"Nothing but the rain"
So they had a hit song that sounded rather different and had a white man rapping and then you buy the album. The first song gloats about how many times you can sing the word “fuck” in a song and you suddenly realise that they are rubbish.
It’s just not very good. Makes me laugh just thinking about it!
This should really be called Chinese Democracy by a man called Axl and some mates. how long did we wait for this album? I think I have played it twice. I just don’t care anymore.
This was the first Machine Head album I bought and I can remember driving in a car somewhere with Andy Smith with this on in the background. I think it was about the time I lived in Brentwood. Much like the previous review it’s a very good heavy album. Well worth listening. On first play I got confused by song number 8 as I knew the lyrics and melody of the vocals! somewhat worrying for an album I hadn’t heard before. Only when the chorus came in did I realise it was a cover version of “Message in a Bottle”.
This is one of two Machine Head albums I bought while I was living in Brentwood. The sound is rather more industrial and heavy than a lot of the other stuff I listen to. It’s good stuff, somewhere on the way to Nine Inch Nails and Slipknot.
The guitars are heavy, the drumming pumps and the vocals are dark. It’s very good winter music. I do suffer a little with Old Dog syndrome with this album. Not to take anything away from the album, it’s just a bit too new for proper song selection. I listened to it this morning in the car and remembered all the songs. It’s good.
If I have to be honest this is not the greatest of that wonderess of bands Bachman-Turner Overdrive. If you want to hear their best stuff then just get the Not Fragile album and remove “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”.
However, as a start this is good. It does contain some stuttering song about blue eyes and it’s a shame as although it is their most well-known song it is not one of the best. My personal highlights are:
I guess it is hard to create a “Best” album. Music taste is so subjective. I do not think this ranks anywhere high. See my review of Not Fragile in about six months time to get an idea of what I think of a great album. This album doesn’t even have “She’s a Devil” because as we all know: “Her hair is the colour of fire”.
The first NIN album in this list. I’ve seen them twice but never really got into them around university time. So, The Downward Spiral wasn’t my first Nine Inch Nails album. This one, along with Fixed, was my first NIN album. A friend was giving away some music as he had just got a new girlfriend and needed the space in the house to put her stuff. I got some NIN and Rammstein.
This is a very good album. It has that raw, industrial sound that I really liked for about 15 years. NIN along with Ministry really broke new ground and paved the way for bands like Slipknot.
Highlights:
I do happen to think that the Fixed album has better versions but this is still great. Well worth putting on at any time but mostly an autumn album. Definitely not for the summer time!
This is probably the last “new” album by Iron Maiden that I bought. There were some duff ones from “Fear of the Dark” and I gave up for a while. I’m not really sure why I got this but it may have been to do with seeing them at Earl’s Court Arena.
This album opens with “The Wicker Man” which is a good song and classic, it has nice pace and rocks along. “Ghost of the Navigator”, “Brave New World”, “Blood Brothers” are all good songs. After that I start to lose interest in the album. I think that, perhaps, the Maiden sound only takes me so far now.
Overall, this is a good album. It’s not like the first seven studio albums but it is good. My main issue with Maiden at the moment is Jannick Gers. The band doesn’t need three guitarists. Mind you, I’m very much looking forward to seeing them at Download this year [probably because they are playing all the old stuff].
This album was originally bought on vinyl, I can’t remember why but it was probably in the rock/metal section and the cover looked good. It’s very much an album of cockrock and a good one at that. All the songs are good and well constructed.
Every now and then I find that I’m humming a tune and it happens to be Britny Fox. I wasn’t aware that the song “Hair Of the Dog” was a cover version until I bought the Spaghetti Incident by Guns’n’Roses.
My highlights:
On further listening it turns out that there isn’t a bad song on the album!
If it’s a classic LA rock style that you want then this is a great album.
There’s something about the energy and flair of a first album that normally shocks you awake. I’d only really known “More Than A Feeling” from this album for years because it’s on every bloody rock compilation collection.
However, I started playing Rock Band about 5 years ago and the song “Foreplay, Long Time” was on the game. I found this to be a genius song. It’s brilliant and operatic and full of riffs that make you want to dance. So, it was time to check out the whole album. To be honest I kinda started on a Boston freak time trying to get all their music, which was a bit harder than you might think.
There are eight songs on this album. They are all brilliant. They all deserve special mention but I won’t because of my old age / new song thing. Every one is a classic. I love how easy and great to listen to it is. I also think the songs are pretty predictable but the thing is there that before this band and some others around the same time this sort of song didn’t exist. It’s predictable because this band wrote this stuff in the first place.
Get it, play it. LOUD. In the car.
I guess I bought this because I really like the first Body Count album. I don’t think I’ve really listened to it.
There comes a time when all bands sell-out. I think they have to, it maintains their income and produces the goods for the record company. Metallica have done it loads and I find a lot of their stuff nauseating. AC/DC by all measures have done it too. Branded Monopoly and anything else that you want but I don’t see it as selling-out. I see it as giving the fans what they want. For some reason it’s different for AC/DC [there’s cognitive dissonance for you!].
Bonfire is a collection of music from the Bon Scott days of AC/DC [when they were at their best]. The discs are split up into the following:
The Atlantic Studio recording is of them live in the early days. It’s great. Really raw and lovely. The Paris CDs is just the CD version of the video “Let There Be Rock”. Volts is a collection of rare recordings from the early days.
I bought the Let There Be Rock video in about 1989, over an Easter break. I remember watching it. Videos were new to me and this was AC/DC live. At the end after the concert when the screen goes black and “To Bon” is written on the screen I cried. It’s hard not to. The world lost an extreme talent the night he died. On my return to school after the break Steven, who was the other AC/DC nut in my year group, had also watched the video. He had shed a tear too. The soundtrack is lovely. It’s nice to hear slightly different versions of the songs.
Volts is good but it freaks me out hearing classic songs with different lyrics.
If you are a Bon Scott fan then this is grade A merchandise.
I’m sorry. Who?
Ice-T?
Singing metal?
What?
That’s right. Ice-T has a band called Body Count and they play metal. Ice-T “sings” his stuff. This is a great album. It makes me laugh and slightly sad at the same time. Ice-T definitely has a message to portray and it seems to be one about the desperation of black people in society and getting laid. It’s funny how these things fit the music but when written down they just don’t scan very well.
My favourites:
This, first and foremost, is not metal. It’s not even close. However, everyone should have a copy of this and have seen the film at least three times. While I was in the sixth form at school there were a group of people who were very “Blues Brothers”. They loved the film and thought it was really good. They would quote it now and then and I was happy for them. I had never seen it.
While at university I attended a couple of the City and Guilds College Union Engineers’ Balls. Part of the night’s celebrations would be a posh dinner and dance and taxis around London. Then we would return to the student union and spend the rest of the dark hours of night there with music, drinks, food and films. The student cinema would show “The Blues Brothers” [it was a tradition]. So my first experience of this was at some god-awful hour of the night and feeling slightly worse for wear. It is a great film and one that I bought on video to watch in my own time. My latest copy is on DVD to explain and show people that although it is a “musical” it isn’t a “musical”. It’s a great film.
This is a soundtrack to a great non-musical-musical film that has cult status. It’s great.
When Whitesnake had their massive eponymous album in 1987 they went through so much strife that the band didn’t survive. The guitarist went on to form Blue Murder and they produced this album. I bought this on music cassette from the Our Price shop by Harlow bus station. It was in the rock section and one of those albums you look at, look at the band, look at the titles of the songs and then think it should be worth the money. This was a bargain!
The sound is so British and heavy. The songs are pounding slow beats of pure rock heaven. The style is similar to 1987 but the feel is much more heavy. I really like it. It still gets played quite regularly which is good for an album 20 years old. My highlights would be:
The British sound of the 1980s is one of my favourites. I love the NWOBHM style and this is what it evolved to become.
It’s hard to inform you just how much of an influence this album has been! I bought this when I was 16. AC/DC had charted with “That’s The Way I Wanna Rock & Roll” and I really liked it. So, I bought the album. I then recorded it onto tape and I’m pretty sure I took that tape on our last family holiday to the island of Jersey where we stayed at the Hotel Central. I remember listening to these tracks while I stayed in the hotel’s annex on my own. This album has provided the soundtrack for my introduction and descent into metal and for the summer of my GCSEs and 1988.
Once you get into a band you want to listen to all of their stuff. I started to buy the back catalogue, all of which will be mentioned in these communications.
Blow Up Your Video is not the best AC/DC album but it is one of the better ones. All the songs are classic AC/DC with catchy rock’n’blue riffs and good lyrics. Strangely, not many of the songs here are to do with sex. There isn’t a song a will skip when I listen to the album. The only thing is that AC/DC don’t play any of these songs in their live set which is a shame!
My highlights are:
This album just means so much to me.
I have a feeling the Chilli Peppers along with some other bands mentioned before are somewhat over-rated. I bought the album What Hits? and I really liked it. The songs were fast and raw.
I bought this album. Now, I can recognise it is a good album and I can almost see why people rave about it and the Chillis but they just don’t do it for me and so are over-rated.
“Suck My Kiss” and “Give It Away” are my favourites. The rest don’t bother me. I really disliked the Chillis when they became super popular (it’s in my psyche to dislike popular stuff) and stuff like “Dani California” etc just makes me want to puke.
Every now and then you need a bit of chill-out music. Where would someone like me turn for that?
Films.
Most of my classical and easy listening knowledge comes from music in films. Blade Runner is an excellent film made atmospheric by the music contained within.
This is that music. Simple.
In the late 80s those cheeky Scorpions had a massive hit with “Winds Of Change” from the Crazy World album. I bought that album – no bad songs there just classic straight talking rock.
After a while I bought this on music cassette. The cover has a man screaming with his eyes being impaled with eating forks. Just sayin’!
Look, this was released in 1982 and I listen to it still. The songs are really good and catchy. It’s not ground breaking rock, in fact it’s rather derivative, but it is a very well constructed album and brilliant. How many great German bands are there? [quite a few in these pages].
There isn’t a bad song. My personal favourites are:
There you have it. I’m a fan of the Scorpions. Not enough to have a tattoo but a fan.
Years ago I bought the Burning Red album by Machine Head and was impressed with the dark sound. I remember I was living in Brentwood at the time so this was 1999 or so. About a year ago I decided to buy another Machine Head album. I got this one. It’s alright. It sounds the same as the first one I got and is good for a run or winter music.
This album proved to be a return to greatness for the grandfathers of rock. This band have been around for so long and made some less-than-brilliant albums that all hope had been given up. I heard about this album while listening to the Bruce Dickinson rock show on BBC Radio 6 Music. He was raving about how good he thought it was and what a return to form it showed. I was curious. Bruce is a big AC/DC fan and so he couldn’t be wrong.
This is a complete wonder of an album. It doesn’t have the gritty rawness of the Bon Scott albums but it is crafted and written brilliantly. It has everything you could want. Blockbusting riffs, brilliant drums, good lyrics and thundering bass. It’s great.
All the songs are good. Well worth putting on in the car for a summer drive. It’ll cheer you up.