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.
Last night was one of those events I had been looking forward to for quite a while. Nachtmahr were playing a gig to celebrate 10 years in business and it was happening at Electrowerkz. I really like Electrowerkz, it’s a dingy little club in Angel with a small venue for concerts. I’ve been here before. This time I travelled with my niece and met Smith there.
Outside the door is a sign saying Hadley’s Hope. Inside it’s black and reminiscent of the landing site in the film Aliens, called Hadley’s Hope. There’s a bar decorated in a very Giger way.
Bands playing were:
Drakenwerkz
Biomechanimal
DKAG
Nachtmahr
We arrived near the end of the set for the first band so I shan’t comment. The Biomechanimal set was . . . not marvellous. They had a keyboardist pressing buttons on a bass guitar looking device, the bassist was busy but I couldn’t hear what she was playing and the singer was screaming so I couldn’t really hear what he was saying. I would say they were an industrial dance band with heavy overtones but I’m not sure they were any good. Fair enough if some people like their music but it didn’t really do a great deal for me.
Biomechanimal
Third band on the bill were DKAG, who I’ve seen before a couple of times. It’s very dance. Well constructed but a little boring with no lead singer to interact with. We went to the bar.
DKAG
Finally, Nachmahr were on. I saw them at M’era Luna a few years ago and was slightly underwhelmed. This time though they were great. One “programmer” and the lead singer is all it took. The music was hard fast beat Austrian industrial and it was great fun. Really enjoyed it.
Nachtmahr
Some songs are in German, some in English. Rainer spoke in both. This was well worth missing a multitude of fireworks and bonfires celebrating the state sponsored death of a Spanish Catholic. Over all this rated about an 8 on the official scale of 0-10. I thin kthe Combichrist gig a few years ago got a 9.9 from me and so using that scale gives this gig an 8.
After the final song the venue was shifted around a little to be turned into the Slimelight club. The bar downstairs was opened and the BBQ started. I took a picture of the full moon glowing through the roof:
Moon Glow
Finally, here’s a picture of three people at a bar:
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.
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.
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.
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 CoverBack Cover
I dare you to find a song on this album that can be considered weak. I dare you.
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.
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.
In the mid(ish) 90s I was travelling around London and occasionally looking in record shops, as we still called them. I was minded to find some Ministry when Smiff told me about a son called Jesus Build My Hotrod. It was a great song, fast and heavy but not metal. I found it interesting. I’d not yet really got into industrial music, that was to come about ten years later.
Houses Of The Mole is not that stuff. It’s a later album I bought, just because it’s Ministry. It’s a political album about the horrifying aspects of George W Bush’s presidency. It’s worth listening to but it’s not a classic.
