Pantera – Metal Magic (The remnants of Peer Pressure.)
The things peer pressure can do to you.
It can shape you in ways That both help and harm you. However, in the shaping of thing like this whether positive or negative, we by nature of ourselves tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Pantera for better or for worse when it came to their sound, ruled the fucking WORLD in the 90’s with their more groove-laden chug-induced guitar.
Eh…It’s Allright…
I don’t love it
Mostly due to the production just making each and every song in my honest opinion sound Samey. However, I was always hearing that Pantera was not always like that…and too be frank it got me curious. So I decided one day in a way to give it a go. So I decided when this conversation came up I would be Giving their 1983 Debut Album Metal Magic a Glace over.
And…Honestly…This seems like a sad case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The hatred of 80’s glam acts, especially in metal circles was always quizzical to me (Especially for the Thrash Scene.) Is there some cheesiness to it? Absolutely. Does this mean you turn away the entire sound and the acts therein because of it?
Fuck no.
Bands like Dokken and W.A.S.P Have shown that there is merit to the more melodic style that can crossover with the metal camp in a specific way…and 1983 Pantera…ALMOST hits that.
Now let’s get this out of the way…Diamond/Dimebag Darrell’s Guitar playing, is consistent to a fault. The dude did not changed his slow riff craft since he started and honestly…It is possibly the one thing I can say he DID Keep into their 90’s sound change.
Songs like “Biggest Part of Me” And “Sad Lover” Showcases he can use that riffing and chugging to create some Banal but perfectly acceptable Hair Metal love songs. However, what is showcased is his technical ability overall. He shows very good promise in his writing with “Ride My Rocket.” And The Title Track “Metal Magic.”
Moreover, The Production even for a 80’s first release is actually fairly impressive, Their first release and sound very polished and focused. However, it doesn’t stop them from just sounding like every other band of that era. Especially with that Vocalist. Sorry, but this is another promising album shut down by what I see is a subpar performance from the vocalist. Terry Glaze is a perfectly fine vocalist especially later with Lord Tracy, but he just sounds unenthused here.
Overall, I say for a Debut…Not bad. There seems to be a good direction here overall but it can be better.
Is this better than their later releases?
Ehhh…Not Quite…Not Yet.
They would get there as time passed, and when they Finally Hire Phil Anselmo for the “Power Metal.” Album I think they find that good balance between the old and new sound, that sadly…they didn’t find the merit in enough to keep as they went into the exact opposite direction.
Besides...I've already talked about god...Gotta talk about Satan now...a truly Mercyful Fate.
In 1981, a band from Copenhagen called Brats had two musicians who decided they wanted to do something different. They began to sing in English and became more...demonic in their delivery, their record exec at CBS Record in horror at this demanded they change this and go back to the boring punk style they were playing before. They Steadfastly refused and went to form a new band.
I actually really dig this punk album! It's a GREAT curio for Mercyful Fate fans. And NOT nearly as boringly straight forward punk as you might think, mostly since Hank Shermann's massive Kiss obsession comes shining through on a bunch of the tracks! From what I read, King Diamond was a huge Kiss fan as well. Kiss (and Alice Cooper) being a HUGE influence on King Diamond's stage antics and corpse paint. Which brings me to my main point => '70s Kiss is massively underrated!! Massively!!! They were just a HUGE influence on everybody I loved in the 80s from The Replacements to The Melvins.
I might have to do a Kiss Rankings here at some point. But, Ace Frehley was pretty much considered a guitar god by many of us in the early 80s. And that included even those evil looking dudes from Mercyful Fate! In truth, they were total Kiss nerds just like the rest of us. lol.
For those looking to get into Kiss, these are the two best places to start...
King Diamond would tell you this kinda stuff happens all the time. I'm not so sure. What I do know is that IT happened. I pried open some wooden floor boards right under where I've been sleeping at night and found my old walkmen Guardians Of The Galsxy style. I opened that yellow, clunky (supposedly water-proofed) beast to find a single Maxell gold cassette labeled 1983 in my piss-poor excuse for penmanship. And this is what it played...
Hank Shermann and his vocalist, a man who took their experimentation and began to represent this more in his performances, electing to go with full-on corpse paint, satanic imagery, and a hammer horror-themed aesthetics. His Name? Kim Petersen, but nobody is taking a dude named KIM Seriously with that facepaint on...
Which is why he elected to go by KING DIAMOND.
With fellow Guitarist Michael Denner returning from Brats. They would grab Bassist Timi Hanson, and Drummer Kim Ruzz and record Probably one of the BEST Debut Albums in Heavy Metal.
Melissa!
While a lot of bands (especially 80's bands.) Took Time to get their groove together...King Diamond (Probably because they had an EP under their belt previously) Got it right in ONE Studio album run.
Totally!! Mercyful Fate's debut s/t EP from 1982 aka Nuns Have No Fun has to be considered one of the three most important EPs of 80s metal! Right up their with Queensryche's 1983 s/t EP and Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales from 1984. All three of those are ESSENTIAL stuff for the 80s metalhead and actually fueled the mythology of those three bands! I loved that they they didn't try to rehash that stuff on their proper debut LPs. They just let it be. It just seemed so confident and badass NOT be recycling that stuff. Like they had an endless well of evil draw upon.
What I didn't know about until recently though is a compilation of Mercyful Fate's demos from 1981 & 1982 that was released in 1992...
And it's amazing as well and a total treasure trove for the Mercyful Fate fanboy!!! These demos are sooo good and fully formed that Diamond Head would have just released them on the spot and called it a day!!!
And Merc, make sure to check out the outro to the Rocka Rolla-ish "Return Of The Vampire" track. I swear I hear some East Bay Ray (of Dead Kennedys fame) influence in that outro!!!
Last edited by Repo on 07/27/2022 01:59; edited 2 times in total
@Repo, thanks for the head's up! I already had their classic debut EP on my list for 1982 and now I have added that early=Mercyful fate-Compilation as well. _________________ -Ryan
Why do u think I like UDO so much! He was the 2nd coming of Bon Scott! There's a couple of clunkers on R&W. I think Breaker is pretty awesome too!
Accept sounds influenced by 70s AC/DC on Balls To The Wall, but far & away, the band they sound most like is... ACCEPT. Few metal bands had such a distinctive sound. No one was mistaking Accept for AC/DC in the mid-80s.
edit: What would be your Accept album rankings, Gowi?!
I'm a lot less hard on AC/DC nowadays, but I really prefer the AC/DC influence away from bands like Accept and The Cult. You're free to like it, but I think R&W is their peak. Anyway, a lot of my problem with Accept is they really didn't know who they wanted to be after R&W which led to a lot of different sounds (still hard rock/metal but yeah) that reeks of inconsistency and whiplash.
My opinion on the best albums they did are:
Metal Heart (return to form after Balls to the Wall imo)
Restless & Wild (their original "opus" and set the standard for late 80s speed metal)
Breaker (third place for being behind those two great albums, improved on their first 2 albums a lot)
Blood of the Nations (their only great modern album, has a lot of great riffs despite them being old as hell)
after these four you have solid to very average albums and yes Balls to the Wall is probably the best of the solid ones
Why do u think I like UDO so much! He was the 2nd coming of Bon Scott! There's a couple of clunkers on R&W. I think Breaker is pretty awesome too!
Accept sounds influenced by 70s AC/DC on Balls To The Wall, but far & away, the band they sound most like is... ACCEPT. Few metal bands had such a distinctive sound. No one was mistaking Accept for AC/DC in the mid-80s.
edit: What would be your Accept album rankings, Gowi?!
I'm a lot less hard on AC/DC nowadays, but I really prefer the AC/DC influence away from bands like Accept and The Cult. You're free to like it, but I think R&W is their peak. Anyway, a lot of my problem with Accept is they really didn't know who they wanted to be after R&W which led to a lot of different sounds (still hard rock/metal but yeah) that reeks of inconsistency and whiplash.
My opinion on the best albums they did are:
Metal Heart (return to form after Balls to the Wall imo)
Restless & Wild (their original "opus" and set the standard for late 80s speed metal)
Breaker (third place for being behind those two great albums, improved on their first 2 albums a lot)
Blood of the Nations (their only great modern album, has a lot of great riffs despite them being old as hell)
after these four you have solid to very average albums and yes Balls to the Wall is probably the best of the solid ones
Nice! Heard it a couple of times a few years ago and thought the same, BUT really haven't given it enough spins. Will rectify the next time I talk about Udo or Accept.
Psyched that you dig Metal Heart so much <saw them on this tour, and it really did sound GREAT live>!!!
I love it too! I have it ranked fourth, but that's NOT because I don't dig it. Accept pretty much owned the early -mid 80s. Only Maiden & Motorhead were more consistent& important for this strand of metal. And then, quite differently, you'd have Van Halen and Rush and perhaps Ozzy! <I have mixed feelings on Bark At The Moon!>
... which also didn't make my top twenty, but deserves an Honorable Mention <or three!>. I LOVED walking to The Warwick Mall with my big ass boombox playing this with my friends! lol.
Only Maiden & Motorhead were more consistent& important for this strand of metal.
Eh... I wouldn't say so. Their peak was very short. They only really had a good run from 81-85. I could probably figure out far longer stretches of influential bands.
Only Maiden & Motorhead were more consistent& important for this strand of metal.
Eh... I wouldn't say so. Their peak was very short. They only really had a good run from 81-85. I could probably figure out far longer stretches of influential bands.
Repo wrote:
Accept pretty much owned the early -mid 80s. Only Maiden & Motorhead were more consistent& important for this strand of metal.
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