Tag: album

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Killers – Iron Maiden

There’s something about the raw power and sound in this album that has stayed in my core. Along with Iron Maiden, Killers has that kick in the teeth, it pushes you around and beats you up with its riffs and lyrics. I bloody love this album. My feelings for the first two albums often goes against the grain of general fandom. In my view Iron Maiden were good until the end of Seventh Son. After that they went shit. Or maybe I just grew out of them?

The Ides Of March – Borrowed from Samson and written by Bruce before he was part of Maiden. This opener gets you ready for the onslaught.

Wrathchild – rolling bass line with bouncy riffs. A great song.

Murders In The Rue Morgue – such a melody that I get shivers down the spine.

Another Life – You can imagine jumping around to this song in an East End pub in the early 80s. The riff change halfway through is ace.

Genghis Khan – This song pops with the main riff. What out for the speed change that doesn’t accelerate it just knocks you flat.

Innocent Exile – Another bouncy tune that keeps me jumping around the room.

Killers – Entirely about stalking someone and killing them. What do you expect from a band named after a medieval torture device?

Prodigal Son – Devil’s got hold of my soul. But with a ballad feel. Although it’s not a ballad.

Purgatory – high speed danger in this song. It races along daring you to join in.

Drifters – The symbol crashes on the off beat excite me in this song. Just one of those things. This song canters along with room for a breather at the end of each verse.

This whole album encapsulates a teenage yearning for power and respect. You can feel the angst in the writing and the production. It still excites me after over thirty years of listening. I bloody love it.

“Sanctuary” isn’t on this album and so probably wont’ get mentioned until “Live After Death”. That’s an “L” album and so won’t be too far away. As a clue I’ll let you know that “Live” is simply the best Maiden album.

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Kerbdog – Kerbdog

I do think that this album was another of my early buys on CD in the days when CDs were the latest technology. I don’t recall where I bought the album but it released in 1994 so that puts me at college. I don’t know a great deal about this band, I do know that when I got another of their albums I was slightly disappointed with it.

This album has some excellent riffs and can only be described as having “wavy” guitars. I used to have quite a bit of resistance to that term but over time I have decided it does represent a style of riffage.

I’m not sure I know any of the songs by title but I do know that I quite often hum the main riff from End Of The Green. It starts with a rolling riff that then hits hard when the rest of the band enter. The vocals are quite haunting also.

Dry Riser hits home as well. A good riff with a sudden pace change towards the end.

Dead Anyway crunches the squawker with its guitar work.

After that the songs fade from my riff-memory-centre. I’d definitely recommend giving the first few songs a blast over Spotify – whoops – just checked and this album isn’t on Spotify.

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Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part 2 – Helloween

This album carries on the story from where Helloween left off. I don’t know what the story is though. Lyrics kinda aren’t my thing. I don’t think this is as good as Part One but it does contain more humour within the writing. I wrote about the speed-opera metal in the last communication. This album is just as epic.

Rise and Fall, Dr Stein, and I Want Out are my highlights from this album.

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The titular track is over thirteen minutes long. I reckon if I had to go through that live I would fall asleep!

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Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part One – Helloween

Gosh. I can’t remember when I got this album but it was probably in the late 80s. This was my introduction to German speed metal with an epic operatic over-arching theme. It was utterly different to anything else I had listened to. It has such a story telling power with blistering guitars and drums all the way through along with excellently written and arranged songs giving such a sense of completeness once the album is finished. I really like it.

Highlights from this album include “I’m Alive”, “A Little Time”, “Haloween” and the most excellent “Future World”.

I want to say that this album is listenable by all. But I expect I’m wrong on that. When I haven’t listened to metal for a while I get all misty-eyed and think that almost all songs are excellent and everyone would appreciate it. That feeling when you play some metal to your family after they’ve been listening to Heart FM and you promise they’ll love it but as soon as the first bar ends you know you’ve made a massive mistake. They don’t get it. They look at you ever more weirdly. Oops.

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Keep The Faith – Bon Jovi

I really liked “Slippery When Wet” it started my descent into metal. “New Jersey” rocked as far as I was concerned. It has a good collection of excellent songs.

Keep The Faith stutters it’s way through the genre and marked a turn in sound for the Jovi in my opinion. I don’t know what the sales figures are, I’ll come back in a moment, but this album pretty much left me cold. I didn’t like the indie-U2 feel of the song “Keep The Faith”. There’s a tranche of ballads which I guess the Jovi do very well. But it all just leaves me meh.

It sold 12 million compared to 18 million for New Jersey.

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Katmandu – Katmandu

If you Google Katmandu band you get a list of results that aren’t anything to do with this band. Many years ago in the days of music cassettes and long playing records I use to browse the music sections in the Our Price shop close to Harlow bus station. I was earning money in a job on my “year off” before university. I don’t really count that year as a “year off” but technically it was. I’m not sure if I’ve explained that within these communications.

I’d always be looking for new bands and music to listen to. I’d always browse the section called Rock/Metal but even then you can’t really be sure what type of music you are going to get. So I would often base my purchases on the cover or what I had heard about that band. Another album bought in these circumstances would be Blue Murder by Blue Murder.

With my pennies in hand I went and bought following music cassette to then listen on my “walkman”.

Katmandu – Katmandu [1991]

What do I think about this album? I love it. It’s a rare case of an album I bought without previous knowledge but I found myself really enjoying to vocals and guitar work. Is this “metal”? Nope. Not by a long way. I reckon it’s an album that closes off the excesses of 80s hair rock.

I do like bands with a decent plodding bass sound and this band manage that very well. There’s a certain slimy/creepy quality to the sound. The guitars are heavy and well produced. The songs are perfectly structured.

I remember liking God Part II and then I found out it was a cover version of a U2 song and I felt bad as I’d always slammed U2. I still don’t like U2 but am willing to appreciate their contribution to music, just.

The Way You Make Me Feel – the album opener and it’s a lovely heavy track with excellent mix of steady riffs and start-stop types of stuff. You’ll know what I mean if you listen to it.

Love Hurts – Oh yeah, it does. Also, in the chorus it has a lovely wacka-wacka guitar sound which is perfect.

Sometime Again – could make me cry on a bad day.

When The Rain Comes – A slower paced but still heavy track with vocals matching the guitars and a great middle section with rolling drums and steady-beat-bass.

Heart & Soul – A summer song for playing American Football on the beach, drinking beer and watching the sun set.

Ready For The Common Man – opens with a WTF moment with vocals suggesting the “sometimes I feel like a motherless child” and I have no idea what this is about. Then it smashes into awesome 80s riffing and halfway there are gang vocals. It’s a great mix of everything. This YouTube version misses the vocals at the beginning and so I think some of the effect is lost. Ah. I’ve just googled “motherless child” and now I’m not sure about this song. Is it cultural appropriation or a valid part of this album. Quick, turn that part of my brain off.

Only The Good Die Young – this we know. I’m pretty sure there’s a Maiden song called this too. This is well worth it. A lovely chorus and it would have been great to sing along to this live.

Let The Heartache Begin – opens quietly and then blasts you with a wall of classic ballad heavy rockin’.

Medicine Man – Whatever happened to the Medicine Man?

Pull Together – opening with a bass line and then heading to a wavy-riff of lovely erk sounding guitars.

Warzone – fast and war like. The vocals are perfectly matched to the subject matter here. Would be a good song to be in the pit while playing live. It’s the perfect pace and then the crowd would stop and scream out the chorus together. It’d be great. I do love a decent bass-drum bit with the guitars shutting up.

Look. This album was a lucky find. The songs still play through my head nearly thirty years after buying it. That’s the sign of a good mix of writing and production.

The band split up after this, their only, album.

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K – Kula Shaker

I bought this album because didn’t they feel like they could be a rock band? I’m sure there was one good song.

I’ll pop it on the music maker thingies in the house.

<waits>

First song: “Hey Dude”, seems ok, I guess. Nope. Change that. Got to the chorus.

<skip>

Nope.

<skip>

<repeats>

Oh, here’s a song called Hush. Pretty good song. But it’s NOT theirs. It was by Deep Purple. That’s why it’s a good song. It also isn’t on this album. I added after downloading it.

 

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Just Say Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne

The thing about this album is that the bass sounds so bloody lovely. It’s a live record and when you look at who’s involved you see that Geezer Butler is playing bass guitar and you go “ah, now that makes sense”.

The tracks on this are all proper Ozzy. Really good songs with blistering guitar work.

Miracle Man, Bloodbath in Paradise, Shot In The Dark, Tattooed Dancer, Sweet Leaf and War Pigs.

The last two are Sabbath classics. This is a great album [EP], well worth a listen, but not necessarily worth the £15 on Amazon I just saw! I’d recommend Tribute instead.

Zakk Wylde on guitar, Geezer on bass and Randy Castillo on drums? What more do you want?

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Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop – Jeff Beck

This album was originally bought on music cassette and has since bee played a reasonable number of times. My ignorance comes to the fore here as I don’t really know who Jeff Beck is. I think he wrote “Hi Ho Silver Lining” but I could be mistaken. I don’t want to Wikipedia him because that’s cheating. My suspicion is that he used to be a member of an awesome 60/70s rock band and then was part of a few super-groups.

This album was late 80s or early 90s and it’s good fun. It’s not rock by a long way but it has gentle rhythms and sampling along with some spoken word lyrics. I quite like it as something different for the summer evenings. Perfectly pleasant for company I guess.

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Iron Maiden – Iron Maiden

This is the next draft in my list but I’m not sure I’ve completed all the Is before this one. However, I don’t care. This album is SEMINAL.

There’s a communication somewhere here called Descent into Metal. I’m not sure if this album appears but I still rate this as the second best Iron Maiden album after Killers. I love the raw sound, the anger and the power behind this album. It’s brilliant.

Prowler – awesome
Remember Tomorrow – shivers down my spine
Running Free – YEAH!
Phantom Of The Opera – Lucozade advert anyone? plus tempo changes and harmonies!

 

 

Transylvania – incredible instrumental
Strange World – mysterious magic
Charlotte The Harlot – what you gonna do?
Iron Maiden – Marvellous.

My CD version also has Sanctuary on it which is a super song. Just brilliant.

Now, I’m not known as a wordsmith, far from it. Hence this communication doesn’t quite match my emotional relationship with this album. I have listened to these songs since I was 14 or 15 and I still think it’s a great album.

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Hybrid Theory – Linkin Park

This potentially will annoy many people but I remember these guys having a really big hit and I thought that it sounded good. Definitely a new sound and worth checking out. I  bought this album and liked pretty much all of it, but I just don’t play it anymore. Then the singer chap died. That’s very sad but it didn’t make me play this album. I reckon I’m just out of the age bracket for this to be a formative sound.

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Iron Man 2 – AC/DC

This is a compilation so songs will be reviewed elsewhere.

  • Shoot To Thrill
  • Rock ‘n’ Roll Damnation
  • Guns For Hire
  • Cold Hearted Man
  • Back In Black
  • Thunderstruck
  • If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)
  • Evil Walks
  • T.N.T.
  • Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be
  • Have A Drink On Me
  • The Razors Edge
  • Let There Be Rock
  • War Machine
  • Highway To Hell
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Iowa – Slipknot

In terms of Slipknot canon I don’t know where this fits. I think it might be their second album. Just not sure. I’ve bought a few Slipknot albums but never really played any other than the first one. Having now listened to it I can say that some of the songs I recognise from the live album Antennas To Hell. They also play some of these songs live.

Highlights are:

  • People=Shit
  • Disasterpiece
  • My Plague
  • Everything Ends
  • The Heretic Anthem
  • Left Behind

I do like the Heretic Anthem and the chorus is something I have sung with my childerbeasts.

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Invasion Of Your Privacy – RATT

This is a teenage fantasy album. It’s pretty obviously a load of cock-rock and remarkably a product of its time. I’m pretty sure I own this on picture disk and the cover is likely the reason I bought it. All my vinyl disks are stored in decent boxes in a cupboard. I haven’t put them in the loft as I harbour secret desires to play them again one day. I don’t have the same response with my tapes, they are less tactile and less loved, tucked away in the loft somewhere getting heat cycled.

Look, if you want 80s LA rock then get this. It’s does exactly what it says on the cover.

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If You Want Blood You’ve Got It [live] – AC/DC

Holy Shit!

This album has been with me throughout most of my life and I still rate it as one of the best albums I have ever heard. Blow Up Your Video came out in 1988 and the singles were released before then in the wonder-year of 1987. so, you love AC/DC and start looking up old albums. Then, the excitement that there are thirteen albums is palpable.

This is a best of the first few albums, and it fucking rocks. They hadn’t even released Highway To Hell yet and all the songs on here rock.

This album has healed me emotionally when I have felt broken. It has calmed me when I have been un-calm and it has restored me to who I am on many occasion. SR once told me to go and listen to “If You Want Blood”, it’ll make you happier. That was somewhere in the early 90s and I hadn’t realised its effect was so obvious.

I had to re-purchase this on music cassette because I had listened to my first version of this so many times the tape had stretched in places and it made the music sound wrong.

I’ve bought this on CD since. And then I ripped that to save onto an MP3 player. Then I used the CD to rip to a higher specification and it is now on the NAS Drive.

After you’ve listened to this a lot you can hear the smiles in the band, you recognise every note, you can imagine where they are on stage and what they are doing there.

For many years I had only seen the front of this album, the rear cover wasn’t part of the tape version I had. When I saw the back cover I wasn’t disappointed.

Front Cover
Front Cover
Back Cover
Back Cover

I dare you to find a song on this album that can be considered weak. I dare you.

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Hysteria – Def Leppard

Wow. This album was released in my summer of music awakening. 1987, when I was fifteen, was, in my mind, a year of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and Hyteria by Def Leppard. It was the year of my second summer camp and moving into the fifth year at school.

I think Armageddon It was released as a single and I loved it. So I bought the album. It’s great. Well, it was then. It’s a product of its time and I’m happy with that. It has consistently been in the top of album lists.

Then you hear that the drummer only has one arm. He lost the other one in a car accident and you think, wow. This is really impressive.

I was meant to see Def Leppard as my first concert. They were playing the Royal Albert Hall in the round in April 1988. I had a friend to go with and everything. But I got a cadet trip to Cyprus and so did that instead. I’m still glad I went to Cyprus, it was a brilliant, but frustrating experience. That left Iron Maiden to become my first concert on December 10 1988.

I finally did see Def Leppard play. They opened one of the NFL games at Wembley Stadium that I’ve been to. I had grown up then and they didn’t really bother me.

So, the album.

It’s full of hits and power ballads that knocks the 80’s out of 1987. It’s probably another great driving album.

The thing is, once you’ve listened to this, you seek out other Def Leppard and you get some excellent stuff like “On Through The Night”, “High n Dry” and “Pyromania”. Each of these is a better album, but not as popular.

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How To Do Battle – Senser

I remember trying to persuade my Events Manager at college to book Senser in 1995. I wanted to see them play but he refused, they would cost too much. I had owned the Stacked Up album for about a year and found it thrilling. This album is the classic mix of political lyrics, heavy bouncy guitar riffs and chilled out beats that made Senser an awesome band. I have seen them twice. Once in Southsea and once at the Underworld. If you want to hear Senser then buy Stacked Up. If you want more buy this.

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Hot Rocks 1964-1971 – Rolling Stones

This is just a quick one really. You grow up knowing that certain bands are very influential. You hear about them and then you listen to them. For me The Doors were meant to be really good but I just don’t like their material, I mean I understand how and why they were such an influence but I just don’t like their stuff. The Beatles are another band who pretty much leave me cold!

The Rolling Stones are a little bit different. I like their music. But then, I don’t have all their albums, just this. And, this is meant to be the best of all their stuff covering seven years. So it’s not really surprising that it is full of very good music.

All of the songs on this album are very good. It should really be in every collection, much like the White album, which I don’t have.

A particular favourite here is Sympathy For The Devil. It builds brilliantly and is crafted so very well [unlike the Guns N Roses version which is shit in comparison]. Whenever I hear this song it reminds me of a couple of overnight parties we had next to the river Stort in Pishiobury Park in Hertfordshire. We pretty much stayed up all night drinking, playing cricket and generally having a laugh and I remember putting this song on the music player just as the sun was rising and a mist was settling over the river. It’s a very atmospheric song and this was the perfect use for it.

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Holy Diver – Dio

I bought this on vinyl originally. The cover of the Devil chaining a priest and drowning him was probably quite shocking for the time. I probably bought it because of the cover and it was in the heavy metal section of the record shop. Back in those days we couldn’t pre-listen or try a song, only the posh shops did that. I bought records on the cover and recommendations of friends.

Ronnie James Dio’s voice is strange, I wasn’t aware of his history with Black Sabbath and I still haven’t listened to any of his stuff with them, but I can see how he could follow Ozzy. I’ve just looked up that the guitarist was Vivian Campbell which explains a lot. I first heard of him when he worked for Whitesnake and the 1987 album.

Holy Diver has lyrics, but I don’t really pay attention to the lyrics. For me music is the riff, rhythm and tune of the vocals. This is an excellent 80s rock album with a perfect combination of sound and feel. It’s great. I can imagine a crowd of 80,000 all jumping in time to the heavy crunching riffs.

I can remember once being on Imperial College Radio and commenting that I thought Rainbow In The Dark sounded a lot like Living On Video. I had phone calls objecting but I maintain I was correct, or at least correct about the keyboard riff.

Rainbow In The Dark

Living On Video

Do you know what? I was right! Yes, for some reason I have both. I think I bought Living On Video as a single before I developed my love for screaming loud guitars.

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High Voltage – ACDC

1976.

AC/DC.

Debut international album.

This album. Is. Awesome.

I’m not sure if I’ve gone into my relationship with AC/DC before. My attention to them was first awakened by the song “That’s The Way I Wanna Rock n Roll” off the Blow Up Your Video album. When I found out there was a back catalogue of about 12 albums I was so excited. All that music to be consumed.

This album is their first major release. I believe that the track listing is different in Australia along with the cover. I have owned this on cassette tape, CD and now digitally. I didn’t buy much AC/DC on vinyl because I couldn’t carry around a record with me to listen as I moved.

AC/DC are masters of riff driven rock with a dirty guitar sound, perfectly crafted rude lyrics and brilliant accompaniment to balance out the sound.

It’s A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna (rock and roll) – fucking bagpipes.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer – includes the lyric “yes I are”, which I maintain is lyrical genius.
The Jack – better live as the lyrics are truer.
Live Wire – AC/DC Live video opens with this song. It’s a great sing along tune.
T.N.T. – riff-tastic.
Can I Sit Next To You Girl – pace change in the rhythm guitars is great.
Little Lover – “Killed me when I saw, The wet patch on your seat, Was it Coca Cola?”
She’s Got Balls – Opening riff just floors me. Lovely bass work. Beautiful.
High Voltage – Still played. Still loved. Like every song here.

This is an album to horrify the elders. To rip fear into grown ups. The lyrics are rude without being offensive [kind of] and the sound is pure dirt. Put it on. Play It Loud. Really Loud.

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