Tag: heavy metal

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.

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

Disfear and Doomriders – All Paths Lead To Nothing, There Is Only Death

On By bigbadburchIn collecting7 Comments

It’s that time of the week to dig into another offering from my singles collection. Today it’s the good old split single – two bands each offer a song, the vinyl gets pressed and here we are years later looking over the results. Split singles and even albums have been a consistent feature of the metal underground. I was never one to splurge on such things but I’ve wound up with a handful in my collection.

Today it’s a double dip into some very noisy territory – Swedish D-beat merchants Disfear are paired alongside American metal act Doomriders for this 2008/2009 split. Sometimes these split singles get their own “album” names and other times they don’t. In this case the single does have its own title completely separate from the two songs.

This isn’t necessarily an “unlikely” pairing but there is a common thread to tie these bands together – both groups recorded albums in this timeframe at GodCity Studios. GodCity is the brainchild of Kurt Ballou, who plays in Converge and has also produced a great deal of work at the studio. Ballou is also bandmates in Converge with Nate Newton, who is the head of the Doomriders project. (Note – the Disfear song on this release was recorded among themselves and not part of Disfear’s album at GodCity)

A lot of metal band trivia here, and more to come – but in reality there are only two songs to discuss here, so let’s have at it.

Disfear – Fear And Trembling

Disfear is an unsettling proposition, owing its sound to the crust punk and D-beat scene. It’s a very underground affair with English group Discharge as one of its primary pioneers. The music is very, very unsettling, noisy and not for the faint of heart.

Disfear themselves have a long history, though broken up in phases. They were around in the 1990’s but would go on hiatus and reform under a very different line-up in the early 2000’s. Two original members would remain and would be joined by Swedish death metal royalty – Entombed guitarist Ulf Cederlund and At The Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg helped Disfear into a new millennium.

Our song today is, as far as I can tell, exclusive to this release. It was not featured on their 2008 album Live The Storm and the band haven’t done any further releases so I suppose this single is the only place to get the song. As luck would have it, this split is still in print for anyone who stumbles upon this and just has to have it.

As I’ve said, this music is not for the weak of ear or constitution. It is a noisy mess. Even for the standards of Swedish death metal, Disfear makes those bands sound like orchestra music. Lyrically it is apparently a dissection of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s work of the same name. As lyrics and background info are hard to find for this song, I can’t source that claim, but I saw it in a YouTube comment so it’s probably true. And knowing how Tomas Lindberg likes to source such material, I would feel safe in the assumption.

Again, I’m pretty sure this is something most of my regular readers are not going to be into. This song is a headache in vinyl form. But this is my series of singles and well, here you are.

Doomriders – Crooked Path

Out to something still harsh and noisy but perhaps more conventional, we have New England’s metal/sludge outfit Doomriders. The group is the conception of Nate Newton, who is a member of the aforementioned Converge, as well as Old Man Gloom and presently Cave In.

When I first got this split, which was way back in ’09 when it released stateside, this was the song that pulled me in more. I was familiar with Disfear but not with Doomriders and this was a sound I was pretty well lacking at that time. It is gruff but also groovy and well performed. I was very much into stuff like High On Fire around this time and this was a worthy compliment to that.

Crooked Path did see release on an album – the Doomriders’ 2009 Darkness Comes Alive. This single that I purchased for the involvement of Disfear led me to the Doomriders and it’s been a fond listening relationship since.

That’s about all for this one. The single was packaged in somewhat unique fashion – instead of a slipsheet or cardboard holder, a massive poster is folded into the 7 inch sleeve. I wouldn’t dare unfold it because I’d spend the rest of my life trying to get it back in to the sleeve, but it’s a nice touch for a cheap, out of the way single. (Actually not, it’s really easy to open and put back together as it turns out…) Stay tuned next week for another oddity from my collection of 7 inch single horrors.

Megadeth – Night Stalkers

On By bigbadburchIn Upcoming Music3 Comments

I had to switch post order up a bit, the reason why will be clear in a few weeks. This was originally supposed to be about Woodstock ’99, but with a new additional documentary about to hit streaming, I decided to put off my post about the existing one. Instead I’ll talk some about a new song from one of the bands that closed down the ill-fated festival.

Today I want to go over the new Megadeth song a little bit. Night Stalkers is the second single released from the upcoming album The Sick, The Dying And The Dead!, out September 2nd. The song is really good, Megadeth have established that they are going to be heavy as hell on this record. Both singles shape up for a nice album coming in just over a month.

There are a few odd and/or funny talking points going around about the song. I thought I’d dive into a few of them.

Dave Mustaine’s voice – shot?

The biggest topic of discussion has been Dave Mustaine’s voice. This isn’t new – the conversation came up during the Dystopia album release and tour cycle. Dave is now 60 years old and, well, I guess the pipes just aren’t what they used to be?

Honestly, I’m not hearing any huge impact here. Yeah, dude is old and also battled throat cancer in the late 2010’s, but nothing I’ve heard on either new song gives me any pause. He still carries a tune and also, it’s not like anyone was listening to Megadeth for Dave’s vocal prowess anyway. He’s always taken shit over his voice and while his snarl is unmistakable, it never was Megadeth’s calling card. But even with this new stuff I’m not having an issue with it. I don’t know. We all hear things differently, sure, but I do think sometimes people just like to find things to bitch about.

And even if Dave can’t carry a tune like he used to, the band is playing in such fine form that it doesn’t deter me much at all. Let the old man warble a bit over some of the hardest-hitting metal he’s recorded in ages.

Ice T is on this?

Yes – Ice T makes a guest appearance on the song. He does a brief spoken-word part that fits the song’s narrative and isn’t some weird bit that detracts from the track at all.

It’s almost like Ice T knows his way around a metal song, which of course he does. He has fronted Body Count for decades now, and in fact BC and Megadeth toured together in the early ’90’s. This was around the same time Mustaine heaped praise upon Ice T as a great artist.

And that relationship didn’t stop back then, either – in 2017, Mustaine provided both a spoken word intro and a guitar solo to the opening track from Body Count’s 2017 album Bloodlust. Civil War is an awesome song and here’s my very high opinion of the album overall from when it was Album of the Week awhile back.

The point is this – there is nothing strange about Ice T being on a Megadeth song, it might be called long overdue if anything. And there certainly is nothing wrong with it, even if some amount of keyboard warriors seem to think so.

The origin of Vic Rattlehead

The most exciting part about the new Megadeth video was something I’d heard about when the first song was released but nothing was really confirmed. This video arc, clearly meant by Mustaine to tell a story, is giving us the origin of Megadeth’s long-beloved mascot Vic Rattlehead. At the end of the first single We’ll Be Back, a soldier carries an atomic bomb into the sea in an apparent attempt to save people from certain destruction.

In Night Stalkers, this soldier is in some form of afterlife that resembles the river Styx and the ferryman Charon, though is also termed Hell in official preview clips. The shrouded figure transforms the soldier into the well-known mascot, then Vic returns to the mortal realm to unleash some hell on shadow agents hunting his family (or something, I’m not entirely sure).

It is really cool to see a Vic origin story after decades of his existence. I’d wager Vic is the second most famous heavy metal mascot, behind only the ubiquitous Eddie from Iron Maiden. And with this video arc we get far more of a story for Vic than we’ve ever gotten for Eddie.

I’m really looking forward to see where this story goes. Vic often appears as a tyrant or arms dealer type of baddie on old Megadeth album covers, and his story is clearly linked to some very dark military shadow operations, so we’re bound to get some really intriguing stuff in the upcoming arc. I love stuff like this that gives albums a bit more meaning and lore behind them, and it’s especially great to have this with one of heavy metal’s most recognized (drawn) figures.

That’s where we are with the preview songs for the new Megadeth album. We get some wondering about Dave’s vocal state (fine by me), some clowns questioning why Ice T is on the album, and some cool lore behind the long time mascot of the band. All that’s really left to do is see where the story goes and to get ahold of the new album here in several weeks.

A quick refresher on We’ll Be Back and the origin of Vic Rattlehead

Album Of The Week – July 25, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week8 Comments

This week’s pick is one that was always going to wind up here, the only question was when. I could write about the album in my sleep and I could probably write this without hitting play on it (though I will). But all the fuss raised up over the title track’s use in a hit TV shows means the time to talk about it is now.

Metallica – Master Of Puppets

Released March 3, 1986 via Elektra Records

My Favorite Tracks – Damage Inc., Disposable Heroes, Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

Metallica’s third album would showcase some polish and a very consistent approach. The band would make waves after its release as the record gained momentum without the benefit of radio or MTV play. It would go one be considered one of the band’s finest moments, even as tragedy cut short the album’s touring cycle.

It’s a fairly lean track list with eight songs but there’s almost an hour’s worth of music to get into. Let’s dive in to one of heavy metal’s most noteworthy albums. Also, a note – the videos posted are all live performances that may not reflect everything discussed in the post, and were also performances after the death of Cliff Burton.

Battery

Opening with one hell of a thrash attack. The song is a scorching track that pays tribute to the band’s fans, being the “battery” that Metallica draws from during shows. It’s also a reference to San Francisco’s Battery Street, where Metallica roamed in their early days. This song showcases how Metallica were able to retain the savagery of their early career while also refining their sound.

Master Of Puppets

The title track is a mammoth epic clocking in at 8:36. The long runtime did not deter fans – the song is one of the band’s most popular and stands as the track played live the most in the group’s 40-year career. The song tackles the issue of drug addiction and how the drugs wind up being the master controlling the user.

Master Of Puppets was the only single released from the album. The song did ok on the charts for a single not supported by video play at all and very light radio play, thrash wasn’t a radio gem in 1986. The song would chart again in 2022 when its use in a pivotal scene in the hit Netflix show Stranger Things sent the world to discover or re-discover it again.

The Thing That Should Not Be

A slower number that sees Metallica again visit the H.P. Lovecraft eldritch horror universe. It is a suitably heavy, doom-laden track about a sinister horror driving victims to madness. It is a track that gets flack in some circles but it’s one I enjoy. The song was massively influential to one Brian Warner, who would go on to become Marilyn Manson.

Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

A noted highlight from the album comes in the form of a song similar in form and spirit to Ride The Lightning’s epic Fade To Black. Making use of slower and haunting instrumentation, the song paints an explicit picture of being abused inside a mental facility. The song was reportedly influenced by the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

This is another showcase of how Metallica were able to do far more than just beat the listener into submission. The song does ramp up the aggression after a long build but its desolate harmonies in the early verses are its calling card.

Disposable Heroes

Another marathon busting the 8-minute mark, this titanic effort tackles a soldier being sacrificed on the battlefield by a ruthless, uncaring leader. It is a stark look at the horrors of war, a subject often brought up by Metallica. Even with the long run time, this song is fast and unrelenting throughout.

Leper Messiah

This song slows things down a hair but doesn’t let up on the heaviness at all. It is a look at a conman preacher, a favorite target of ’80’s metal bands (who were often the favorite targets of said preachers). The song does pick up the pace as it goes along, establishing a series of movements and an ear toward arrangement and composition beyond the usual scope of thrash.

Orion

Metallica had one instrumental song on each of their prior releases and kept the ball rolling with this one. The song is a trippy, out there track that is the brainchild of bassist Cliff Burton. Much of the unconventional noise is coming from his bass. Parts of the song do thrash along in more standard ways.

Damage Inc.

The album closer is an absolutely pummeling affair that starts attacking the listener just after a quiet intro ends. The song describes a corporation (Damage, Incorporated) that mows over humanity in its quest to get bigger. It’s cool that the band were able envision these dystopian kind of horror scenarios that don’t reflect reality at all…

Master Of Puppets would serve to further the career of Metallica and lead the group to new heights of success. The album sold well out of the gate and the band landed a coveted opening spot on Ozzy Osbourne’s American tour, playing arenas for a five month haul.

As the band were trekking Europe that September, a bus accident in Sweden would claim the life of bassist Cliff Burton. The band decided to press on, hiring Flotsam And Jetsam bassist Jason Newsted as the new member.

Though the tour cycle for Master Of Puppets was cut short, the album has gone on to hold a significant place in the band’s catalog and in heavy metal overall. This album, alongside Slayer’s Reign In Blood, Megadeth’s Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? And Anthrax’s Among The Living would establish the “Big Four” of thrash metal. Thrash itself would see a huge spike in popularity through the remainder of the decade and Metallica were often hailed as the ultimate practitioners of the craft.

Master Of Puppets is often regarded as a “perfect” album and the quintessential thrash record. It is toward the top of countless “best of metal” lists and sees a spot at or near the top of most any Metallica album ranking. Its legacy is immense and casts a massive shadow over the world of heavy metal.

And that legacy continues on. 36 years past its release and long after the band set aside thrash and became one of the world’s biggest musical acts, the song Master Of Puppets has taken on a new life through its use in Stranger Things. Not that Metallica necessarily needed the rub, but the frenzy from the show has copies of the album flying off record store shelves again. A new generation of fans are jumping in to the pit, and so it goes for the titans of heavy metal.

Album Rankings – Motley Crüe

On By bigbadburchIn Album Rankings9 Comments

I’m going to debut a new series today, though it’s one that might not stick around in written form for too long. My original intent was to do these as videos but time to make them proves ever-elusive, and I’m tired of sitting on this content that I originally compiled a year ago.

This will be just as the title says – album rankings of a band’s discography. My rankings aren’t based on any scores, though I do intend to go back through and score each album later on. I prefer to do the rankings based on other factors and then see how differently things come out later based on scoring. There are other factors that can influence where to rank an album that doesn’t reflect in a score, and this first one will give a vivid example of that.

I’m starting out with Motley Crüe – nine total studio albums and it’s a fair shot that this is their final discography. Doesn’t matter either way, let’s get to the rankings. Of course we run from worst to first as most any sane person’s rankings do.

#9 – Generation Swine

The 1997 reunion with Vince Neil did not deliver anything I found worthwhile. I didn’t like the album when I first heard it and last year I played it for the first time since the ’90’s. I was expecting to take to more of the album this time, or at least find some songs I could call quality. I did not. There’s just nothing here I can get into and I don’t really know what they were doing here.

#8 – Theatre Of Pain

I talked about this one awhile back and I didn’t have much nice to say about it. A few songs I thought were really good, a few that were ok but lifeless production and a lot of filler make for a fairly miserable listening experience.

#7 – New Tattoo

This 2000 offering was the only Crüe record not to feature Tommy Lee. It was a pretty good return to form album, it got back to basics and offered up some good cuts. It is consistent throughout but it doesn’t have, to me, any truly breakout or defining moments. It’s a high-floor, low-ceiling kind of thing. But from here and for the rest of the list we’re talking about albums I can enjoy listening to.

#6 – Girls, Girls, Girls

The 1987 album was a success for the band and was certainly better than its predecessor. It has one of the best tracks they’ve ever done in Wild Side (already an S-Tier song), a great title track, and honestly several other songs that I found better than I remembered them to be. Its production wasn’t great but there was a lot more to like here than on that prior one.

#5 – Motley Crüe

The 1994 self-titled effort spelled the end of the band as we knew them up to this point. Vince Neil had been fired and was replaced by John Corabi. The sound was something apart from the band’s prior output but it is still well-executed and has some great moments. It’s a record that gets (I think) unfairly maligned for not having Vince, though I can understand the sound is a departure from what we were used to.

#4 – Saints Of Los Angeles

The band’s final album from 2008. It seems to be a bit overlooked, from my standing this is a fantastic album and I don’t know why people didn’t give it more of a chance. This is the sound that I thought the band would get into after hearing Primal Scream in 1991. And it’s the band not giving a damn about radio play and just saying whatever they want, it’s truly Crüe uncensored. The grit and attitude just drip from this album. If this is what happens when Sixx AM bandmates write Motley Crüe records, then do more of it.

#3 – Too Fast For Love

The debut that kicked off a whole damn scene in Los Angeles and the official beginning of this crazy band. This is raw, ferocious and just great music. Not a weak track in the bunch. There honestly isn’t much more for me to say about it – it’s just a damn great record.

#2 – Dr. Feelgood

The Crüe closed out the ’80’s in style with their biggest success. A honed and polished affair saw several huge singles and perhaps their best song ever with Kickstart My Heart. While many bands were feeling the end of the hair metal train, this group rode into the ’90’s in style.

As for why this one ranks so high, I covered the reasons when it was the Album of the Week. It was the album that flipped a switch for me and made me massively obsessed with music. It’s a super important album in my listening history and there was a strong argument that this should be number one. But…

#1 – Shout At The Devil

Their second album is just unbeatable. This is packed from top to bottom with fantastic songs and some of the best moments of the band’s career. This stuff is loud, heavy and dangerous and the band gained massive notoriety from both the music and the album imagery. Nothing here misses or is even of a lower cut than the rest, even the cover of Helter Skelter fits both musically and image-wise.

That does it for my first-ever edition of album rankings. Let me know where you agree or disagree in the comments. It might be a minute before my next round, depending on who I choose to go with.

A Story And A Song – Can I Play With Madness?

On By bigbadburchIn A Story And A Song5 Comments

Today’s song is a good one – it’s one of the singles from Iron Maiden’s 1988 masterpiece Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. It’s one of the more recognizable tunes from the record and a fantastic track. And the video is notable too – it features Monty Python standout Graham Chapman and is one of his final acting appearances before his 1989 death.

The story goes as such – I first saw Iron Maiden in 2000. I recounted that concert and other Maiden-related things roughly a month into this blog. Of course I got a shirt from the tour and it was a unique design only available on that tour. It was a pretty nice keepsave from what is a legendary concert in my show-attending lexicon.

Let’s jump in time a few years to 2004. I wind up dating this gal. Long story short – she was kind of awful and not worth the time. While I won’t get into the particulars of it, I will say that the inevitable happened – I lost my Iron Maiden shirt at her house.

It’s worth mentioning that it was a legitimate case of loss. It does seem like people lose articles of clothing when they’re involved with someone for awhile. Sometimes people “lose” possessions in these sort of split-ups when others intentionally misappropriate items to fund their shitty drug habits and that did happen in this break-up, but the shirt itself was truly just lost in her house and never to be found by me again. I also lost a Megadeth Rust In Peace shirt in the same break-up, just some really lame shit.

But the Megadeth shirt is fairly easily replaceable, it’s just the cover of Rust In Peace, it wasn’t original anyway and the shirt gets re-issued all the time. The Iron Maiden shirt, though? That was a tour original and was not going to be easy at all to replace.

Being that this was a super urgent issue to me, I waited until roughly late 2005 or early ’06 to bother with the matter of finding the same shirt again. It sort of struck me one day that if I were going to get another one, time would be of the essence. Iron Maiden tour shirts were already fetching princely sums in the mid-00’s, and now they can be flat out obscene.

Luck was (mostly) on my side – sure as shit, someone on eBay had the same Brave New World shirt up. It was $60. That was a seemingly ludicrous price to pay for a damn band shirt, but again, consider the mitigating factors. It was a unique Maiden tour-release shirt. How bad of a mistake would it have been to NOT buy it in 2006 for $60 compared to what I’d have to pay now for the same thing? I haven’t even seen a listing for one in a long time and I doubt the price would be $60 if there was one for sale. (Edit – a few do seem to be around for sale, in the $200 price range)

The shirt was in great shape and still is all these years later. The seller also threw in a bootleg CD of the concert he attended on the tour. It was a cool touch from back when eBay wasn’t so hard up about people selling bootlegs. I haven’t seen that around for a long time but I’m kind of sure I know where it is. And it was a very good sounding bootleg, almost like it came off the soundboard.

Anyway, I was able to recover my position and get the shirt. There was one small hitch – the backs weren’t exactly the same. There is a rear art piece of Eddie in a crowd on the back, that much was the same. But my original shirt had a listing of all the US tour dates. This replacement shirt only listed one city, Irvine. It kind of sucks but it’s a relatively minor issue I can live with. I even wondered if the shirt was a bootleg but it looks fine and they spelled “Iron Maiden” correctly so I can live with it. I’d guess it’s official, it looks identical to my first one besides the dates on the back.

That’s about all there is to this silly story. All stories have morals and there are a few here – don’t date lousy people and for damn sure don’t leave prized possessions behind at their homes when you split.

And if you do, don’t wait until the secondary market is some kind of cash-gobbling monster before replacing your stuff. I dodged a bullet on that one.

The shirt in question

Album Of The Week – July 18, 2022

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week5 Comments

This week I’m going to “cheat” and save myself some time by talking about an EP. It might be short in length but its significance to metal is vast.

Queensryche – self-titled

Released September 1983 via 206 Records

The EP was a demo in the true sense of the term – the band then known as The Mob were looking for a record deal. At the time they didn’t even have a singer, they convinced Geoff Tate of rival local act Myth to handle vocal duties on the demo.

The group changed their name to Queensryche, and altered the spelling of “reich” to avoid accusations of Nazism. They also put an umlat about the “y” but I’m going to be lazy and not do that in my post today.

The EP got around in quick order and the band quickly found themselves with a major label record deal with EMI. Geoff Tate agreed to join the band in full and one of metal’s most unique acts was on its way.

Today we have a whopping four songs to discuss. There are two other versions of the EP, thankfully I should have the time and space to talk about those a little bit.

Queen Of The Reich

The EP’s opener was also released as a single with The Lady Wore Black as a b-side, so half of the EP was made available on a separate record. Environmental waste aside, the band spared no time establishing themselves as a force in the metal world. Even with the sound of a self-funded production effort, the band’s talent is evident in this blistering attack.

While the band gets down to business, the song is a showcase for the immense vocal talent of Geoff Tate. He could hang with the very best singers in metal and that is established right off the bat on this song.

And check out the music video for the song. It is … uh, just watch it.

Nightrider

The guitars of Michael Wilton and Chris DeGarmo put in some work on the second track. While still a traditional metal track, this song does offer a taste of the sound Queensryche would explore going forward.

Blinded

Another brief yet savage metal attack that shows off more of the sound the band would pursue on their full-length debut. There are definite points of comparison between Blinded and songs from The Warning, I hear some of Roads To Madness going on here. Tate goes into insane territory with his voice at the song’s close.

The Lady Wore Black

A longer effort, the EP’s closer was unfinished when Tate agreed to help record and he composed the song’s lyrics. This was an early sign that Queensryche were not interested in simply playing metal, the band were going to be a thought-provoking force that explored soundscapes from multiple directions. This song stuck around in the band’s set for a long time.

Queensryche not only established the band in and of itself but it spread quickly and got the word out about the new outfit. They would make full use of their record deal and release three magnificent albums throughout the 1980’s. This EP only hinted at what was to come.

There are a few different reissued versions of the EP. In 1988 EMI released a version with a fifth song, Prophecy. The song was played live in the band’s beginning but was actually recorded during the Rage For Order sessions. It served as a bonus track both here and on a future reissue of The Warning.

The definitive reissue of the EP was released in 2003 and has a whole heap of bonus tracks – a nine song live set recorded in Japan in 1984. This live set was available on video as Live In Tokyo and was a very welcome addition to the reissued EP. The entire EP is performed, as well as Prophecy and a few songs from The Warning. It is a great set and I was very happy with the decision to include it as the EP’s bonus material.

It’s very uncommon for a demo to be an official part of a band’s discography. Usually demos aren’t even noticed and the songs are just reworked as part of a group’s debut. Demos were typically only sought out by hardcore collectors and were curiosities. But Queensryche were able to get a lot of mileage out of their demo – it is considered an essential part of their catalog and it was even certified gold. It would mark the start of a run of albums that would both shape and defy music.