Category: Album Reviews

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Every Dog Has Its Day – Salty Dog

I love this album. I’m not sure I can explain why though. For some reason every song makes me smile and want to jump along. There’s something about the sound and beat that gets me going. This is an odd album because I would say that the sound is a bit harsher than Poison and the songs a bit ruder and I’ve grown up out of Poison. Not this album though. I still play it. Quite a bit. There’s also some slow songs on here and they don’t bother me!

I bought this on Music Cassette back in the days when they were popular and I think I was probably working at Cossor Electronics in Harlow. There was an Our Price store next to the bus station and I used to get at least one album a week. More importantly, this album along with Blue Murder turned out to be a good buy in the days before preview and dodgy downloads.

As far as I know this band only made the one album. They are described as “sleaze metal”, whatever that is? I think they sound “southern” a bit like the Black Crows, but then I could be very wrong about that. It’s a great album, almost romantic [except for the song titles].

I like it, that is all.

Favourite songs include:

  • Come Along
  • Cat’s Got Nine
  • Heave Hard (She Comes Easy)
  • Slow Daze

You can always JFGI if you want to know more of the specifics.

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Enter The Grave – Evile

If you want thrash metal. This album is for you. It’s fast, angry, heavy and can’t be taken too seriously. If you like Slayer, you’ll love this.

Song titles are:

  • First Blood
  • Bathe In Blood
  • We Who Are About To Die

It’s lovely comic stuff. Or possibly slightly scary if you can’t cope with thrash.

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Eliminator – ZZ Top

What is there about ZZ Top that isn’t to like? Their sound is a unique blend of well-polished down and dirty guitar rock.  This album was a commercial success and had many singles that zoomed to the top of the charts. If you understand the American music taste then you’ll see why these songs worked so well.

All the songs on this album and toe-tapping head-banging great. Probably the sort of stuff you could play while your mum visits and she’d say she likes it. On my version I think “Legs” is the weakest song, but it was the biggest hit, maybe because of the video. I also think that “I need you tonight” is a lovely love song, it should be on every “intro to metal” mix tape, as it once was on a tape I made.

Alongside the comments I wrote about Boston, this is a great driving album.

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Elephant – White Stripes

This was the second album by The White Stripes that I owned. I really like the first one I owned and I guess it’ll be written about eventually in this place.

This album is much the same as the other one. I haven’t really played it a great deal in the last ten years but I really do appreciate the barebones sound and writing. I think it shows that every now and then the popular taste in music comes full circle.

One thing I would say is that this is the album with Seven Nation Army blasting off as the first song. It’s a great song with an amazing riff that has been ruined by every sports ground ever since.

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Electric Ladyland – Jimi Hendrix Experience

Look, I am perfectly aware that this is a classic album. I’m also perfectly aware that it’s hard to criticise things that are considered classic. For instance; I’m not that keen on The Beatles, they don’t really do much for me. I feel much the same way about this album. It’s OK. I can see that it’s considered a classic and I can even see why but it does little for me. I don’t really play it often.

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Eject EP – Senser

It is hard to explain just how important this EP is to me. I know that it shouldn’t really appear in this series as it’s not an album but I don’t care.

Loud, hard, heavy, angry, sexy, violent, calming, soothing, political, gentle, vicious

Rock, rap, heavy, soft, crazy, DJ, mixing, scratching, chugging, funk, trance

Andy first got me into this in around my third year of university. I lived in Ongar road and he gave me a tape of new music he had found. He always found good music and passed it on to me. It sounded a little like Faith No More who, I felt, had messed up heavy metal a little by mixing in some funk and crazy stuff.

Senser had taken music I loved and turned it on its head. They had funk, metal and they even had a DJ dude who would scratch in the background. This stuff blew my mind. It has to be played loud and let the bass ring out. I do like rolling bass lines that play all the while other ditties are played around the steady beat of the drums and thumping bass. I think all my favourite bands have managed that [AC/DC, Dokken, Iron Maiden].

So, all of the four songs on here are great. Download it from iTunes or whatever your preferred music provider is. I especially love Eject (Over Zealous Mix) with the David Koresh quotes. You youngsters should look it up and see how religion fucks everything up and belief in crazy things fucks everything up.

I would say that the sound that Senser created, along with the Prodigy, allowed other bands to build and transform the heavier side of music leading to Rammstein and Slipknot.

This EP still sends shivers down my spine. If it can do that after about twenty years then I’d say it deserves all the merit I can bestow upon it.

No one knows when it’s going to happen. When they asked him, Jesus said even he didn’t know the exact time, but it’s going to happen. One of these days, and it could be any minute now, Christ is going to come back for us all and after that it’s going to be pretty awful around here.

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Echogenetic – Front Line Assembly

I can’t quite remember how I heard about Front Line Assembly. I think they were on a compilation album and then I downloaded the album “Millennium” which will be reviewed much later in this series.

This album I bought before I saw FLA last summer at the Garage. This was their latest album and I wanted to make sure that I knew some of the songs they were going to play. I do like it. All FLA stuff makes it into my Hellektro playlist on my phone and Sonos system. This album has fewer guitar sounds throughout and is a bit more industrial/dance than Millenium. The voice is distorted and almost whispered throughout the album and that’s not my favourite type of sound. The songs are all well crafted as you would expect from someone with over 20 years in the business.

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Dream Evil – Dio

Dream Evil is a quality fast 80s metal album. It should in everyone’s collection along with Holy Diver by Dio. There are many songs on here that make me happy and send shivers down my spine. I love the sound, the feel and the attitude of the whole album. I think this, along with Holy Diver, has my ideal “sound” for a metal band. The way it is mixed really resonates with me.

The album has some definite singles, songs that are catchy and would work well on the radio and also get everyone singing at a concert. Favourite songs are:

  • Dream Evil
  • Sunset Superman
  • Naked In The Rain
  • Faces In The Window
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Dr Feelgood – Mötley Crüe

For whatever reason I really love the 80s metal/rock stuff. I’ve watched documentaries where it’s explained that it was nasty, drunk and misogynistic. I actually agree with all of that. Mötley Crüe were the worst of the bunch really, the album “Girls, Girls, Girls” pretty much sums up that era. It’s hard not to like stuff when it moves you. I think feeling moved by a song is a base emotion, possibly based on some early learnt patterns, but mostly something to do with real unconscious stuff. It’s hard to get away from what moves you like that.

Dr Feelgood is a damn good album. The production is clean and heavy. The riffs are all good it’s just a quality cock-rock album. My favourite songs of this group are: Dr Feelgood, Kickstart My Heart, She Goes Down and finally “Don’t Go Away Mad (just go away)”.

Pretty much every Crüe album has a bad song on it. They’ve always recorded one song that just doesn’t fit with the rest of the album and, for me, this is their first album where every song is valid and fits. “Without You” is a ballad, but well written, I just don’t like it much anymore.

 

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Don’t Look Back – Boston

I bought this on my Boston phase. I bought up all their stuff as I really liked “Foreplay – Long Time” from Rock Band on the Playstation. Any Boston album is very well written and just what you want. I’m pretty sure this is stuff someone not into rock would cope with playing in the background. More driving music. See Boston review.

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