The American Way – Sacred Reich

This is a thrash album. During the mid to late eighties there were a number of bands who changed the sound of metal. Metallica and the rest of the big four are considered the trailblazers. I found Sacred Reich while on holiday in Saint-Jean-de-Monts during 1990. One day while walking in the town we found a market and one of the stalls was selling music cassettes.

I bought this album purely on the front cover and it being surrounded by other bands to whom I listened. After a few listens on the car stereo and possibly a Walkman the album really grew on me. I think I recognise it as brilliance now. I love all the songs, even 31 Flavors! Recently I downloaded a digital version and it’s now on my iPhone. I find this album particularly calming and often its mood matches mine perfectly. There might only be eight songs but they are all good.

Given that this album was released in 1990 I consider the political messages of the song Crimes Against Humanity rather prescient. The song is about humans polluting the Earth and although this was a major concern in the 80s it is more of a concern now with anthropocentric global climate change affecting our planet! Sacred Reich aren’t the only band to criticise human pollution, Testament and Metallica have also written songs much to the same effect.

All Beauty Destroyed – Aesthetic Perfection

There are two bands I consider to be the lead players in the aggrotech / hellectro sound. Combichrist and Aesthetic Perfection. One of the saddest things about me finding this style of music is that I started with the best two bands and the rest just don’t quite match up. More in later editions of album review.

All Beauty Destroyed is an awesome album. The beat is perfect for running. The tunes are memorable and the lyrics freak me out. It’s perfect. Favourite songs are:

  • A Nice Place To Visit
  • Hit The Streets
  • Mother*

If you don’t want to kill yourself before listening then this could help you on your way. It’s a fresh approach to dance music with catchy upbeat tunes and samples and then some sick and gravely vocals over the top. It’s all rather over the top and brilliant. It’s emotional gone crazy.

After The War – Gary Moore

After The War by Gary Moore was bought for me as a vinyl album for my seventeenth birthday by SJR. Not sure why some album gifts and purchases really stick in my mind but this one does. Obviously, I taped the album so I could listen to it on my Walkman cassette player while at school and work and eventually I bought the album from iTunes to digitise my collection.

I don’t like the iTunes album because it starts with a non-vinyl appearance of Dunluce, Pt 1. This kinda ruins the opening of the album for me, although I won’t delete it. I don’t think this album has a bad song on it. I like them all. Interestingly I had never really heard any Led Zeppelin before this album and the song Led Clones which was meant to sound like them started me investigating who Led Zeppelin were and what their music was like.

This is just a good British rock album by an excellent artist.

Ace Of Spades Best Of – Motorhead

I honestly have no recollection of purchasing this album. Considering there is only ONE Motorhead album worth owning I’m surprised I’ve got this one. Maybe I got it to have the studio versions of some Lemmy classics:

  • Bomber
  • Iron Fist
  • Metropolis
  • No Class

That’s it. That’s the great songs on this album. It’d be better to just have the ONE album.

 

 

 

NO SLEEP ‘TILL HAMMERSMITH

Access and Amplify – Icon Of Coil

Strictly speaking this is an EP and so does not qualify for my “Album information” section but I am going to write about it anyway.

Icon of Coil are one of the projects of the main protagonist of Combichrist,  Andy LaPlegua. I am still in a phase of really enjoying the “hellectro” and “aggrotech” sound and Icon of Coil were listed on Wikipedia as an influence on Combichrist. So I downloaded this EP. What struck me firstly about it was it has much more of a clean dance feel to it that the Combichrist material. The EP consists of two songs and three re-mixes of Accerss and Amplify. I don’t often listen to the EP as a stand-alone source of music but I do hear the songs now and then while I’m listening to an aggrotech shuffle when I’m on a run. Ultimately it’s well constructed music but just not quite my type. It’s not so bad that I’ll skip the songs when they come on though!