist Vivian Campbell, who departed the band in acrimonious fashion. Though Dio’s “golden era” would be over, he was still capable of striking gold, as he did on this magnificent track. It’s a splendid quasi-ballad that stands alongside his prime cuts as one of his best works.
That wraps it up for 1987. Just two more years of the golden 1980’s to go, then things get really, really different – both in music and in my tastes.
The Crooked Wanderer 