They were definitely an alternative and industrial trailblazer in the 80s. I think their best work is in 1986 and 1985, though.
Interesting. The Ministry fan in me (they were very important in my musical taste development when I was 11-13 years old) makes me really warm to their 2006 or so Hosannas From The Basement of Hell. Only in the last year have I explored their industrial metal stuff of 1994 onward. I know I would have been in love with them had I delved into them as a teen. But I digress. _________________ -Ryan
I had a lazy day and listened to lots of albums today. Thus the very fast tuirn around on next big Mercury post lol. There are no Death Church-level great albums here for me personally. But all these, as you will soon see, I enjoyed.
1983 and some 1982 again – some more metal and punk of that age – Group D
Time friggin flies! It feels like just a few months ago I was making my way through Maiden’s discography. But it was a year and a half ago.
I’ll cheat and quote myself from then and then say how my opinions changed today:
Mercury wrote:
Iron Maiden's 4th LP
For years I slept on this one. When I was 12 or 13 I saved up money and bought a lot of classic metal albums in the months following my discovery of Ride The Lightning. That included 2 and only 2 albums by Maiden, namely, The Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind. The Number of the Beast was the hyped one and the one that seemed to be the classic of the duo, the one that got most of the ink it seemed. As a kid I was mostly just laser focused on their 1982 album and I gave Piece of Mind maybe 1 listen to every 5 or 6 that Number of the Beast got. Unfair. But as a result of sheer familiarity, one of those albums just never clicked and one did (mostly). I never considered either a favorite and I would usually just skip to "Hallowed Be Thy Name" for The Number of the Beast. Of course, the wheel of time turned and I moved very very far away from any Maiden album for a good decade and a half and Piece of Mind remained on my shelf and out of mind.
After listening a couple times, I am starting to think I am with Repo and starting to think this may be a slightly more consistent, tighter, better written album than its predecessor. At least, its equal in most ways. I am not sure if its just that there are enough similarities to the 1982 album while being almost completely new and that makes it refreshing, or is it that the band had an additional year to cement Dickinson into their sound more naturally? Is it the new drummer and the drummer that would lay down the beats for their most classic period of music? Hard to say. But I have come around that outside of a 10 minute Hallowed-sized hole in its tracklist, this is equal and in some ways better as an album than TNotB. Of course I will no doubt go back and forth over and over on this for the rest of my life and "Hallowed Be Thy Name", being the greatest early metal song or tied for the best and the best possible closing track, is a hard disadvantage to overcome even if every other track is 5-10% better (which i'm not sure is the case
Okay, now on this album I'll say something rather than kind of generally tracing my history.
There is one stinker here in my opinion, and that's the one that starts with a sentence with the word Dinosaur in it. That is, let me check, ah yes "Quest for Fire". And the next track "Sun and Steel" is generally pretty mid and features that overplayed Maiden chugging/galloping rhythm that gets tiresome. But at least "Suna nd Steel" has a cool solo.
Outside of those 2, the slower, heavier and more cinematic songs here such as "Revelations" are dope and show the band can do several styles and tempos. The stranger and more unorthodox here "To Tame A Land" and "Still Life" while not my favorites are interesting and again show the band has a nice variety of styles and sounds and can pull em all off.
"Die With Your Boots On" is, amongst the classics here (there are like 4 songs that I seem to hear about enough to call all time classics) my least favorite. But it does have a cool anthemic (and goofy) chorus and a fat fucking riff which is stellar. The band kicks as on that one.
"Flight of Icarus" is dope and epic and fucking makes me wanna get up and go! (do what I don't know.)
But really the 2 songs that seem almost TOO GOOD, and make this album in the running for best Maiden I've heard are the opener, the detailed, brilliant, goddamn perfect opener at that, "Where Eagles Dare" and of course the most exhilarating war themed metal song I've heard "The Trooper". The thing that strikes me about "Where Eagles Dare" is how much is always going on, the bass lines are so active and shifting, the guitars are going in all kinds of excellent soaring directions both rhythmically and melodically and they work so perfectly together. The song just shifts and morphs and builds and all so fast and beautifully. Stunning stuff. Whereas "The Trooper" while still being fueled by a deft, sharp band and having its own dynamic switch ups, it mostly gains its classic status because its so fast and hard charging and unrelenting and the vocals are awesome, the drums and the bass are consistently (and as always in the case of the bass playing) on point and exhilarating and of course the twin guitar madness is as good as it gets. The way they go off and solo is stunning. I love the recurring/main riff and I love the start-stop-start-stop aspect of the song. And although that cliche maiden galloping rhythm guitar is present, its better here than anywhere else on this album. (but seriously I am starting to tire of that little chugga-a-churiff. I hope some of you even know what I am talking about with that classic and consistent Maiden riff.
Overall, I think I may be stuck here. Earlier I was all like "yeah Piece of Mind is a little better than TNotB" now I am thinking I give a slight advantage to this album's predecessor. The combined power of "The Trooper" and "Where Eagles Dare" may give even "Hallowed Be The Name" a run for its money. But there are other great songs on TNotB and perhaps its because I have heard it a lot more, I think there are more Great songs on Maiden's 1982 classic. There are also slight stinkers (but "Quest for Fire" is the lowest song on these 2 albums.)
Anyway, I am sure my opinions will shift and develop but for me, I give this also a 5 emoji, but its the first time you'll see a barely 5 emoji rating where all 5 are evil and none are twisted. Here it is for you to see: 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
--- Okay, so as you can see I was kind of loving this then. Today though, I only liked it a lot. Some songs still absolutely rule (The Trooper and the opening track), but its weird, sometimes I can stand or even enjoy the vocals of Maiden and sometimes I really just can’t even! Today was a “Can’t Even” day. The lyrics and the vocals strike me as cheesy and over the top and since I was a child I have always had a tendency to dislike theatrical hard rock/metal vocals. And for some reason lyrics about fantasy stuff or “in the time of the dinosaurs…” just really, REALLY rub me the wrong way!
The bass work is the best metal has to offer, or right there on the tip top tier at the very least. The riffs and the solos are divine and the drumming is consistently powerful as hell. But the one thing holding me back from loving Maiden, even top tier maiden, in the Dickinson age is, well, Dickinson.
Also, look, as anyone who has read this diary knows, I like punk and hardcore and filth, and sludge and things that are ugly… when it comes to the wide beautiful world of metal and punk I always tend in the direction of the heavier, nastier, less refined. So, the likelihood I love a hidden gem of crust punk over a meticulous classic-of-classics HEAVY METAL album are high. It’s just my tastes and I can’t change that. That is probably why Thrash is the first broad movement and subgenre of metal or even hard rock that I truly came to love or adore. It’s epic, sure. It’s technical at times and even the lyrics and vocals can be theatrical at times, sure. But there are also those riffs and beats that keep the genre (generally) firmly rooted in the garage and in the ugly, angry world of punk. This album is Heavy Metal through in through and OH BOY is it MELODIC! Melodies are cool, but I don’t love ultra melodic and pretty elements in my heavy music to be too accentuated and its very accentuated here.
A lot lot of the issues I have with really, FULLY loving Piece of Mind (released just 9 days prior to this Dio classic) apply here. The theatrical, HUGE vocal range lead singer, the somewhat fantastical lyrical motifs, the accent on strong melody, etc. BUT whereas today my general feelings for Piece of Mind took a hit, my general feelings for Holy Diver on revisit went up! I still wouldn’t say I love this album, but there are points here that are epic enough and Metal enough to move even my cold and dismal heart!
The vocals, which up until now I always felt were completely overrated, hit me as being quite soulful and cool on this listen. Dio is not the type of vocalist I generally gravitate toward, but there is no doubt he gets his whole body into these songs and belts em like mad! And that classic, smoky, powerful voice is indeed a force to be reckoned with here.
The guitar riffs and solos are top notch and the songs are solid as well. Overall, this was pretty darn good and I liked it.
There are a couple albums from 1982 that I was thinking I’d give a listen to some months back but decided against. I decided not to listen to some albums because they weren’t thrashy or influential enough on the eventual sound of Thrash Metal. Not sure if you remember, but that was the original gimmick or theme of this project – covering the metal and punk that most directly influenced thrash (maybe 10-15 albums) before listening to Kill Em All and all kinds of other thrash albums. LOL. Now here we are covering much much more and with 95 albums done and 30 more to go before we even get to the Epochal release of Kill Em All.
Anyway, so this is a punk album. It covers a nice range of, oh idk, cadences? Styles? Sounds of punk – some hardcore fast stuff, some old school snotty shit, some melodic almost Bad Religion type stuff here and there. Lots of bratty bits and sick riffs And overall this was a lot of fun.
Somehow when I was a teen and super steeped in punk and trying to at least read ABOUT punk, I had never come across this band. Today was my first listen and it was a really fun experience. It came right after listening to a couple classic Heavy Metal albums and I guess I was just thirsting for some good, brash punk rock – rock that is on a smaller scale and less ambitious, but more grounded and more my taste. This provided it beautifully. It’s very good to GREAT (at times). It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome – 16 tracks, 26 minutes of firey old school rebellious rock music.
Let’s dip into 1982 again. This one just passed me by – I shoulda highlighted this months ago! Because this is fucking sick! It’s extremely fast and aggressive hardcore/thrashcore with some of the most savage yet artful drumming you’ll hear out of this brand of hardcore. The sound here is razor sharp, and the incredible playing in terms speed is actually matched by a charm, and a fury that is missing in some other uber-“extreme” hardcore. TBH as of now, I prefer this take on “thrashcore” over D.R.I. and their Dirty Rotten EP any day of the week.
Not much to say about this. It’s just really solid stuff and I look forward to revisiting this a few times and also listening to more of what Neos has to offer.
I wish I had more to say, really I do. But there are only so many things I can think to say. The drumming is the main highlight here, even as everything else is solid. There are some truly cool beats being put on display here that kind of caught me off guard a bit!
Okay, so once I listened to the 2 May 1983 albums I erroneously skipped over last time, and after I went back and covered a couple 1982 albums, I basically had a list of 30 albums to check out that all I know is they were “released in 1983…”. So I went with my gut, and I decided I want to revisit a truly noisy and nasty Japanese Hardcore/bordering on Noisecore album from the early days. So, of course, I listened to this. It was a good choice I think.
I had heard this a few months ago and I remember I liked it and I loved how extremely abrasive it was. On this listen, I loved the sound even more. This is staticy and NOISY as hell. Underneath the muck and murk is some brutal, heavy as fuck, crusty hardcore. And the vocals! This is the closest I have heard on this project of those classic Death Metal grunts and growls that we all love so much. These aren’t quite Death growls, they actually may be more muddy and gross even than those. The vocals here sound like some long-isolated cave troll’s irritated babblings as it’s being woken up mid slumber. They are just awesome! And they work super well alongside the abrasive and mean and muddy noise of the production as well as the band’s intentional incorporation of noise (I assume this is intentional, unlike some of the Demo tapes I have been hearing lately.)
The riffs are simple and blistering fast and heavy as anvils. The whole experience is debased and wild and glorious. It’s not a masterpiece, or something that I can say has anything truly transcendent. But the main selling point here is that it’s very weird and wild and I think it may have been a huge influence on later, more cohesive and fleshed-out noisy hardcore/proto-grindcore that emerged from Japan from 84-87. It’s cool and melikesit.
7.9/10
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Okay, quick turn around on this. There was nothing revelatory here for me. But all these were quite good. I’ll go ahead and post this now despite it only being like 30 hours since my last post because I am fidgety and itching to find that next special album (like Death Church or Damaged or Minor Threat) that will become a new indispensable part of my musical soul (okay that was corny…sorry).
Okay talk to you later.
Yes I know Repo you will not like my Piece Of Mind comments at all… : - ( _________________ -Ryan
As for where I find these bands, LedZep, I wish it was cooler than just scrolling RYM lists and some Metal Archives dives on occasion. But… that’s really it. Some bands stick out to me because I read about them years ago. But mostly it’s the RYM list scrolling and then looking at genre history chart thingies on RYM. Also there are a couple YouTubers that recommend good stuff. _________________ -Ryan
As for where I find these bands, LedZep, I wish it was cooler than just scrolling RYM lists and some Metal Archives dives on occasion. But… that’s really it. Some bands stick out to me because I read about them years ago. But mostly it’s the RYM list scrolling and then looking at genre history chart thingies on RYM. Also there are a couple YouTubers that recommend good stuff.
Hey don't keep all the goodies to yourself 😁
A pretty dank youtuber in the same vein I've been following is Goniloc. Hilarious and has very good metal recs, half-serious band deep dives, subgenre chronology stuff etc.
As for where I find these bands, LedZep, I wish it was cooler than just scrolling RYM lists and some Metal Archives dives on occasion. But… that’s really it. Some bands stick out to me because I read about them years ago. But mostly it’s the RYM list scrolling and then looking at genre history chart thingies on RYM. Also there are a couple YouTubers that recommend good stuff.
Hey don't keep all the goodies to yourself 😁
A pretty dank youtuber in the same vein I've been following is Goniloc. Hilarious and has very good metal recs, half-serious band deep dives, subgenre chronology stuff etc.
Well, this is incredible. I have been listening to this a couple times each day for 3 or 4 days now. It’s to me in the hall of fame for punk rock albums. Certainly one of the best and most essential hardcore punk LPs ever. And as much as I liked/loved that EP from SSD a couple weeks ago, this is easily now vaulted to the top of my Boston HC list (not a huge list, mind you – much more to check out or revisit).
Jerry’s Kids were just such an incredible band. There is a clear-eyed purpose to the hardcore, extreme-speed tracks here that sometimes can be lost or feel lost in extremely rapid and blistering fast HC. This album, when it’s really cooking, is blasting along at insane speeds – but there are always actual songs and emotions (mostly of anger and dissatisfaction) coming through clearly. The drummer, even when blasting along on these speedy explosions fits an ABSURD amount of fills and artful details in. The drumming is mind-blowing at times, and usually when I listen to this album I am focusing on the beats and patterns more than anything else. The riffs are fine and fast and heavy. The vocals are awesome as well, very raw and growled and angry. The whole flow of the record is pretty much flawless as well. There is one part of the album when the it’s clear the band somehow manages to play 2 super fast songs back to back seamlessly and I can barely tell there is a new track starting. It’s mind blowing how crisp it is.
On tracks like “Vietnam Syndrome” and “I Don’t Belong” there are distinct grooves inside the blasts, and on most of the other tracks its all about impossibly fast and intense punk being played with impressive precision. The 2 tracks that perhaps get the most attention are the 2 slower and more atmospheric jams “Raise The Curtain” and “Lost” – which are both perfect, relatively longer 3 minute tracks that give the listener a breather from the onslaught. The track “Raise The Curtain” is masterful in my opinion. The riff and vibe of it is evil and unsettling. Just a great way to end the first side.
In closing, I feel this has been a great revisit. I barely remembered this album from a decade ago and I surely was not giving it enough credit. It’s right there in the upper tier of Hardcore punk records – still a tier lower than Minor Threat, Damaged and Group Sex, but in that tier of excellence alongside Discharge’s debut and Dead Kennedys debut. The Boston scene is batting 1.000 so far in this little project!
Thick, intense riffs, somewhat monotonous pounding drums, a pissed off if not particularly impressive or distinctive vocalist, and some cool and heavy bass work. This is a clearly pissed off, charged up hardcore LP. It didn’t really separate itself from other stuff of the time. Every time they go off the beaten path a little, they quickly get back onto the somewhat overdone hardcore sound. “Death Toll” has a solid minute of cool, stutter, heavy creativity – as an example of them going off the well worn path a bit. But mostly this is a cold, heavy album that you will perhaps love if you want some underground gems of the genre. And maybe if I hadn’t heard this after listening to many peers of theirs working in similar fields maybe I would have liked it more. But as of now I will say this is a solid hardcore punk LP.
Oh and the opening intro rant made me a cringe a little. Not a great sign when my first taste of a record is not good. They make up for it eventually. Wanted to note that observation. Also the closing track (“Stop Torture”) has a cool, distinct, bone-rattling sound and riff that actually may be the coolest song here. A solid way to close off this furious album.
This is an interesting album. It’s fascinating how many elements of this are so close to being something I personally really like, but in almost all cases there is -something- about it that leaves me not into it. This is for one clearly a talented band, with a cutting-edge sound when this album dropped. The not-quite punchy enough production, the songwriting which doesn’t really engage me and in some cases comes across a bit silly, the uninteresting vocals and vocal performances all let down the speedy, kickass solos and riffs. Some of these riffs are stellar and some parts of the album are borderline Kill Em All-levels of kickass and inspiring. But unlike that album by their contemporaries, all the elements don’t come together for a classic. I am tempted to give this another try before submitting this post. But I have other stuff to listen to and do.
I will say I gave a listen to about half of their second album from 1984 and it seems some of the shortcomings on this debut are fixed up and improved with their sophomore effort. And I will revisit this debut when I get to their next sometime in the future. For now, I’ll move on.
Full disclosure, I had a whole write up that rambled about Black Metal and its sound and blah blah blah. I put myself to sleep whilst writing it and it got out of hand! So I nixed it. The TL:DR was I I am finally getting what so-called First and Second Wave Black metal are and that’s cool. I feel like, by-and-large, first wave black metal are the major influences on the metal side of second wave black metal. When I think what is black metal, I don’t think I will behold and listen to a black metal album until Darkthrone’s A Blaze In The Northern Sky. I will give in and say that many upcoming albums and demos and EPs are First Wave Black Metal, or Old School BM or Proto-BM. Venom and early Sodom and Poison and Bathory all came pretty close to creating what is for me true black metal… but mostly they made lo fi or rough hardcore punk-ish satanic heavy/thrash metal. The album that put all the disparate elements together fully and coalesced their sound into fully formed black metal was A Blaze In The Northern Sky.
Now watch as I discover albums that disabuse me of that idea over the next many months lol. I know it will happen.
Okay, and now let’s talk about this lo-fi “First Wave Black Metal” Demo from Antichrist.
This is quite good. The opening track had those strange sing songy melodies in the chorus, surrounded by all kinds of speedy devilish metal it was strange. Unique… not sure its great or simply strange.
Elsewhere there are some really cool riffs and these devilish overlayed biting solos which make the sound of much of this demo legitimately blackened in its vibe. The vocals are rough in a good way, the production is shite in a good way. The songs are consistently solid. Sometimes the tracks seem to be directionless and amateur to a degree which is not charming. But by and large I consider this to be one of the coolest of the so-called First Wave Black metal I’ve heard. Right up there with that Holy Moses demo and decidedly more enjoyable for me than Sodom’s 1982 demo.
Some elements here – the themes, the vocals to some degree, the hardcore punk influences, the production, and those rapid fire satanic evil sounding solos to name a few – really did age greatly and do give me the idea (rightly or wrongly) that some of the artists of the second wave of BM may have been influenced by this demo. With demos that surely at the time were heard by so soooo few I am hesitant to say they influenced anything. I am doubtful Euronymous and co. heard this demo. But, maybe.
I’m a man of simple tastes. Give me screams and brutal and utterly intense d beat blasts of rage, some disgusting tinny grating production, some pure rage! That is all I want from my hardcore or d beat or crust. Okay, that’s not ALL I want – if you can somehow work in some great songs and a theme and all that, all the better. But the first stuff I mention is the first and foremost. And this EP has it.
After Shitlickers ended (after giving us the FINAL WORD on d beat) much of that group went on and created the next great group, Anti-Cimex. I saw a funny comment saying that it makes more sense why Discharge got out of the D Beat game and started making heavy metal when these dudes arrived on the scene. This EP along with the Shitlickers GBG 1982 EP and the next EP Victims of a Bomb Raid represent the best Crust/D beat ever made. I haven’t heard it all…. But I got I’m just using hyperbole to express how much I love this sound.
The production is bad, if you like good sounding punk or metal, this may not be for you. But if you like, say Bathory’s debut and the trebly discordance there – you may like the sound of this and you may get the idea much like I did that Bathory perhaps got some inspiration from these giants of hardcore d beat.
“War Machine” is the best track here and it was even better on their Shitlickers EP. The other 4 tracks are hellishly great as well. The long delays between tracks and the general monotony of the sound are downsides. They aren’t major downsides. But I figured I’d mention ‘em. The solos that come in on tracks 1 and 2 are surprisingly great and melodic. Those solos also do represent some development in their sound from their days as Shitlickers as well as development from their first EP, Anarkist Attack. Anarkist Attack is not on the same level as this EP or the other 2 I have just fawned over. It just sounds strangely detached and tame in comparison.
Anyway, I don’t have much to say about this 5 track and 9 minute utter barrage of anger. It’s great! Check it out.
8.3/10
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Okay… this was a great batch! I will give Exciter another try and maybe I’ll give it a rating. I was gonna give it a 5 or lower and I wanted to listen again when I’m more in the mood for speed metal.
As for the others – I think that Jerry’s Kids LP is a legit classic! That Antichrist Demo is one of the better demos I’ve heard. And Anti Cimex is predictably incredible and just exactly my taste.
I’ll end my post here and come back sometime soon with the next set of 4 or 5 records to talk about. Until then, stay happy, friends _________________ -Ryan
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Mercury
Repo
LedZep
