Category: Album Reviews

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Not Fragile – Bachman-Turner Overdrive

This album is so very important to me. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get across why but I’ll give it a go. The most talented writer I am not.

My earliest memory of rock music is being in the back of the Smith’s car and they decided to play this via a music cassette. I can remember being driven in a Ford Granada along Gilden Way in Harlow and all the members of the Smith family banging their heads up and down. I’m not sure I understood what was going on. I was young, somewhere around ten. This whole event seemed strange. I form of loud guitar music when you move your head.

I’d only been exposed to Abba and Jean Michel Jarre at home. I don’t think there was any rock in the house. There might have been some of The Shadows but nothing particularly heavy. We have to skip a bit after that and it’s worth reading this communication about my descent into metal music. Music back in those days was hard to find, it was exciting to be able to listen to something you had search for, something others hadn’t heard, something that was your own. It’s like finding that one book that really affects you but no-one else has read.

I don’t know when I bought this album. I expect I had a taped copy for a long time. I’m pretty sure I have a CD version somewhere now but, of course, it’s all digital and on a NAS now.

What amazes me about this album is that it is a complete and fully-rounded rock album and it was released in 1974! I probably expect that rock started around 1980, when I became music-conscious, of course every generation likes to think they invented sex (or music).

Bachman–Turner Overdrive.png
By Mercury Records – Billboard, page 27, 7 September 1974, Public Domain, Link

I have loved this album for over thirty years and I expect I will continue to do so. There isn’t a song that is fast or crazy. Just a complete album of well-crafted songs that make you want to dance, or smash your head on something. I’ve always been amazed at just how beautiful the two lead guitars sound when they solo together.

  • Not Fragile – the title track starts with a blistering bass line and continues to develop into a crushing riff. I love it. The duelling guitars is amazing.
  • Rock Is My Life, And This Is My Song – Lovely. A wonderful song.
  • Roll On Down The Highway – classic rock anthem with a wonderfully crafted solo.
  • You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet – arguably the weakest song on this album but annoyingly the most well known.
  • Free Wheelin’ – An instrumental with some classic stop-start riffs. It’s built upon all the classic forms of rock/blues. It even has a bass solo. Love it.
  • Sledgehammer – another of my favourites. The opening riff slowly beats out and makes this song a calming beast.
  • Blue Moanin’ – I do think this is the second weakest song on this album. I mean it’s good but one of them has to be bottom of the list doesn’t it? I’m excluding You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet from the list.
  • Second Hand – you gotta love a cheeky muted cow-bell in this song. This is a great song.
  • Givin’ It All Away – an upbeat bluesy riffed beast of a song that would get a pit going (maybe, if we weren’t all so old).

This album isn’t metal. But it’s some of the finest blue-rock you can find. It still holds it own forty five years after release. If I had my way either everyone would know this or no-one. You aren’t good enough for this music.

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No Sleep ‘Till Hammersmith – Motörhead

This is a monster of an album. Buy it. Play it. Love it.

I was meant to see Motörhead play in around 1990 with two friends, Smith and KH. That didn’t happen because of a falling out between me and KH. I didn’t go. I’ve heard the show was really good. Oh well. I had to wait until 2013 to see Motörhead live at Download Festival and they were OK but very much a product of their time. This album though captures them at their very best.

I bought this on tape [music cassette] waaay back. I can remember listening to it while I worked at Cossor Electronics in my “gap year”. I had an AIWA portable cassette player with bass-boost and this album was a great kick in the ears. Gap Year is in quotation marks there because I never intended to go to university but things happen, maybe I’ll write about it here.

I think the thing that this album surprised me the most was the elegance with which Lemmy plays the bass and how his rolling riffs and scales really fit the music. I’m not sure I’d be able to hear this subtlety live but in this album it shouts out.

  • Ace Of Spades – bloody marvellous.
  • Stay Clean – another great song.
  • Metropolis – not a bad song on this album.
  • The Hammer – it’s metal isn’t it.
  • Iron Horse – better than when Bon Jovi mentioned it.
  • No Class – say it with an American accent.
  • Overkill – Often imitated never bettered.
  • (We Are) The Roadcrew – Just listen to that scream.
  • Capricorn – Not a unicorn.
  • Bomber – I’ve not seen the video but I suspect this is when the lighting rig, shaped as a bomber, flies over the band.
  • Motörhead – This is the best.

Just before the band play Motörhead Lemmy says “Just In Case”. This phrase echoes through my brain, it’s there as a constant catch phrase, I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve written it on pupils’ leaving books in the past and referenced this album in the hope they listen to it. The bass playing explodes out of the speakers and knocks you flat. It’s an amazing song and the rhythm of the vocals makes me smile. I don’t really know what Lemmy sings, it’s not thing – vocals, I leave those to Smith.

Everyone should own this album, even if it’s to put on at the end of a party to get rid of everyone, or to celebrate a great night. Go and buy it.

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No More Tears – Ozzy Osbourne

It’s Ozzy isn’t it! You don’t need much more than that. This freaky person who once bit the head of a live bat during a concert. This man who took copious quantities of drugs and who invented Heavy Metal. This man who still writes great music. This god of metal.

And then you see him on a reality TV show and it shocks you just how fucked he is. His body is knackered and you can actually see him thinking. The show highlighted just how much his wife had managed him and got him clean, eventually.

Whoever your heroes are they will let you down eventually. This downfall will be quicker if you see or meet them in real life. Never meet your heroes. I used to think Ozzy was a god, now he’s a broken man.

I’m pretty sure this was the first Ozzy album I bought. There are a couple of others but I think I got this one on music cassette. It’s a brilliant album. It’s very well produced and has excellent songs on it. I’ve loved the rolling bass lines keeping the rhythm section going and the creepy sound clips over the top. There’s a certain beat to these songs that is a slow but heavy boom that means you can feel the urge to move and bounce along.

Mr Tinkertrain – excellent.
Mama, I’m Coming Home – tear jerker.
No More Tears – brilliant opening, the riffing is ace.
Hellraiser – damn good.
Zombie Stomp – written with the audience in mind.
A.V.H. – darn good.

I’ve enjoyed this album for many years and it still pleases me, which is no mean feat.

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New Jersey – Bon Jovi

This was the first Bon Jovi album that was released during my fandom. I’m not sure if I had already seen them live, I’ll check at some point. I remember driving with friends down the Wembley Arena and seeing Bon Jovi with Dan Reed Network as support in around 1990. Right, this album was released in 1988 and so I was into Bon Jovi then but I hadn’t seen them live.

I really loved this album. It felt mature but still great fun. I have just, slightly embarrassingly, realised that the band’s name shortens to BJ, which is brilliant but I can’t believe I’ve only just noticed that [I wonder if the Pom has?].

Lay Your Hands On Me – brilliant.

Bad Medicine – brilliant and includes the lyric which I have found most fascinating: “You’re an all night respirator wrapped in stockings and a dress”.

So, here’s the thing. I could end this album right at this point. I know that’ll be controversial given some of the songs that follow:

Blood On Blood, Homebound Train, Rise Cowboy Ride, I’ll be There For You, 99 In The Shade.

These songs have never really done much for me. That’s just how it is and I do understand it’s a massive character flaw. When I saw these guys last at Twickenham they played “I’ll Be There For You”, it was the most boring song ever, key changes and everything. I hated it.

This album is still great, even though I turn off after about ten minutes. Everyone should own it.

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Nevermind – Nirvana

As we approach the other classics in the “N” section of this mammoth album review journey we settle into thoughts about Nevermind. You know what, I just don’t know. In the early 90s this sounded amazing and remarkable, a real game changer. It turned metal from overblown historical narratives to being about feelings and angst.

I’m also worried that it doesn’t stand the test of time and might be a bit shit. If you’ve heard The Pixies you know what I mean. I haven’t played this for decades. I guess it still scares your parents though.

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Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols – Sex Pistols

This album means a lot to me. I originally had this on tape bought as a birthday present [I think] by a friend from my village. Lisa and I both went to air cadets and our friendship grew over the years we spent together. Towards the end of my cadet career we would give each other lifts to the squadron. 309 was based in the nearest town to the village and we had to get there somehow.

Lisa bought this tape for me. We listened to it together in the car and I loved the rawness of the sound. As I grew up further it amused me that this band were put together pretty much to sell things at a shop on the Kings Road. Brilliant marketing and hilarious at the same time. Punk being used as an overt advert for the shop Sex. Brilliant!

Not all the songs are brilliant but a good proportion are and the production is excellent. Again, it’s amusing how well produced this album is given the whole punk pastiche [not sure that’s the correct word there, I might have just mentioned a Danish pastry].

  • Holidays in the sun
  • Bodies
  • No feelings
  • Liar
  • Problems
  • Seventeen
  • Anarchy
  • Pretty Vacant

All amazing songs. All really well written and produced. This is a one album band, everything else was shit. This album though, it served them well.

This does what it’s meant to. It scares your parents. It makes them worry for your sanity and the future of humanity. It’s ingenious.

Then, while I was at university, in possibly my second year, Lisa died. Suddenly. While playing football. Fuck. My dad told me. In a bar near Goodge Street. “I’ve got some bad news” he said. Lisa was dead. Fuckin’ dead. At about 21 or 22. They didn’t ever find out what happened. She was fit, played sport and ran all the time, smoked all the time, was great to be around.

The funeral was fucking terrible. The church was packed. People sat in the aisles. I think we all, the cadets, wanted to run away afterwards, but her dad asked us to stay a the wake. It was shit. I think we were all numb. We pondered going to look at the coffin in the hole, I said we shouldn’t, let’s remember her the way she was, we didn’t look. That night we all went on a pub crawl around Sawbridgeworth and drank many round to Lisa.

I used to go and chat to her grave for about ten years after she died. I just went there to think. I might have said stuff, but I also know that’s just stupid because she was dead and gone. Once you’re dead that’s it. Your gone. But it felt like the right thing for me to do at those times. Even my mate Rich and I once went to speak to her after a dining in night at 309. We left our girlfriends with my parents at about midnight and just went to chat to Lisa. Fuck knows what the girls thought about that. It’s just what we did.

I have a newspaper clipping about Lisa dying folded inside the CD case of this one. I moved it there from the music cassette when I upgraded.

Life’s shit quite often and then every now and then you get a bit of happiness. Then you die. Some of us die before the others. I miss you Lisa.

Newpaper article about Lisa dying
Lisa Died

We’re so pretty, oh so pretty, we’re pretty, va-cunt.

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My Generation – The Very Best Of The Who – The Who

I don’t remember buying this album and I suspect it was another failed attempt to get into The Who. I can tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it, or if I did it was decades ago. I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what tracks are on here, although I could guess.

I’ve just looked at the track listing and I can honestly say I recognise about half the song titles. I guess I’m still not a Who fan.

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Mutter – Rammstein

I was given this album as a gift during early February 2007, I’m pretty sure it was on my stag do. Anyway, as much as I love Rammstein I haven’t listened to this album as much as I should’ve. I’m not sure why but I seem to prefer the other albums.

Sometimes the older stuff works best for a band because you know the songs so well. I think that’s why I find it hard to get to know the newer albums or ones that are newer to me. I guess I also don’t like bands who keep the same music style? I’m not sure about that statement actually. Here’s my thinking:

I love the early Iron Maiden stuff but the albums after Seventh Son are a little boring. I think it’s because they didn’t really change their sound? Or maybe I just grew out of Iron Maiden, I’m not saying it’s wrong to keep liking them I’m just saying I changed.

I still love AC/DC even though [apart from Let There Be Rock] all their albums sound the same. This contradicts my experience to Iron Maiden so I don’t know what it is about AC/DC or Maiden that makes my response to their new music so different.

Metallica changed their sound over the years and I haven’t liked anything by them since Garage Days Re-Revisited. I mean there are two songs on the black album that are OK but everything since then I’ve not liked. Maybe it’s because they went “mainstream”?? I don’t know. Maiden are pretty mainstream, as are AC/DC, and I still kinda like them so who knows what’s going on. I guess you like what you like.

Since 2009 I’ve been into Aggrotech or Hellectro music and I really enjoy it. The canon isn’t as large as for metal and so I haven’t tired of the music yet. I don’t understand the causation route here. I can’t decide if Andy and I share the same interest in music genres because we have the same music tastes and are friends anyway or whether the fact that we are friends also influences our music tastes so they are the same. There are some small differences in what we like and obsess over but by and large our tastes have grown together. Odd and probably not that odd I guess.

So, Rammstein. I first heard them when a friend, Sara, gave me her CDs of the first two Rammstien albums and I loved them. I remember listening to these CDs in around 2003. It took a few year for me to get to the point of seeing Rammstein because I had a phase when I didn’t go to gigs and concerts, but I am definitely in a music phase at the moment and one that’s lasted about six years so far.

This album is a classic but it just happens to be one I’ve not listen to that much.

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Music For A Jilted Generation – The Prodigy

This is an album which takes me back to the early 1990s almost straight away. I’m pretty sure I bought this in a record shop in Portsmouth. This means I bought it around 1995/6.

I remember spending time at a mate’s flat after being out on the beers in Bishop’s Stortford. He was working as a house master in a private school and we would often rock up to his accommodation and sometimes we’d have the Narcotics Suite on in the background and I remember being very impressed with the music.

I also remember being in a car with my parents and even though they were fine with all my heavy metal and thrash I asked them to put this CD in the player and listen and I don’t think they quite got it. The music has complex beats and I think it broke them slightly. I have loved this album for over twenty years. When I saw The Prodigy last summer at the M’era Luna festival it was one of the best gigs I had ever seen.

  • Break and Enter – a deep heavy intro to the blistering sounds of The Prodigy.
  • Their Law – Fuck ’em. Shout and scream this one at the establishment.
  • Full Throttle – a fast ride to hell I reckon.
  • Voodoo People – magic people. I think I remember this one from the live show. A guitar based sound to give you full on dance beats.
  • Speedway – It’s a race isn’t it? Sounds like the soundtrack to a Ridge Racer game, but better.
  • The Heat – Still great.
  • Poison – The intro to this, with the spoken word and then the wa-wa sounds makes me shiver. It needs to be loud and hit you in the chest.
  • No Good – ha ha, this one reminds me of a relationship I was in once. Every now and then this song went through my head before I’d had enough and left.
  • One Love – lovely.
  • Narcotic Suite x 3 – a beautifully written selection of songs which will make my spine shiver.

I liked this album before I was into my current electro-aggrotech-industrial phase. It was a forerunner that seemed “OK” for a metal fan to like. I think I used to be worried what people would think about me when I spoke about music and now I don’t care what you think. I like what I like and am what I am.

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MTV Unplugged in NY – Nirvana

So, Nirvana were massive. They were huge and considered a great influence over the 90s. But then he died and I heard The Pixies and suddenly I wasn’t that bothered by them.

I really liked the Seattle sound of the early 90s and I saw Alice In Chains a few times. The soundtrack to the film Singles is a super album. Nevermind was amazing and had a raw power that was a complete turn around from the thrash and metal that had come before. But, I’m afraid that one good song on a pretty good album doesn’t heroes make [in my view].

I look back quite dispassionately from the lofty heights of 2019. I can see what they did but I can be almost unbothered by it all.

I bought this album, I played it but for me I think it lacked the power of Nevermind. The vocals have a haunting sound and this was the first of the Unplugged albums that made MTV a fortune. I can’t remember the last time I played this album. I can’t see a time when I will play this album.

Nirvana does make me remember my third year at university. You see you have to read this boring, lofty communication to get this far before you get a nugget of glory days waffle. Back in the day we held “welcome” dinners for each of the engineering departments and we asked freshers to come along. I attended all of these in my third year as I was in the “Departmental Societies Officer” role within City and Guilds College Union. I t was pretty much my duty to go along and drink and be merry.

The disco at the dinners was run by the people from Imperial College Radio, a group to which I also belonged having been part of the organisation since my own first year at university. There are stories about time at the radio station that I should record on this site. So, ICR ran the discos and kept pointing out that I knew all the words to the Wham! songs, which was slightly embarrassing but at least it meant I got the chance to influence the choice of songs.

When “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on I would run to the dance floor and then begin to be a little aggressive with the metal style “dancing” I guess. There was one dinner where, at the end of the song, I was the last man standing on the dance floor. Everyone else had decided it was best to get away from me. I look back and think my behaviour could have been considered anti-social but I also recognise that times were different and people probably cared less then that I do now.

Being in the pit at a metal show is an act of consensual violence to a certain extent. Everyone there wants to have a good time and jump around and bounce into each other. However, at the same time everyone looks out for each other and if someone falls we all help them up. I’ve helped up people I’ve been running into and I’ve also been helped up when I’ve fallen. There are levels of behaviour that are considered OK and there are definitely upper limits. It’s all unspoken but works. If you don’t like the level of violence then you leave and no one cares. I’ve left pits in the past, where I’ve considered the violence beyond my limits and I’ve stood on the edge and watched.

Most concerts I’ve been to just involve the crowd jumping around and maybe creating a circle. I’ve been to gigs where we’ve run into each other in time to the music and in the right environment that’s pretty good fun. I’ve been to gigs where the pit seemed to consist of a few people rugby tackling each other and I thought that a stage too far and so I left that one. In that same pit I saw someone throw a punch, this was beyond the unwritten rules and that chap was dragged out and handed over to security. There are rules you see, you just have to know what’s going on.

When I think of the pits I’ve been in, there has been the following bands where I’ve been controlled by the music:

  • Iron Maiden
  • AC/DC
  • Combichrist
  • Newsted
  • Aesthetic Perfection
  • The Prodigy
  • Megadeth
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