Album Of The Week – August 15, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week9 Comments

This week I want to have a look at an album that was commercially successful, has some divided fan opinion though is generally looked on fondly, but is completely disavowed by the artist.

Ozzy Osbourne – The Ultimate Sin

Released February 22, 1986 via Epic Records

My Favorite Tracks – Lightning Strikes, The Ultimate Sin, Shot In The Dark

Ozzy’s fourth album saw the return of Jake E. Lee to the guitar spot for his second and final work with Osbourne. Bob Daisley was out of the band for this one (at least the recording), replaced by Phil Soussan on bass. And Randy Castillo would join the group on drums, a position he would hold up until the mid ’90’s.

Of course the personnel and especially writing credits are murky for this album, as they often are in the shadowy world of Osbourne rights and finances. Bob Daisley did extensive work on this album before splitting from the band when Ozzy took time to prepare for a one-off Black Sabbath reunion in 1985. Drummer Jimmy DeGrasso was also involved in the early sessions, though he too would leave for Y&T and later Megadeth. Daisley was omitted from credit on the initial presses of the album but his contributions were noted on later pressings.

The controversy over writing credits would lead to issues down the line and are the true likely reason this album is slagged by the Osbourne camp, but we’ll get to those issues after running through the songs. 9 tracks at 40 minutes to go through here.

The Ultimate Sin

The title track opens the record with some super sick riffing from Lee, one could be forgiven for thinking that Ozzy’s next guitarist was the one shredding on this. Ozzy and sin go together like peanut butter and jelly and this song works exceptionally well.

Secret Loser

Another rocking track that offers up pretty much what the title says – Ozzy looks cool and all but is really a loser, or whatever. It’s probably something like that but honestly it’s not that deep and is a really nice song.

Never Know Why

Enough of the “inner loser” thing, here Ozzy and company are back out to rock. The detractor, of which Ozzy had many around this time, will never know why we rock. It’s not hard to figure out – just listen, how could you not rock?

Thank God For The Bomb

The pace comes up a bit for this song that is far less nihilistic than the title suggests. Here Ozzy is offering that the threat of mutually assured destruction is keeping nuclear annihilation from happening. It is not a “pro-nuke” song like, well, the 100 million pro-nuke metal songs out there.

Never

A tune about fate, the great mysteries of life, the various beliefs people hold about all that, and so on. Ozzy offers a pretty fatalistic and down to earth approach to the song. Lee’s guitar gets to go off a bit more here than on other tracks too.

Lightning Strikes

A listener could find that the songs on this album, while quality, aren’t necessarily holding up to the sterling reputation of Ozzy’s past work. Here we have an entry that fits the more melodic sound of this record but also puts itself out there as the star of the show. This track is Jake Lee-era Ozzy at their best. They turned stuff up to 11 and slammed this one home.

Killer Of Giants

Another song about the bomb but this time a mournful account of the sheer power and potentially apocalyptic consequences of nuclear warfare. It could be called a ballad but it doesn’t stray into the saccharine territory that other ballads of the period got into, the song holds its place with the harder rockers on this album.

Fool Like You

A pretty simple one, Ozzy is having a go at someone he doesn’t like. No idea if it’s personal or if it’s aimed at one of society’s adversaries.

Shot In The Dark

The album closes with the home run track that was the signature hit. It is also a pre-existing song offered up to Ozzy by bassist Phil Soussan, which is likely a massive contributing factor to the song and this album being disowned by the Osbourne camp.

The song is a total winner, a very somber yet still rocking track that fits 1986 Ozzy like a glove. The song became Ozzy’s most successful single at the time and is a long-cited fan favorite from across his entire catalog.

Shot In The Dark also might as well not exist in the Osbourne version of history. It has generally been left off of greatest hits collections and was replaced later on the one it did show up on. It is on the 1993 live album Live And Loud, so something must have happened later on to dissuade Ozzy and his handlers from messing with the song anymore. It is presumably arguments over the actual songwriting credits, as Phil Soussan’s prior bandmates had worked up the original version of the song. There are enough shady dealings in Ozzy’s writing credits history to fill a book, so I would have to guess that the actual origins of Shot In The Dark keep it out of Ozzy’s lexicon.

The Ultimate Sin was a smash success for Ozzy. The album charted well in many countries and hit platinum in the United States within a few months of release. And for a number of reasons not entirely clear to the public, the album is persona non grata as far as its creator is concerned.

Ozzy has been on record with his criticisms of the album – they involve the production of Ron Nevison. Ozzy felt that the songs all “sounded the same” and that the recording could have gone better.

And in that I think Ozzy is right – there is a samey quality to many of the songs. A few do stand out, like Lightning Strikes and Shot In The Dark, but the presentation of the record as a whole could be called a bit sterile. I do think it’s a fair take.

But in the end I have to believe that the overriding issues are that of writing credits. No legal issues have ever presented themselves regarding Shot In The Dark, though obvious matters of uncredited writers are there. And even outside of that one, this album was written mostly by Bob Daisley and Jake Lee while Ozzy was away. Lee was fired after the tour cycle for this album in a shocking decision, while Daisley has long had legal issues with the Osbourne team over his contributions to several records.

It’s no secret that Sharon Osbourne has spent a great deal of time and energy in consolidating the rights to all of Ozzy’s music. She secured control of the Black Sabbath catalog from Tony Iommi and has ruled over that with an iron fist, and the buffet of issues surrounding Ozzy’s solo work make for juicy gossip any time they’re aired out in public. Bob Daisley, Jake Lee, and Lee Kerslake are the more prominent members of the “I wrote a song for Ozzy and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” club. Sharon’s battle to control Ozzy’s catalog credits has been long-ranging and largely successful, though with gross missteps along the way, like the ill-suited idea to re-record parts of classic albums in 2002 to remove Daisley and Kerslake.

One casualty of that battle is The Ultimate Sin. The album hasn’t been reissued since 1995, leaving collectors to scramble for original editions, especially on vinyl. If the album is mentioned by Sharon at all, it is with venom and spite. The album was even deleted from the Ozzy catalog in the early 2000’s, but curiously was submitted for streaming services once they became a thing. I guess money is money after all.

Whatever the issues held by creators and rights-holders, The Ultimate Sin is still an excellent statement from Ozzy that slotted very well into the sound of the latter 1980’s. Even with noted production faults, the album still delivered a quality selection of songs. And no matter the attempts to erase history, it’s an album that can’t and shouldn’t be ignored by anyone seeking quality music.

Tales From The Stage – Crowbar and Spirit Adrift

On By bigbadburchIn live music6 Comments

Back on Tuesday, July 26th, I took in what was – uh, I guess it’s actually my first metal show since the pandemic. Probably since some time in 2019. Some kind of metalhead I am, right?

Anyway, so I drug my poser ass out to a show. There was no way to ignore this one – Louisiana sludge legends Crowbar were in town and they brought one of doom metal’s hottest current names with them, Spirit Adrift from Texas.

I was all about the show when it was announced, but then the realization set in – it’s a weekday show and I’m in my mid-40’s. It wouldn’t have phased me in my 20’s or even 30’s, but dammit I’m old and cranky and need my sleep. Yes, yes, I know that people older than I do the road warrior shit for shows to much further extremes than me going to a place that’s honestly 2 miles away from my house, but that didn’t stop that weariness and dread from setting in a few hours before the show.

But alas, I manned up and went to the show. Two local acts played – being unable to tell time, I missed the first one. The one I did catch was named Martyaloka, they are a newer act local to Springfield and this was my first exposure to them. They do a very noisy and nasty take on death metal with sludge-like riffs that were very much at home at a Crowbar show. I haven’t been in touch with the local metal scene since the pandemic hit and tore everything apart, I’ll have to keep an ear out for these guys in the future.

It was straight into Spirit Adrift after a quick line change. It does amaze me how quickly even small clubs execute their gear changes now – back in decades past it could take eons for gear to get swapped on stage, now it’s like a Formula One pit crew.

Anyway, Spirit Adrift are a band I’ve been jamming out to the past year or so and I was really excited to see their name on this tour. While plying their trade in doom, this isn’t the slow and downtrodden “everything sucks” kind of doom. Instead it’s a riff-filled journey that hits the right groove and translates very, very well to a live stage.

Spirit Adrift played a great set from songs pulled from their four studio albums and handful of EP’s. There was no “big hit” or anything like that, the group is very consistent and the set was killer from start to finish. The band got their set in despite time running a hair long, but we’re talking a matter of minutes, no Axl Rose drama here to delay anything for hours.

Below is a full set video from a SA performance earlier in the year. I haven’t found any suitable video from this specific tour.

After Spirit Adrift it was on to the main event. Crowbar are celebrating over three decades in existence and continue to pound eardrums with their heavy-as-hell sludge and doom. While never “famous,” Crowbar is known the world over as masters of the metal scene and they retain a solid fanbase after all these years plugging away from coast to coast.

To anyone’s knowledge, Crowbar had never played in Springfield before the show a few weeks back. Kirk Windstein had been through town as a member of Down, but this was the first time Crowbar had been booked here.

Crowbar ran through a career-spanning set, including stuff from their latest album, 2022’s Zero And Below. They are at that point where they have to make some choices, having 12 studio albums to construct a set from.

The band ran through tunes old and new in the death-dealing heat of southwest Missouri in late July. It was stupid hot, both inside and out. I had to duck out once or twice to catch some air but thankfully I remained upright for the set’s duration. Even Louisiana native Kirk Windstein commented on the heat, and it’s something he’s probably used to.

It was a great show from Crowbar and one that the crowd ate up. I’ve noted a lack of energy and movement from Missouri concert crowds over the decades, but the lot at the Crowbar show that night was into it and having a good time. It’s pretty easy stuff to get into when you can literally feel the riffs pounding through you.

Seeing Crowbar and Spirit Adrift was a great way to get back into the show scene, something sorely lacking from life since COVID changed all the rules two years back. (And no, despite being in a small room with a lot of people, I or no one I know fell ill to it or anything else). I might not have caught a ton of sleep that night, but hey, sacrifice is what life is all about. We don’t get a ton of shows our way these days, or at least stuff I’d like to see, so having this one was pretty awesome.

Here is a performance from Crowbar on the next night of the same tour.

Voivod and At The Gates – We Are Connected/Language Of The Dead

On By bigbadburchIn collecting2 Comments

Today’s single is another split release. It features two bands both well-known and heralded in metal’s lexicon, though in different aspects. Both bands were labelmates with Century Media Records in 2015 and that is the likely reason for this single being in existence. (Both still are with CM, as far as I can tell). One band is a Canadian group revered for their strange yet masterful takes on music, while the other group is a Swedish outfit hailed as a pioneer on the melodic death metal front.

The single was released in three versions – 1,000 copies on black vinyl, 500 on white and 500 on red. Red is what I went for, and now trivia time – red is my favorite color. If you press a record on red, I will go for it. Overall I’m cool with whatever vinyl colors and I dig the wide variety of stuff available, but just like Sammy Hagar, I’m gonna go for red when it’s out there.

I pre-ordered this when news of the split first came down and I’ve had it since release. Slapping At The Gates on a record is a sure-fire way to get me to buy it.

Voivod – We Are Connected

This 2015 song was initially a standalone release. The song would appear a year later on the EP Post Society. Voivod has also aired the song out live.

I won’t even bother trying to describe what Voivod sounds like. It is a useless task and words, especially mine, won’t do any justice to Voivod’s music. They are one of the most unique entities in metal and really all of music.

We Are Connected is a nice jam that extends over seven minutes, not a common runtime on the 7-inch/45 release format. It is weird, in keeping with the band’s traditions, but yet this one doesn’t go to any really challenging places and can be taken in without a ton of effort. There’s a bit to chew on and digest here but it’s a well-presented package.

At The Gates – Language Of The Dead

This song from the Swedish death metal legends was originally available a year prior to this single, as a bonus track on a deluxe version of their 2014 comeback album At War With Reality. It was the band’s first album since 1995, the juggernaut Slaughter Of The Soul that still casts a large shadow over metal to this day.

Language Of The Dead is the case of a bonus track song that people ask “why the hell was this a bonus track?” I mean, don’t get me wrong – I love At War With Reality. Hearing ATG be able to record viable music decades after their moonshot album was a thrill.

But this song is just absolutely great. It has the old-school feel that calls back to the band’s glory days while still sounding fresh and new. I don’t know how or why bands and labels choose songs to be on a record or to be cast aside for bonus material, but I agree with many others that the song could have easily slotted on to the album.

But hey, it doesn’t matter. I have the album and I have this single also, it’s all there. The two bands seem an unlikely pairing but both are revered in many circles and the end result works very, very well. This is one split that offers something a bit more than the sum of its parts, even if it was born of the convenience of having both bands on the same label.

Motörhead – Ace Of Spades (the song)

On By bigbadburchIn S-Tier Songs4 Comments

This post was part of a series that I called S-Tier Songs. I later decided to abandon the series in favor of a simpler Song of the Week format. I am keeping these posts as I wrote them but removing the old page that linked to the list of S-Tier Songs, so that is why these posts might look a bit odd. Enjoy.

Motörhead – Ace Of Spades

This homage to gambling would not just serve as a band’s hit, it would become the signature song associated with one of heavy metal’s most influential acts. Motörhead would not find massive commercial success, but after decades of recording and tearing up the pavement all the world over, they would become a stud in the crown of metal music.

Ace Of Spades was a single release a month ahead of the band’s fourth album of the same name. The song got noticed and hung out on the UK charts for a few months, it would also receive a UK gold certification for sales in excess of 400,000. The album Ace Of Spades would chart modestly well throughout Europe and also go gold in the United Kingdom for sales over 100,000.

And those fairly modest sales figures would be one of the biggest commercial successes of the band’s 28-year career. Motörhead were never a super popular or financially successful act, yet they endure as one of the heavyweights of the metal genre. Bassist and vocalist Lemmy Kilmister, praised in many circles as God, would make far more money writing songs for Ozzy Osbourne than for his own band.

Yet, when all comes due, it is Lemmy’s vehicle Motörhead that remains as a bastion of heavy music.

And even among the “great unwashed” who aren’t radically familiar with the music of Motörhead, it’s a damn safe bet that a lot of people have heard this song. It’s known far and wide as one of heavy metal’s greatest tunes.

The song is pretty simple in its premise – it is a buzzsaw, but with enough subtlety to distinguish it from the later-to-come death and black metal. It embodies rock, punk, speed and thrash, the latter two terms not even yet existing when it was released in 1980. Motörhead were already an edgy gambit in the few years leading up to this release – this song would cement a young legacy.

The tale of the song’s construction is fairly simple, and told in great detail in this 2017 article by Louder Sound. Drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor and guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clark were jacking around in the studio with producer Vic Maile, who was familiar with Lemmy from the latter’s time in Hawkwind. A series of riffs had been thrown around and the band worked them up while Lemmy was out on the prowl.

The lyrics would come from Lemmy later – he truly just slammed a bunch of gambling references together. It might have been in the back of a van while speeding along a freeway as he recalls, or it might have been on the shitter, as Phil Taylor would guess. Either way, the band had their title track down.

And in the wake, one of heavy metal’s immortal songs was born. Again, there is no mentioning Motörhead without Ace Of Spades. And there isn’t a lot of what we call heavy metal without Motörhead – everyone was influenced by the speedy, punkish outfit. This blend of nasty, noisy rock would give way to thrash in just a few year’s time, and by the end of the 1980’s, extreme metal was well on its way to being more than just a footnote in history. And much of all this noise owes its presence to Motörhead and principally Ace Of Spades.

It’s fair to say that this is Motörhead’s most famous song. Hell, their second most famous song is probably a pro wrestler’s theme song that the band didn’t even write. The group never really “got their due” in terms of huge success, yet they are almost without exception mentioned as a forefront influence on the music that has come from the decades since 1980. And while the band have a hefty catalog with several worthy albums and songs to choose from, there is little doubt that Ace Of Spades is the calling card that rallies all points home. When anyone mentions Motörhead, no doubt it is this gnarly riff and Lemmy’s gruff vocal delivery about losing your ass at cards that first enters one’s mind.

Why is this an S-Tier song?

Ace Of Spades is the banner by which Motörhead flew under for decades. It is a barnstormer of a song that both used and defied the music of the time to offer a new construct upon which much of the heaviest music of the ensuing years would be based off of. Everyone knows that Lemmy and Motörhead kicked ass, and everyone knows that Ace Of Spades is the signpost for the ass kickings.

Album Of The Week – August 8, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week5 Comments

This week it’s back to 1993. It was a bit of a strange time, the vacuum left after the events of 1991 wound up being filled by some interesting stuff. One consequence for the years after was that heavier music was getting noticed and would even see mainstream chart success. Today’s album is from a group who’d been known as pioneers of the heaviest possible sounds, and this album provided a template for the shape of metal to come.

Sepultura – Chaos A.D.

Released September 1993 via Epic/Roadrunner Records

My Favorite Tracks – Refuse/Resist, Amen, Territory

Brazil’s Sepultura had captured the attention of the world with several albums of thrash bordering on death metal. By 1993 the band had worn out on the sound and looked to change up the formula some. The results would be downtuned guitars, more groove-based riffing in place of a thrash assault, and drums incorporating tribal and samba influences. It was as if Sepultura timed their move from thrash at the same time the rest of the world did.

There are 12 songs with a run time of a fairly lean 47 minutes. Should be pretty easy to get through.

Refuse/Resist

Opening with one of the album’s three singles (all the first three tracks are), this heavy hitter is an anti-police/authority song that has come away as one of the record’s signature anthems. Even with the band’s move away from thrash, this song is a chaotic, frantic mess. It does its job well of being a protest anthem, and in a time when protests and riots would see a big uptick.

Territory

The second single and most likely the best-known song from the album. Territory is a slow, plodding affair that looks at relations between leader/dictator and the people. Topical footage from the Israel-Palestine conflict is used in the video. Sepultura’s new groove-based music was being matched with incendiary political content, something that would get noticed in the same time frame that bands like Rage Against The Machine got big.

Slave New World

The final single from the album, this song was co-written with Biohazard bassist/actor Evan Seinfeld. The song tackles the issues of censorship and what it means to be “free” in modern society. As with the other two singles, this song is a common staple of the group’s live sets.

Amen

Though apparently not said outright, the song is a look at the Branch Davidian cult of Waco, Texas. The cult and its leader David Koresh were burned alive by US federal agents in April 1993 after an extended standoff. The song handles both the point of view of the cult leader and a more distant perspective that outlays the apocalyptic consequences.

Kaiowas

We arrive at an instrumental and all-acoustic performance, featuring only guitars and tribal percussion. The album’s liner notes pay tribute to a Kaiowas tribe in Brazil that committed mass suicide in response to government taking tribal lands. I have not done the proper scholarly research to corroborate that information.

Propaganda

A song about …. uh, propaganda and confrontation, I guess. It’s a very nice song but I have no idea what Max Cavalera is on about here. Sometimes you just have to quit paying attention and headbang along.

Biotech Is Godzilla

Here is a track with guest lyrics written by Dead Kennedys frontman and alternative icon Jello Biafra. The song gets into the issue of biotechnology and its more insidious uses. The song offers a conspiracy theory that the US government sent lab techs to Brazil to experiment with germs and chemicals on unsuspecting citizens. While the song is brief at two minutes it packs quite a punch and a lot of information and conjecture in its slim timeframe.

Nomad

An ode to the tribal and traveling peoples of the world, and an appropriately harsh, doom-ridden tune to weave that tale with.

We Who Are Not As Others

Another slow, doomy number that literally just repeats the title as its lone lyric over and over again. And it doesn’t suck. Pretty good job on making that better than a throwaway track. I mean, sure, it’s kind of damn dumb but it still works.

Manifest

An interesting twist on a metal song, this track provides a spoken-word account of a bloody news item from Brazil – the Carandiru prison massacre of 1992, in which military police handled a prison riot via the slaughter of 111 prisoners (who were pre-trial and not yet convicted). Max Cavalera does offer a few brief, one-word choruses along with the spoken account. It is an interesting and different approach to a metal song that is also obviously really fucking depressing.

The Hunt

We wind toward the close with a cover song – this originally being an offering from 1986 and the English group New Model Army, an act that can be called “rock” but honestly defies most specific categorization. No real matter here, as Sepultura twist this song’s form into their own. It is a tale of street justice and vigilantism in the face of the criminal underworld, a song very fitting of Chaos A.D.’s themes.

Clenched Fist

Bringing it home with one of those tried and true, defiant ’till the end and I’m angry and gonna get busy with it metal songs. It’s an anthem for weightlifting, running or whatever other crazy exercise shit people do (I do cycling myself).

Chaos A.D. saw Sepultura reinvent themselves and their new form landed squarely in the 1993 metal marketplace. The album went gold in the US and three other countries and saw top 20 or better action in several nations’ charts. Sepultura would tour the US with Pantera in 1994, just as the latter obliterated the Billboard charts with their own Far Beyond Driven. Groove metal was here, a “new” metal approach that beckoned great change on the horizon.

This would not be Sepultura’s greatest success – they truly conquered with their next effort, the multi-platinum Roots. That album would lean harder towards the “new” metal approach and was a benchmark for new trends in heavy metal. The band themselves would not enjoy the full fruits of their labor, as frontman Max Cavalera would depart the group in acrimonious circumstances at the end of 1996. While both Sepultura and Cavalera press on in various incarnations, there has been no heralded reunion of the band’s classic lineup that overtook mainstream attention with their very harsh sounds.

But for all that would come after, Chaos A.D. remains as a staple of the band’s catalog. It helped that one of extreme thrash’s most promising bands helped usher in the new age of metal (though some old-school keepers of the gate did not take to the new sound..) and also that the band incorporated specific, real-world examples of big issues in society as opposed to abstract cackling about bad stuff. It is as much a thinking person’s album as it is a vehicle of aggression, and its combined form is a force to be reckoned with.

Emperor – Thus Spake The Nightspirit/Inno A Satana

On By bigbadburchIn collecting4 Comments

Today I’m gonna dig out a single I’ve had since its release in 2009. So 13 years, if my math is right. It’s one of those “fun” but totally unnecessary things that was put out as a “limited bonus.” I was very, very excited about the albums being released and so I went whole hog and ordered the LP’s, a CD and DVD set, and also this 7-inch single.

The occasion was two live album releases from festival reunion shows of black metal stalwarts Emperor. The band split up in 2001 and reunited in – uh, 2006, which in the grand scheme of things is not a long time at all. But back then it was really exciting stuff and the hype was unreal. Even now as I’m looking over this paltry 5-year time gap for the first time I’m a bit taken aback at just how amped up I was for this. But hey, that comes with age I guess.

Anyway – the band began playing sporadic shows in 2006, and in early 2009 they announced a few LP and CD releases of two 2006 live sets – performances at the Inferno and Wacken festivals. The records were packaged separately, but a big CD and DVD bundle was released called Live Inferno. Oddly enough, the DVD had the Wacken performance on it.

Anyway, again – also as part of this series of releases, this 7-inch record was put out. Released on gold vinyl, it is a limited edition of 2,000 copies. This release didn’t spell out the specific number of the release by hand-numbering or anything, but I can rest comfortably knowing I’m one of 2,000 people who have this. (FYI, it is readily available on Discogs at the same street market value it sold for 13 years ago…)

Enough of that. I’m not really complaining but I am having a bit of fun with this. Whatever happened, I have this two-song single from the Live Inferno set. The two songs are among the most celebrated of Emperor’s work and my two personal favorites of their entire catalog, so that worked out well. Both performances are from the Inferno festival and are both included on that full live album – this isn’t unreleased content.

Thus Spake The Nightspirit

The A-side features a standout track from the band’s 1996 opus Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk. It was the album that first got me into black metal and this song is my absolute favorite of the group’s entire catalog.

I wont’ delve too much into the song itself here – simple fact is that it will be an S-Tier song someday and I’ll just save the discussion for that. For this version, it is a fantastically-captured live version that sounds absolutely great. You don’t really hear the crowd on it until the end, but that’s to be expected – even in a huge festival setting, black metal isn’t “stand up and shout” music. But the band’s sound got reeled in well that night and it’s easy to see why they chose to release it as a live set.

Inno A Satana

Not the version from the 7 inch

The B-side features a track from the band’s true debut full-length In The Nightside Eclipse. It’s the album that put the band’s name on the map just as all the murder and church-burning stuff made black metal famous (acts that some members of the band were involved in).

Inno A Satana (Hymn To Satan, if you were wondering), is one of the group’s many lush, majestic passages that offered something more to the listener than the chaotic lo-fi frenzy of most black metal of the time. Another of their greatest tracks and also a likely candidate for future evaluation as an S-Tier song.

That covers the two songs from the single. My copy did arrive from Europe with a few bends in the cover, but it’s not that big of a deal really. There is a funny story as to how many times the copies of the full live set LPs changed hands between me and a buddy of mine, but I’ll save that for another time. This single has remained in my collection the entire time and it’s a cool thing to have, even though it could be considered rather useless in some instances.

Upcoming Releases – The Next Few Months

On By bigbadburchIn Upcoming Music3 Comments

I set this aside for a moment as the new stuff wasn’t coming out with as great a frequency, but of course I wait a little more than a week and it all hits at once. Plenty from across the spectrum to talk about this time around.

Dieth – In The Hall Of The Hanging Serpents

An interesting and unexpected opening salvo here. Two-thirds of the lineup makes sense – Gullherme Miranda, formerly of Entombed AD and Michal Lysejko, late of Decapitated, have formed a band. One would expect death metal, of course, and one would get just that. What one probably wouldn’t expect is for Dave Ellefson to be throwing down on bass for this. I know Dave has been involved in a wide variety of projects over the years, but to take up death metal after his dismissal from Megadeth? That’s pretty big.

There is no album information yet but it appears they’ve already been in the studio. They sound like they know what they’re doing, it’ll be interesting to hear what a full project sounds like. Dave Ellefson has several other projects coming up, including an album with Jeff Scott Soto, but I’ll wait until new music from that comes out before getting into it.

Sammy Hagar And The Circle – Crazy Times

This fresh new song is the title track of a new Circle album due September 30 (later on vinyl). Sammy and this outfit of Michael Anthony, Vic Johnson and Jason Bonham had a pretty big hit album in 2019 and are now back after pandemic-related shutdowns. This incarnation of Sammy sees him get back to rocking out and leaving behind his Jimmy Buffet-like persona of earlier years. Not that there was anything wrong with that, Sammy can do whatever the hell he wants, but it’s nice to hear the Red Rocker back at it.

Taipei Houston – As The Sun Sets

This new indie-ish rock offering is a standalone single for now. The new band is a two piece of brothers Layne and Myles Ulrich, who do also happen to be the kids of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. It’s a curious call to go in as a two-piece but hey, I’m not here to tell people how to run their bands. The song is pretty good and does leave me interested in hearing more. It’s certainly its own entity and now owing to Lars’ gig in any way.

David Lee Roth – Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway

Another standalone single, this is a track John 5 recently put out as a tribute to Van Halen. It’s a sappy, sentimental song with a video showing photo highlights of Van Halen’s career. It’s not a song that will feature on DLR best of list but it also works well for its intended purpose. There were some recording sessions that were supposed to be a new DLR album, no telling if the complete sessions will ever see the light of day.

House Of Lords – House Of The Lord

A name I know but couldn’t tell you a lot about, the melodic hard rock outfit is back with their eleventh studio album. The record is called Saints And Sinners and will be out September 16. These guys have stuck true to a sound that became dated just a few years after the band started out in 1988. It’s not the sort of thing I would fall all over myself to get but it’s also pretty good execution and I know these guys have had a fair share of buzzworthy albums over the years.

Goatwhore – Born Of Satan’s Flesh

The New Orleans extreme metallers are prepping to release their eighth studio album, Angles Hung From The Arches Of Heaven, on October 7. Goatwhore have made quite the name for themselves in recent years and it sounds as though they are ready to get back on the attack after a five-year recording absence. They are firing on all cylinders here.

Charley Crockett – I’m Just A Clown

The hardest working man in country music is inevitably releasing his second album this year (and fourth in two years) with The Man From Waco, due September 9. This single from the new album dispenses with pure country and offers some boogie, swing, soul, I don’t really know. It’s a pretty cool track and we’ll see what the full album has in store in a few weeks.

The Cult – Give Me Mercy

Ending today’s list with a new track from one of rock’s most enigmatic bands. The Cult will be back with their first album in six years – Under The Midnight Sun hits on October 7. Give Me Mercy offers some of the same atmospheric alt-rock the group have been employing in the second half of their career. I’ve enjoyed the past several Cult releases so I don’t expect this to go down any differently.

That’s all for this month. We’ll see what’s up in the next installment of upcoming releases – quite possible that Kerry King’s post-Slayer band will be among them.

One Year In

On By bigbadburchIn Uncategorized7 Comments

All right, everyone. It’s time for a bit of a party – today marks the one-year anniversary of my first “real” post on this blog. I did a since-deleted “getting ready” post and a welcome post, but on this day last year I posted my first Album of the Week. A great album and also, to be expected, my least-viewed post. I guess someone has to be the loser.

It’s been a pretty wild ride getting set back up in the blogging sphere. I did blogs in some form semi-regularly from 1998 through to 2011. At that time I intended to “make the big leap” and get my own domain and do stuff on a level I hadn’t done before. It only took ten years for me to actually get to it.

I was a bit worried about doing it again, after all – who the hell reads blogs in 2021 and 2022? Blogging was already “on the way out” in 2011 thanks to YouTube and social media. Was I pissing in the wind trying to start something up in 2021?

As it turns out, no. It’s been a really cool thing this past year. I’ve been able to stick with it, people have been reading, and all in all it’s been a rewarding experience.

It has been kind of funny at times. Back in the “old days” when I was younger and had more cognitive function I could crap out a blog post in no time flat. These days it takes a bit more work, but also I imagine things are a little more “on the rails” than I used to be too. (And also this time around I told myself I was gonna edit and triple check everything – yeah, right. Not happening).

But enough of that – looking forward, I don’t plan or expect any huge changes. I’m working to post four days a week now and I think I have that down. I’d eventually love to get to five every week but that might be a bit off in the distance yet (save this week, which will have five). I have enough “occasional” series running now that it’s fairly easy to come up with ideas to crank out.

There are no huge three or more part projects on the horizon right now. I’ve done a few before but I haven’t been struck with the inspiration with anything big lately. I’m sure something will dawn on me someday, but for now it will be a rotating series of S-Tier Songs, Tales From The Stage, and the other “here and there” things I do (along with the weekly single series). A new thing here or there may pop up, but I’m going to ride it out like this for a bit before I spring anything new.

One thing I had intended to do that hasn’t surfaced yet is YouTube. I was going to do album rankings and other things like that in video form. I honestly just haven’t had the time or inclination to mess with it. I may give it a go and see if I can’t get that off the ground before year’s end, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to hold their breath for it.

I have also considered the idea of doing a second, non-music related blog. That is something that may very well happen but will also be a ways off. I want to make sure I have this one sailing smoothly before I commit to something else. But we’ll see.

One note before I go – thank you to everyone who has visited, commented and/or otherwise interacted here. I got a bigger response than I’d anticipated, it’s certainly not easy to get or keep anyone’s attention these days. It’s nice to know I’m not just typing into the void, I doubt I would’ve hung around a year that way.

That’s about all I got – it’s kind of funny to think that, after a year, I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the music I like and have listened to. This site and concept could easily outlive my ability to run it. That’s a good thing, I suppose. Thank you all and we’ll see what the next year brings.

Album Of The Week – August 1, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week12 Comments

Last week I covered one of the most significant albums in heavy metal history. Let’s go 2 for 2 on that front.

Iron Maiden – Powerslave

Released September 3, 1984 via EMI

My Favorite Tracks – 2 Minutes To Midnight, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, Aces High

This release marks Maiden’s fifth studio album and the one where the band truly became a worldwide phenomenon. The album and resulting tour would get the band in front of audiences across most of the civilized world.

And of course, it usually isn’t an Iron Maiden album without an epic cover. Powerslave does not disappoint on that front. Our friend Eddie was worked into a pharaoh sitting atop his throne and the Derek Riggs cover is one of Maiden’s most celebrated art pieces.

Discussion is a fairly easy task with eight songs coming in a hair over 50 minutes (and also I’ve heard this album a billion times), though the huge epic looms at the album’s close.

Aces High

The album’s opener would also serve as the band’s long-time concert opener. Maiden’s sound was now dialed in and this energetic track showcases the rumbling bass, galloping guitars and soaring vocals the band are known for. The lyrics recreate British air forces during the Battle Of Britain in World War II. It is one of the most well-known and loved songs from the groups catalog.

2 Minutes To Midnight

It’s a song that employs the world’s simplest yet most effective rock riff and tells a tale of destruction through the military industrial complex. The title references the Doomsday Clock and the close setting to midnight, which would signify atomic destruction.

This also is my favorite Iron Maiden song. I don’t really know “why,” just that it is.

Losfer Words (Big ‘Orra)

This is an instrumental and (I think) the final one the band ever did. It’s a very nice song that certainly could have been something with vocals but does just fine on its own. It fits the sound of the album perfectly.

Flash Of The Blade

A two-song mini arc about swordfighting starts here. A young kid plays with his toy sword, then becomes a real swordsman after his family is killed in an attack. He sets out for revenge against the killers with his real sword skills as an adult. The chorus is a pretty clever twist on “live by the sword, die by the sword.”

The Duellists

A pretty simple premise – the song is about a sword duel. The two combatants fight in the lyrics through Maiden’s pummeling musical delivery. Both of the swordfighting songs sometimes get dismissed or overlooked but I’ve always enjoyed them.

Back In The Village

This song isn’t entirely clear but it is another reference by Maiden to the old British TV show The Prisoner. The band had already recorded the song The Prisoner on The Number Of The Beast inspired by the show and are revisiting the setting here. I’m not familiar with the show but here are a handful of direct quotes from it in the lyrics here, such as “I’m not a number, I’m a name,” also words worked into The Prisoner song.

Powerslave

The title track heads to ancient Egypt and visits with a dying pharaoh who is not happy with the premise of mortality. The pharaohs were considered gods, yet here this dude is about to kick the bucket. Probably a startling conclusion to a worshiped and revered figure. Maiden kicked the track length up a bit here to 7 minutes, though even Powerslave pales in comparison to the journey to come.

Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

We arrive now at the album’s close, but it’ll be awhile before we get to the actual finish. This song, a direct adaptation of Samuel Coleridge’s famous poem of the same name, clocks in at 13:45. It would be Iron Maiden’s longest song until 2015, where Empire Of The Clouds from The Book Of Souls would dwarf Rime’s runtime (and The Red And The Black would come very close).

The song and poem’s plot can be summed up in concise fashion – ship gets lost, bird helps ship out of ice, guy shoots bird, guy is cursed for shooting bird. Sure, there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that but it’s the gist of the story.

Maiden makes extensive use of movements and arrangement to convey the poem in song form. An unfamiliar listener could be forgiven for thinking this is more than one song, at least until the curse is lifted in the song’s final few minutes. I’ve even had my mind wander off and forget what I was listening to when playing this album in the background.

While doing a song of such scope posed risks, Iron Maiden was all the better for it. They were not ever a radio hits band, so a lengthy epic based on a poem was eaten up by the fanbase. To this day it is listed among their finest works and no shortage of people have it at the top of their lists.

The Live After Death performance

Powerslave was an immense triumph for a band already on the rise in the mid 1980’s. The album charted in many countries and has several platinum and gold certifications. The resulting World Slavery tour took Iron Maiden all over the world and culminated in their first live album, the immortal Live After Death.

Iron Maiden’s ’80’s run is widely hailed as a series of classic albums and performances, yet Powerslave may be the cornerstone of that era. The two singles Aces High and 2 Minutes To Midnight are constant live presences, the title track is a celebrated epic, and of course Rime Of The Ancient Mariner is hailed as a masterpiece. The album’s influence is inescapable – hell, it’s even used by some to criticize other periods of the band’s work. Even as the band has endured and carved a unique legacy within heavy metal, the shadow of Pharaoh Eddie looms large over Iron Maiden’s work.

Also the Live After Death performance

Chat Pile – God’s Country

On By bigbadburchIn Upcoming Music3 Comments

I don’t have a “real” post today, I’m gearing up for next week. It’s a big one as next Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. It’ll be a post every day next week and work/time constraints along with the insane baseball trade deadline have my attention pulled in a million different directions.

But I have a bit of time to discuss my anticipated new release for today. Chat Pile are a very recent outfit from Oklahoma who have generated quite the buzz through a few EP’s. The group just dropped their debut full-length God’s Country today.

I was eagerly awaiting this album as I’d picked up their EP’s last year. I clearly wasn’t the only one – the album has a pretty insane amount of buzz and people are going about it left and right on social media. They also got a rave review from Pitchfork, a monumental feat in and of itself.

I’m not going to attempt a review of any kind, I’ve played the album twice now and I don’t have those kind of skills. I’ll say that I’m really impressed with the album – the music is a contrast between some honestly pretty smooth though noisy riffing and very, very caustic vocals and lyrical themes. This isn’t full on “metal” as much as a communication of society’s ills with a noisy backdrop.

This album isn’t a celebration of the ills of culture, instead it’s a document of them. Chat Pile are located just a few hours from me and I’ve seen the piles of the toxic lead mining remnants that the group are named after. There are a lot of messed up, suffering people in our region and a very twisted, dystopian government that does nothing to improve conditions. God’s Country spells out what this area looks like and sounds as fucked up as things around here are.

So far I’m very much enjoying this very harrowing album. I’m sure it will be in play toward the end of the year when I get to the work of considering my favorites of 2022. I’m off to enjoy my weekend in this dystopian shithole, have a good one and I’ll see everyone next week as I hit my one year mark.