Rainbow's third studio album and the last one with Ronnie James Dio. In retrospect, it's the end of an era: Blackmore, who usually changed almost the whole band lineup between albums anyway, would continue with almost completely new personnel into a much more radio-friendly direction, before eventually disbanding the band in favour of a (quite successful, yet ultimately doomed) reunion of Deep Purple. He would never again release as bold, aggressive and progressive music as he did in the second half of the 70s. What a pity!
Where Rainbow initially not that much liked, and didn't really drew large crowds to their concerts, in retrospect they are one of the defining bands of the emerging heavy-metal genre. Speed, precision, epic lyrics and operatic vocals underlining the classically inspired melodies - Rainbow got it all.
However, compared to their 1976 masterpiece Rising, Long Live Rock and Roll is often seen as the lesser record. I disagree. Rising might been more complex and longer, or more progressive, as one might argue^^ but its successor is just that bit more accessible and compact, has more memorable riffs and - thanks to its more diverse songwriting - feels more engaging. Rising might been a relentless full throttle-trip from start to finish, but Long Live... gives you that little breather from time to time that makes its punches hit you even harder when they come.
And gods, punches it gives. From its cheerfully kickass opening track to the mystical and oriental Gates of Babylon, to the speedmetal powertrip Kill the King, the album has some of the best songs and riffs the band (or Blackmore himself actually) has ever written. Just blisteringly played (and I'm sure some actual blisters were involved), with a vocal performance by Dio, that once again can only be compared to singers like Robert Plant, Rob Halford and Ro... Ian Gillan on top of their game.
It's a shame that this should be the last Rainbow album with Dio's involvement and the band's last straightforward hard-rock album, until 1995's Stranger in Us All. The albums after him were not bad, but too often too streamlined for chart-appeal and too restrained even in their wilder-moments. Luckily for us, Dio stayed true to his style, went straight to Black Sabbath, recorded two stunning albums there, before starting his own project in 1982.
Compared to its predecessor Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, Rising cranks it all up to eleven: the sword and sorcery, the heaviness, the complexity and length of the songs, the instrumental performances - it is basically the quintessential record of the Dio-era. Did the first album sound like the band was dipping their toe into a new world of hard guitar-centered music, in Rising they jumped fully into it.
Probably the best example is the epic Stargazer. Everything is larger than life in this song. A miniature-opera about the rise and (quite literal) fall of a wizard who enslaved the people to build him a tower to the stars. The way guitar and vocals are dramatizing the story here works so well and expressive and organic, with both being at the peak of their abilities, that its a pure, uplifting joy listening to.
Might the rest of the album not quite have the same epic dimension, with predominantly fast-paced songs, it is nevertheless spectacular. A good part of this is due to Cozy Powell's dense and varied drumming, which ties the songs together and works as a perfect counterpoint to the stunning performances of the albums main actors, Blackmore and Dio.
I think in hindsight you can see how influential Rising was to 80's metal: The breakneck guitar shredding, the fantasy-centered cover artwork and lyrics, delivered by an almost operatic vocalist and the occasional keyboard flavouring - all these bits became commonplaces in the decade after.
Its just a shame that the band initially wasn't too successful. About five years later, when the world was finally ready for this type of music and bands like Iron Maiden and Manowar filled the venues playing quite similar material, Blackmore had pushed Rainbow into radio-friendly territories instead. Luckily for us, Dio kept on waving the heavy-metal banner high. First with Black Sabbath and later as solo-artist with his own band.
All in all, Rising is definitely a milestone in the evolution of metal and an underrated masterpiece. And even the cover is less eye-watering than the first one!
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship to Metallica. On the one hand, I really like their albums from the 80s, on the other hand, I find they didn't really do anything relevant, or even noteworthy in the last 20-something years. But that's not our topic for today! Ride the Lightning is one of their records I really love. After a promising and already technically quite impressive, if a bit too simple debut-album, Kill 'Em All from 1983, Ride the Lighting is an enormous leap forward.
Before it came to that though, Metallica went through quite turbulent times. Namely rising tensions with their original vocalist/guitarist Dave Mustaine, over his violent behaviour and his drug and alcohol consume. This escalated in him being sacked from the band just before recording Kill 'Em All. As a consequence, Mustaine, while not actually playing on the album, got song writing credits on a number of tracks of their first and second album. including the eponymous Ride the Lightning and Call of Ktulu.
Mustaine went on and formed Megadeth, and Metallica found its identity in with Kirk Hammett as new lead guitarist, James Hetfield growing into his roles as vocalist and rhythm guitarist, Cliff Burton on bass and Lars Ulrich on drums. Together both bands became two of the most influential metal bands and biggest rivals of the 80s.
Were changes in tempo and dynamic not a completely new thing in rock/metal, when Ride the Lightning came out, (Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were doing that sort of thing more than a decade before), the way how consequentially Metallica was contrasting clean, almost folky passages with their speed and heavy, brutal riffing to build up a narrative within a song, proved to become highly influential for the genre. Technical excellence is one thing - and there is plenty of that on Ride the Lightning as well - but if you can tell a story with your music, and have some emotional impact, or at least give them time to breathe before the next full-on assault, you can catch your audiences attention on a completely new level.
And the album is bursting with great ideas and songs. May it be thrashers like Fight Fire with Fire or Creeping Death, epic narratives like For Whom The Bell Tolls orFade to Black, or the brilliant instrumentalThe Call of Ktulu or the breakneck-speed ride Trapped Under Ice - they all show a masterful level of catchy songwriting, variety and spot on instrumental performances. It is no surprise that this album is still some of their most known and liked ones and part of what defined metal in the 80s.
Doom'n'Roll! That was the spontaneous reaction of one of the guests, when I started playing Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) at a party once. I think, there is barely a better name for what the band was doing on this album.
If is doom-metal usually identified with slow, dragging rhythms and bleak expressions of desperation, Carnival Bizarre is - to me, and obviously to my guest as well - a lively and irresistibly good-mooded record, that just makes you want to move. Yeah, its party music, whether Cathedral intended that or not and lets be honest: song titles like Fangalacticus Supergoria really must been a hell lot of fun to make up!
The band itself was founded in 1989, by Lee Dorrian, after he left Napalm Death, where he wasn't happy with the direction the band took, namely death metal. Something I definitely can emphasize with. And thank the heavens (or hell) for his decision. It brought us a band that influenced and enriched the genre like not many before.
Stilistically, Carnival Bizarre features, as you would expect in doom, heavy riffs that rival the Himalayas (or HP Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness, your choice), combined with driving and varied rock-grooves and Dorrian's characteristic shouty, but clean voice. He might not have the range of a Ronnie James Dio, but he certainly knows how to transport excitement.
It is maybe a bit of an untypical doom-record, but certainly it is an excellent one regardless. Oh, and its hard to top the imagery of their video to Hopkins. What a hedonistic delight!
Electric Wizard has seen quite a soar in popularity in recent time. Something I find pleasantly surprising, since their music isn't exactly the most mass-market compatible. Maybe though, that's exactly the reason why: there is a certain underground authenticity in music that consciously tries to be as far away as possible from the calculated, watered-down mainstream style that so many bands pursue. This doesn't means they aren't accessible, though. With the right ears, attuned to Black Sabbath's Master of Reality or some Cathedral, with the hypnotic repetition of Hawkwind's far-out space-trips, Electric Wizard quickly speaks to you.
To me, their greatest album remains Dopethrone from the year 2000. A raw, droning masterpiece, recorded, according to bandleader Jus Oborn, literally in a drug and alcohol-induced stupor - and it shows in the best sense possible. At its time, Dopethrone did expand the boundaries of metal into a weird, tribal ritual of excess.
While being genuinely dark and monstrous in its sound, with massive guitar-riffs and shouting, madman-vocals drenched with distortion, the album also has an undeniable, and actually quite irresistible, groove and playfulness to it. The album really rocks, which is quite an achievement in this context. It may be a ride through hell and purgatory, but it does it with style and grace, showcasing some musical talent and inspiration that really set Electric Wizard apart from most bands of the genre.
In a way it's a bit tragic that Electric Wizard had their peak so early on. It's not like the successor-albums were bad - to the contrary - but in Dopethrone the band achieved a perfect balance of chaotic, raw emotion and the discipline that allows them to actually take all their energy and turn it into a truly mastrful album.
His stints at Rainbow and Black Sabbath catapulted the unknown singer Ronnie James Dio (born Ronald James Padavona), of the unknown rockband Elf up at the Mount Olympus of hardrock and heavy metal. After leaving Sabbath in 1982, he formed his own group the following year. Conveniently named Dio, after himself. And probably to ensure this time there are no doubts about who is its leader.
The new band basically picked up where he stopped. With straightforward fantasy-inspired heavy metal as it would become archetypical for the 1980s. Unlike the guitar-dominated sound of Sabbath or Rainbow though, with more emphasis on the vocals. And rightly so: Ronnie James Dio's voice is as distinctive as it is powerful. Together with Judas Priest's Rob Halford, he probably was the metal vocalist of the 80s. A singer you would recognize amongst thousands. So dynamic and yes, almost operatic in its range and power. Always giving that little extra emphasis, that is needed for proper heavy metal theatrics. He could sing your shopping list and make it sound like an tolkienesque-epic.
As brilliant as his voice was though, it would have been a waste if the other musicians weren't up to their task. And hell, they are. Guitarist Vivian Campbell's playing is in every sense a proper substitute for Ritchie Blackmore or Toni Iommi, without the danger of mimicry, and the rhythm-section, including Jimmy Bain on bass and drummer Vinnie Appice, who he snatched from Black Sabbath (where they recorded Mob Rules together), delivers a seemingly effortlessly brilliant performance. The whole album just marches ahead with straightforward classic heavy metal. Every fill, every riff and every solo spot on. Holy Diver feels like the band is playing together for a long time already. No surprise that quite a number of songs, like Holy Diver, Don't Talk to Strangers, Straight Through Your Heart and Rainbow in the Dark, became live-staples and are now regarded as heavy metal classics.
Musically, Holy Diver is of course not the most diverse of all records. It pretty much does what its cover-art promises. Well. not literally. Though, that would be quite something... Anyway. if you expect introvert subtlety, then you might have misunderstood the whole concept of heavy metal in the first place!
All in all, Holy Diver is epic 80's heavy metal at its finest and truly a must-know-album, that helped defining the genre. The band in this line-up would record two more albums, The Last in Line (1984) and Sacred Heart (1985), before descending into power struggles and instability. To me, these three albums mark the highlight of the band. Later albums still have their moments, but won't offer such an abundance of consistently strong material.
Some bands I like live much more than on their studio records. Rammstein is one of those bands. I guess its the dirtier, rawer sound and the stripped down electronic-elements. Its just more rock'n'roll going on and their Live aus Berlin album from 1999 captures that side of the band perfectly.
To me, this also marks a turning point in the band's career. The first two albums, Herzeleid and Sehnsucht, were much more edgier than their later releases, dealing with topics like incest, necrophilia, murder - and surely a number of other perversities I have missed out. Not to be taken terribly serious of course. Back in the day, Rammstein were fun! In their own, wicked way, but nevertheless fun.
There has been quite a substantial hiatus between Sehnsucht (1997) and the follow-up album Mutter (2001). Live aus Berlin as the only release in that time and I had no idea the new millennium would bring back such a watered-down band. It has been one of the great disappointments in listening "career" to buy their single Sonne and just being completely underwhelmed by what I heard.
Luckily, we are not delving too much into that today. Live aus Berlin shows us the band at their rawest and most daring.
The songs are intense, tight and still fresh after all those years. And quite overwhelming in the sheer brutality of their sound. There wasn't much like Rammstein around in the mainstream music of the 90s. Maybe Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, but neither of them had quite this menacing aura, Rammstein had. Maybe they should have sung in German too...
Given Live aus Berlin's runtime of 1 hour and 15 minutes, there isn't a relevant song from their first two albums missing. Well, ok. Except Klavier, but that's nitpicking now. Live aus Berlin an excellent album. Spectacular, dramatic and overwhelming. A perfect document for the early, wild phase of the band's career.
This one might just be another case of "brilliant albums you may have never heard of". Released in 1997, so just over 20 years ago, Komödia was the first full length album of the Dreams of Sanity, after having recorded a couple of demos before, and you wouldn't know it from just listening to it.
Komödia is a beautiful and complex album, with a refinement that is just remarkable. Especially for a debut. And on top of it all it's subject matter is nothing less than one of the greatest works of world literature: Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedia from 1320. An epic poem describing the journey of a wanderer, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, through hell, purgatory and eventually heaven on the search for his lost love, Beatrice.
Clearly, you can't blame Dreams of Sanity for a lack of ambition and, of course, when you aim that high, the chances of failure are quite substantial too. The band however masters their set task brilliantly, with confidence and excellent ideas. A really classy performance, especially by the vocalists, who contribute a lot with their expressive, nuanced performances.
To me Komödia has as much in common with a classical symphony, or opera as it is a metal album. And quite extraordinary in how it brings both together. It is rich and complex, without being too academic, features nuanced and stunningly beautiful songs without drifting off into kitsch-regions, is technically impressive, but never forgets to play for the song, not over the song - its no coincidence really that I still find this album so appealing and interesting after all those years.
Dreams of Sanity would release two more albums, Masquerade and The Game, before they split in 2002 after several line-up changes. A pity they never got the recognition they deserved.
When I showed the record a friend once, who had no idea about the band, he remarked that "this looks like classical music", I think this spontaneous, and not really qualified, assessment is actually quite suiting. This is miles away from mainstream rock and metal. In fact, it is not a trivial question where to put The Gathering really. A fact, which I find actually quite delightful. Is it gothic? symphonic? prog? All of the above? Does it matter?
Anyway, I discovered the band while everyone else was into stuff like Nightwish (once again I dutifully did exactly what everyone else wasn't doing). Goes without saying that I was appealed by the more edgy and experimental sound of The Gathering, despite being quite "symphonic" in their own way. They music is without a doubt quite heavy and dark, almost wagnerian at times, while it also shows some (for the genre) unusual instrumentation and airy colourfulness, creating an interesting and appealing mix.
I find it always fascinating to see the development some bands go through and The Gathering are a good example for a band that changed quite a lot over the years. They started in the late 80's as a doom and death metal band, yet as of Anneke van Giersbergen's arrival in the band for Mandylion, their sound has distinctively and lastingly changed and dramatically expanded its scope.
And certainly, her expressive voice fits ideally to their music. Not as sweet and angelic as so many other female symphonic metal singers, but with an edginess that happily deviates from the norm and works well with the band's overall experimental-attitude.
Still, certain elements still hint to their past. Especially the guitar work: heavy riffing with long held power chords and melodylines is certainly doom-influenced. Interestingly the result is actually quite Pink Floydian as well. Just think Dogs of War and Sorrow.
In later albums, starting with How to Measure A Planet, they began to abandon their metal roots more and more and moved towards a experimental, sometimes ambient-like direction. Something the band itself described as trip-rock - undeniably a quite suiting term.
Mandylion is a colourful, highly enjoyable album. Beautifully composed and executed. It shows a band able of writing songs that are complex and varied on the one hand, but at the same time catchy and beautiful.
The Gathering might not be everyone's taste, but in a genre like metal, with so many conventions and stylistic uniformity, an album like Mandylion is a more than welcome departure from the norm. It's actually quite needed.
Deep Purple was never free of conflicts. At least not for long. Strong egos, touring stress, diverging creative ideas and their rocketing success in the early 70s with all its consequences (as in drugs, more touring stress and ever bigger egos) - that's all not really de-escalating factors. Ironically, their most creative (and successful) line-up is at the same time the one which probably was the most tense. Of course we are talking about what is known as Deep Purple Mk.II. Originators of masterful albums like In Rock (1970), Fireball (1971) and Machine Head (1972).
With the (involuntarily) departure of Ian Gillan and Roger Glover on the peak of the band's success in 1973 and Blackmore leaving two years later (frustrated, but voluntarily), Deep Purple went into a steady decline and eventually - in 1976 hit rock bottom and fell apart unceremoniously.
In the years afterwards, each member went on to boldly pursue his own projects he never had time for while being in Deep Purple. Well... not really. Jon Lord and Ian Paice found themselves playing several years together in Whitesnake, the band of Gillan's replacement, David Coverdale, which - at least in Lord's case - was more a vacational arrangement than anything else. Roger Glover eventually joined Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow in its commercial successful radio-rock, post-Dio-phase. Only Ian Gillan was really doing solo-projects (amongst with losing a lot of money in bad investments).
Anyway, at least in retrospect it seems they couldn't really stay away from each other for too long, doesn't it? So in 1984 their reunion eventually happened. Having big cheques waved at them by their record company certainly helped a bit as well.
But enough of the foreplay. How well does the record actually hold up, I hear you ask? Ok, since you ask me so directly: Its amazing!
The album starts off subtly with a sneaky keyboard-intro before building up to the groovy and relaxed rocker Knocking at Your Back Door. Already at this point you know, this is going to be good. All the ingredients which make Deep Purple what it is are back together in perfect harmony. Those typical Blackmore guitar-riffs and melodies, the unmistakable and elegant keyboard by Jon Lord, always there when you need it, but never pushing itself into the spotlight for the sake of it, the powerful Glover/Paice rhythm engine and those sleazy Gillan vocals (really, listen to those lyrics!) that fit to the sound of the rest of the ensemble so brilliantly that it's hard to imagine anybody else doing the job (well, certainly not Coverdale/Hughes).
For the second track, Under the Gun, the band is shifting up a couple gears. A tense and energetic song that wipes away all remaining doubts whether they still had their fire. With its simple, but superbly effective intro riff (in great symbiosis once again with the keys-section) it storms over you and takes you with it before you figured out what happened. Great song. One of my all-time favourites.
Nobody's Home and Mean Streak are similarly energetic and fast rockers and certainly excellent songs in their own right, but the monumental Perfect Strangers following them just steals the show here. What a song! Heavy and almost gothic in its dark and cold mood. Probably the archetypical Deep Purple song of the 80s and always a highlight played live.
After the moderately-paced epic named Perfect Strangers, A Gypsy's Kiss is picking up the tempo again and rushes through its classical-inspired melodies with breakneck-speed. I always associate it with rushing along a nightly road or through a tunnel. It just has this rushing, tunnel-vision-feel to it. Really captivating.
Wasted Sunsets, on the other hand, is musically the complete opposite. Slow-paced and melancholicly meandering, with some of the most beautiful guitar soloing you might encounter in a long while. So lyrical, so intense and heartbreakingly played. An absolutely brilliant song.
The album finishes (in the LP version) on a bit of a sentimental note with Hungry Daze. A restless rushing through scenes of their busy tour life - the aforementioned hungry days, when they were almost constantly either on the road or recording a new album. A good song with some blistering guitar-work once again.
The final final track is Not Responsible, which stomps along quite nicely but doesn't really goes anywhere. Not a bad song. Certainly not, but in company with all the greats on this record, it falls off a bit. At least it give you some additional four minutes to enjoy this brilliant, perfectly attuned band, before it fades out.
Sound-wise Perfect Strangers picks up on their album Machine Head and does a modernised interpretation on the crisp, cold and almost biting feel it had. This modernisation works really well and at no time like an artificial ahem... "enhancement", of albums like Yes' 90125 with its silly, seemingly randomly thrown in samples. Blackmore allegedly told his band mates to listen to it carefully for inspiration. Good job they paid attention to the right parts. Because you can doesn't means you should do certain things!
The production by Roger Glover on the other hand, who did a lot of Deep Purple-albums over time, is solid, but a bit too muddy. Other albums from around this time are clearer, punchier, so no chance of blaming 80s studio-technology there.
So despite the slight niggle here and there, which is like complaining that in the Himalaya not all mountains are the same, height, my verdict remains. Perfect Strangers is amazing. A spectacular reunion-album with sparks flying left and right and the good old Deep Purple motor firing happily from all its cylinders. As usual with this line-up, the peace didn't last forever (or longer than a couple of months!), but at least we got this wonderful album out of it.
My first contact with Black Sabbath was through a German TV ad in the 90s, which used the song Paranoid for a quite silly recreation of that famous scene in Wayne's World. It wasn't even the original song but a pretty close cover version, which - in retrospect - seems quite fitting: play the pastiche of a cult song in a pastiche of a scene from a cult movie.
Anyway, I started my enquiries (luckily rock and metal is strong in my family) and after I learned song title and artists name, I went to a local record store, bravely ignored the rather stupid cover motive, bought the CD and well, music wasn't the same again after listening through this album for the first time.
While their first album is generally seen as the birth of heavy metal, thanks to their trademark sound* and gloomy subject matter, things really took off with their second album, Paranoid.
Released just months after their debut, you would maybe expect this record being an afterthought, but to the contrary: the amount of power and doom the band unleashes here is just spectacular and literally unheard of. With Paranoid the band definitely found their groove and cranked up the dials to elven!
Lyrically the album moved away from the supernatural/satanic imagery of songs like Black Sabbath or NIB towards a more gritty, real-life perspective, with the danger of the nuclear apocalypse (War Pigs, Electric Funeral), insanity (Paranoid, obviously) and drug addiction (Hand of Doom) being the overarching themes. And the album clearly benefits from this shift. It's songs still speak to us and possess a timeless, intimate quality.
The atmosphere of its lyrics resonates in the music itself: The bluesy-jazzy vibe of its predecessor is almost gone; exposing the bare bones of the bands heavy riffing and drumming. In fact, only the screaming, psycho-esque (you know, that shower scene) high notes in Iommi's soloing are a descendant of his jazz-influences. The result is a more condensed and focused record with no frills. And a pretty bleak one. The perfect soundtrack for the apocalypse and a how-to-guide for generations of upcoming doom bands.
*And lets be fair: neither of the other two big heavy rock bands of the early 70s, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, had that an uncompromising sound. So kudos to Sabbath for changing the game.
This one is in a way special to me. I even had a poster of this cover around the year 2000 - and a T-Shirt as well. And it still remains one of the most beautiful, touching - and sensual - record covers I know.
Fortunately the music itself fits just perfectly. Its a dark and sensual record. With its heavy, abrasive (yet in the context of the songs very fitting) guitar, the slow and atmospheric songs and Peter Steele's deep and tender voice whispering in your ear.
Despite its overarching doomy nature, Bloody Kisses is quite diverse actually. The album takes you on a journey of different moods, yet the individual tracks seem very coherent with each other. A bit like in a dream, where one scene transmutes into another, keeping the listener moving in a flow of different feelings and stories to tell.
The album achieves this with absolute spot-on tempo changes and instrumentation. Everything just fits seamlessly into each other. Purely masterful.
Its hard to point out certain songs. Despite its runtime of about 73 minutes there aren't really any filler on this record. The songs all have depth and their very own unique character.
There is the obvious Black No. 1 of course with its sarcastic look on one of Peter Steele's ex-girlfriends and the goth-scene in general.
Or the Seals & Crofts cover Summer Breeze, which got a completely new and different life in this incarnation. I was actually quite shocked to hear the original for the first time. The Type O Negative-version just feels so natural - and right - to me.
Naming some of the other highlights of the record, like Set Me On Fire, Kill All The White People, Christian Woman, Bloody Kisses, and we are already almost through the whole tracklist. It's indeed hard to find a weak song on Bloody Kisses.
To make a long story short: Bloody Kisses is a masterpiece of a record and (at least to me) one of the definite albums of the 90s. A brilliant, intimate soundtrack for your own private melancholia. Light some candles, open a bottle of red wine and press play. To paraphrase the band itself: This album will hit you slow, deep and hard.
It is possible to look at an album like Innuendo without the context of their singer, Freddie Mercury's illness and approaching death? Not for me. It is just shimmering through every song and note.
Queen's last record published in his lifetime is a foreshadowing, moving, theatric in the best sense, and graceful piece of music. Upbeat at time, almost defiantly so, especially in its faster songs, it however can't hide its sadness: the very human struggle with one's own mortality. Here is a singer who, facing the inevitable, literally sings for his life.
Framed by the majestic album-opener Innuendo and concluding with the emotional tour de force The Show Must Go On, the album is a kaleidoscope of tunes, themes and moods - each single one of them is strong, even captivating. There isn't any filler. From straightforward rockers like Headlong and Ride The Wild Wind, to the playful and carnivalesque I'm Going Slightly Mad, to fragile gems like Don't Try So Hard and Bijou - Queen covers such a wide variety with such masterful musicanship.
Innuendo is really Queen at their peak. And when the last note is ringing out and silence creeps upon you, you might feel a little lump in your throat. What a record!
It's probably fair to say that this album started the 80s. At least when it comes to hard rock/heavy metal. Such energetic songs, the top-of-the-line production and, most critically, Eddie van Halen's groundbreaking guitar.
He is often described as the one who brought tapping to the electric guitar, but while its certainly a spectacular technique, I actually rate his characteristic sound (the so-called "brown tone", the blueprint for the 80s-typical high gain) and his masterful use of the instrument in the context of the songs actually as his bigger achievement.
Like Jimi Hendrix ten years before him, van Halen's playing blends rhythm and melody together so naturally, so skilfully that its just sheer exciting joy to hear these songs. So much talent, yet so much tasteful playing for the songs and not for the sake of virtuosity (well, most of the time).
Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love is a perfect example for that. It kicks off with this brilliant riff (its a bit overused maybe, but that's not the riff's fault!), which still sounds modern despite being recorded 40 years ago. Same applies for the Kinks-cover You Really Got Me, which feels like a natural evolution of the original song. After all, the Kinks where amongst the first who experimented with distorted sounds. Namely on this very song, so there is that.
Eruption, on the other hand, is a different animal altogether. I remember when I listened to it for the first time and it sounded so futuristic. Like the guitar turned into a synthesizer in some parts - brilliant!
Of course its pure technique-wanking, lets be straight about that. A highly skilfully played tapping demo and it can't hide its nature, despite being played with a lot of melody and taste. It therefore sounds a little dated today. Tapping is not as revolutionary anymore and shredding became commonplace really. Or - even worse - something like a sport.
Therefore, Eruption feels to me now like a magician's trick when you find out how he did it: the sense of wonder simply has worn off a bit.
This doesn't stops being Van Halen's first from being a outstanding, game changing record and really fun to listen. The duo Eddie Van Halen (guitar, of course) and David Lee Roth (vocals) works together so congenially and turns the album into a damn good party.
Lyrically the album ticks all the boxes of sleazy cock-rock. But you don't listen to Van Halen because you expect something meaningful or even poetic, so don't expect to get it.
All in all, its a spectacular record. Probably one of the best debut albums of all time. Technically and musically it is still brilliant and quite timeless. The only weak spots are the shallow and sleazy lyrics really, but with that Van Halen are in excellent company.
There are barely more genres a single album is said to have originated than Black Sabbath's debut. I'm not going to list them all, but rock music definitely hasn't been the same since. Other bands might have experimented with heaviness in their sound as well, but the sheer amount of rawness and doom the first couple of minutes on this album evoke - for a big part thanks to Ozzy's haunted madman voice that brilliantly complements the instrumental part - were something new and literally unheard of. The band later said that their inspiration for their name and sound were horror films and well, it shows!
Beside all its heaviness - and there is plenty - Black Sabbath eponymous first album album also shows that they didn't fell from the sky as the band they are known as, but evolved into it. There are still some strong bluesy, even distinctively jazzy elements in their playing that were pretty quickly phased out in later songs. Especially in the second, more improvised half with Sleeping Village and The Warning have the feel of a heavy-rock-meets-jazz jam really, which actually works really well.
Another quite distinctive attribute this album has is its raw, unpolished sound, which has almost live-qualities. If we can believe guitarist Toni Iommi, and I do, the album has been recorded on a single day, with very few overdubs. Quite the opposite of what they would do just in a couple years time, where the studio sessions dragged on for weeks, even months.
Like many debut albums, Black Sabbath isn't as perfect and polished as their later work, but shows a band that has opened the gate to a new world. In the coming years they, and after them many other bands would step through this gate and continue upon what this album started.
While many great bands of the 80s, if they are still around, are well past their creative zenith, live off their reputation from their "glorious old times" and haven't really released anything relevant in years, some bands just keep getting better and better.
I am glad to say that Iron Maiden falls into the latter category. Especially after seeing them live in the mid 2000s, where they delivered a smooth and polished, but essentially unexciting best-of-show. You know, the sort of show you do before you retire.
In this context, The Book of Souls was quite a surprise. Not only that the band is still able to write exciting new material, they also made serious moves into progressive-metal territory. I think this mix is the magic ingredient of this album really: songs that work as well on an emotional level as on a technical, songwriting one as well.
Despite the majority of the songs being well over six minutes long (and three of them over ten), they are all varied, engaging, keeping the listener interested - and deliver quite some punch.
The most outstanding song of the album is without a doubt Empire of the Clouds. An 18-minute long epic on the tragic maiden voyage of the Airship R101, that perfectly builds up from a dreamy piano-melody into the thunderstorm that eventually crashed it down - all carried by Bruce Dickinson's brilliant vocals and lyrics.
And the best of all of this? They achieve all this without abandoning the character of the band. This is still Iron Maiden; the band that wrote The Number of the Beast, Fear of the Dark, The Trooper - you name it. The new songs fit stylistically perfectly to their old material. They are simply enhanced, have grown and matured into - I won't say perfection, but they are pretty damn close.
Listen closely, guys from Metallica: That's how it's done.
This is probably the best band you have never heard of. The Psychedelic Avengers were founded in 2004 as a collaborative project of a number of artists and bands, the best known ones probably being Colour Haze and Vibravoid. I think their goal is best described with their own words on the back of their first album: 'This is the first psych-o-phonic, in-head science fiction b-movie for inner-eye-listening pleasures, which is being transvisualized via the soundtrack to your very own imaginary space, psych, teen, mutant, love, trash, porn, noize sci-fi movie'. And yes, its really all that!
The songs usually feature lengthy, pulp-inspired titles like 'The discovery of the lost transdimensional time-space vortex on the iceplanet of Vistar 7' (and that's not even one of their weirdest) and are colourful mixtures of stoner, psychedelic and electro, combined with radio-play like sequences to drive the story ahead. The result is more than compelling.
Be it the tranqulity of space, trippy warp-jumps, radio broadcasts from deep space, or tense battle-scenes - the Psychedelic Avengers are utterly immersing and entertaining. So many different moods, so many different musical worlds to discover.
From the two albums they released, their second ...and the Decterian Blood Empire is the more refined and coherent one. The tracks are more focused, with the overarching storyline of the peaceful civilisations of the Galaxy having to defend themselves against the... you guess. it. The album doesn't gives up any of its inventiveness and diversity though. It just flows and takes you on a wild ride through the ups and downs. An amazing "Space Opera" in the sense of the word.
A pity the Psychedelic Avengers disappeared into obscurity (or into the depths of space) after this album. They really created a masterpiece I love listening to again and again.
As if to prove how obscure this album is, there is only one song from it on Youtube:
Fireball doesn't have it easy. As follow-up album to In Rock, Deep Purple's immensely successful, all-out-assault on the audience's hearing, it probably met the wrong expectations. Despite its fast namesake opener (and probably one of the very first times in rock history to feature double-bass drumming), it is a much more nuanced and varied affair.
Bluesy rock 'n' roll elements can be found here just as well as progressive spacerock-tunes. Hell, with Anyone's Daughter, even a country-song made it on the record - and it does good there!
If someone expected In Rock II however, that can only end in disappointment. In Fireball you can hear a band that doesn't needs to prove anything, but instead can experiment a little and extending their scope. The driving urge of its predecessor is gone and replaced by confidence and playfulness, without losing any of its heavyness - resulting in a brilliant, if slightly atypical album.
Its a pity that Deep Purple didn't pursue the direction they took with Fireball further. The next album, Machine Head, would become more restraint, and straightforward. Possibly reflecting the growing tensions within the band, which eventually led to their split in 1973 and a long painful road to disbandment a couple years later.
In this context, Fireball gives us a glimpse into the band Deep Purple could have been, if this line-up just had a couple more creative years. Who knows what amazing songs they would have made?
For many, In Rock is Deep Purple's de-facto debut album, despite the band being already around for a while and having released 3 studio albums and a recording of their Concerto for Group and Orchestra. But by all means, In Rock is the record where they finally got their act together!
Prior to it the band was stuck in a creative limbo somewhere between aping Vanilla-Fudge-style psychedelica and playing with string quartets. You can argue about the former being a good idea or not, but the latter is for itself certainly not a bad thing at all. Alas, the band didn't feel really at home with the music they were making. Its not like their songs of that era were bad. Not at all. Unfocused maybe at times, but played at a high standard of song-writing and musicianship. It was maybe just a bit too cerebral and melodramatic to really grab you.
A change in line-up (Ian Gillan replaced Rod Evans as singer, and Roger Glover took over bass-duties from Nick Simper) brought finally a shift in direction towards the more condensed, no-frills heavy rock-style of In Rock. And indeed it sounds like this is a different band. Sure, you recognize the musicians and their individual styles if you listen closely, but the end result is just so staggeringly different. In Rock is almost brutal in its directness and sheer noise. At the same time its very groovy too, but like heavy machinery running at high speed: with an undeniable urge and density. A captivating, even radical performance that takes you for an exciting flat-out ride, leaving their past works behind in the dust.
This said, the album isn't the most diverse. With the exception of the monumental Child in Time, the songs are pretty straightforward and mostly tend to be either fast and heavy or slow and heavy. Not a bad thing really. It makes in Rock a coherent experience, saturating its listener in sound. The album is one of the earliest, defining moments of hard/heavy rock music; it doesn't has to be all polished or refined. To the contrary: its raw, uncompromising nature is what inspired generations of bands after them to do their own thing.
Listening to it in 2018, In Rock still excites me. Yes, you can hear its age. It sounds very late 60s, early 70s, but looking at how many bands are trying to emulate a retro-sound and look, that's not really a bad thing. And the album still excites. The sheer energy and playfulness of the band is just as present as when In Rock came out.
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