Trollheart

Ok, well I just never heard like Mexicans described as North Americans. I think it's kind of like would you describe a French band as a European one? Well yeah you would, but you'd say French first. Anyway, shows what I know.
Can't say yet, but until Batty stuck his oar in while I was away it would have been a totally new direction for me, and the first time that such a journal had ever been attempted. Goddamn it Batty! I hope to launch it soon, but if you really want to know I'll PM you, as long as you keep it to yourself.
Oh that is so spooky! And when you see who the featured artiste is in Metal Month II it'll be even more significant. No, it's not Venom! Who do you think I am?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I'm actually coming back around to them. Though Down's first album is still better than anything they ever did. And I still have no idea how you can listen to Roots.


Damn it, I could swear I remember updating it.

You mean... you were gonna start a comic book journal? SUCKA!!!

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Big Ears

Watch the Anvil film if you do nothing else. It is one of the best films I have seen for giving an insight into the real workings of the music business. It reminds me of the John Huston (fictional) film about a boxer, in which Stacey Keach in the lead role pisses blood after a fight.

Toto were a cult band around the time of the Mindfields album (1999) with Bobby Kimball back in the band and British musician Simon Philllips on drums. It followed and preceded a succession of compilations or covers and, during this period, they were concerned about becoming unfashionable. It was not their best album, but it was pretty good.

I have heard Pantera, but never took any notice, probably because they have anaggressive vocalist(?). I do remember a radio interview where they asked for Budgie's Melt the Ice Away. There are some forums where Pantera are very popular.

Elf weren't very good and all credit to Blackmore for seeing Ronnie James Dio's potential.

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My Journal: Rabbiting On

The Batlord

I think in a lot of ways it might be a retroactive reaction by younger thrash metal purists---who seem to have a disproportionate influence on the metal scene these days---against what they see as a bastardization of their favorite genre. Don't get me wrong, there are legitimate reasons not to like groove metal, and I don't hold not liking Pantera against anyone, but when someone is actively hostile towards the band, as opposed to just indifferent, then you can be pretty sure they're thrash metal hipsters.

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Trollheart

What's with the "were?" I WAS gonna be the FIRST, but you beat me to it. Still, it'll be miles different to yours. Coming soon...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Anteater

U.S., just thought I'd let you know you missed a "big" spot for '82. If you haven't experienced this gem yet, you really should.

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Anteater's 21 Fav Albums Of 2020

Anteater's Daily Tune Roulette

The Batlord

You ever feel like a collaboration, just holla. I'm all about some comic book talk. If I haven't been updating my journal as much in the past week or so it's just because doing it issue by issue was actually getting in the way of reading comics. So my enthusiasm hasn't actually waned at all.

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Unknown Soldier

A good album and usually liked whenever people talk about it, but I still prefer all of Pantera's classic run albums over it.

Roots still the best metal album ever released and I'm salivating just thinking about it.

I'd totally agree with that.

The reason I hadn't included it was because I never knew it existed both album and band. But I listened to it for a first time and despite the Saxon and Deep Purple influences wasn't impressed, listened to it a second time and thought hey this is a good album but very much an acquired taste as this band has some real songwriting ability. Now guess what, the day after listening to it twice I still have the songs in my head, which means that the album has hit my subconsciousness............. which means I should be head over heels in love with the album in a few days.

Would I include it in retrospect now? Well if I saw it as a metal album with strong AOR influences then yes (as there are a number of bands included like this) but I noted that the AOR tendencies of the band were just as strong as their metal ones if not stronger. So for that reason its doubtful, because if I were to include Nightwing then I could be including Foreigner and a band like Night Ranger as well in these lists. In fact Night Ranger is a tricky one because if I was doing an AOR journal I would include them in it, but the group are also seen as a vital link in the early glam metal movement as well, which qualifies them for a metal list.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Overview
After the disappointing Point of Entry the year before, an album which just didn’t have the songs. Judas Priest knew they had to pull something special out of the hat for their eighth studio album Screaming for Vengeance, especially if they were to maintain their position as one of world’s premier metal acts. Screaming for Vengeance would not only rectify this situation in the manner most appropriate, it would also give us an album that was even stronger than their landmark British Steel release two years earlier. Judas Priest were of course one of the biggest metal bands in the world in 1982, but their US sales were certainly lagging behind those of the rest of the world and it was time the band rectified this slight. Ultimately Screaming for Vengeance would sell 5 million units around the world and go double platinum in the US, finally earning the band the same commercial prestige that it was earning elsewhere. In fact that year on their US Tour they were supported by the likes of both Iron Maiden and old boys in Uriah Heep who had returned to form with their Abominog album. The album’s big single would be “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin” which as is often the case, was a last minute addition to the album as the band thought they needed another song. This certainly recalls bands like Black Sabbath and Kansas to name just two, who used last minute song additions to have two of their biggest ever hit songs. In my opinion the other single from the album “(Take These) Chains” written by Bob Halligan, Jr. is actually the better song of the two. Screaming for Vengeance along with the following Defenders of the Faith, are often seen as two of metal’s greatest shining moments and act as a display of what timeless metal should be all about. This grandiose title was probably only matched by newer rivals Iron Maiden with their classic double helping of Piece of Mind and Powerslave when it comes to mainstream metal from the 1980s onwards and these two albums easily go toe to toe with the Judas Priest ones. Like with the listing’s previous album review by Iron Maiden, a whopping number of tracks on Screaming for Vengeance have been covered by too many bands to mention here and the album stars highly on every ‘best metal album list’ that really matters out there.

Verdict
By 1982 Judas Priest’s best album to date had been the monolithic Stained Class (see review) but that album was strictly for metalheads that knew their stuff and not for your average metal listener. Realizing that Stained Class was an act just to great to recreate again so quickly, Judas Priest quickly caught onto the commercial metal tag and they were probably one of the first metal bands to do so, and entertained the listening masses firstly with the lighter and melodic Killing Machine/Hell Bent for Leather, which was then followed up by its bigger brother with British Steel (see both album reviews) with its trademark pop hooks and it was an album that went down a blast, and launched the already veteran band to the highest level of commercial metaldom. On Screaming for Vengeance the band would effectively marry the pure menacing metal of Stained Class, to the commercial punch of British Steel to give us one of metal’s premier albums and it would certainly be an album that would pack one hell of a punch! The album goes for the jugular from the word go and like a lot of landmark albums it does this by employing an opening barrage of stunning tracks to knock the listener silly. There is the double-guitar attack on the brief intro of “The Hellion” which then lands us straight into the lap of “Electric Eye” the real album opener with its combination of both speed and punch, the song feels like a knock-out punch in the first round of a boxing match! On closer analysis as well, the song demonstrates Rob Halford’s amazing ability to sing in a multi-dimensional style at real speed, certainly no easy thing to do. He then keeps things more one dimensional on the hard rock feel of “Riding on the Wind” before he drops things down a notch or two on the midtempo grooves of the epic “Bloodstone”. Then just when you think things can’t get any better, the band dish out one of their best ever melodic tracks in the single “(Take These) Chains” before the first side of the album closes with the inevitable S&M track “Pleasure and Pain”. As expected the title track “Screaming for Vengeance” plays like a menacing speed metal track and then the album’s big single “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin” is neatly dropped in. The final tracks contain "Fever" one of the most ambient on the album and then finally the almost AC/DC sounding "Devil's Child" and some editions also include "Prisoner of Your Eyes" which is worth having. Certain sceptics against the album have picked out the thinness of certain tracks, for example like “Electric Eye” which they claimed was a rehash of “Breaking the Law” or indeed claimed some of the material was no better than what featured on Point of Entry. Overall Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast might have the stronger individual tracks from a songwriting perspective, but it simply doesn’t doesn’t touch Screaming for Vengeance when it comes to song flow, something I usually give great importance to. Finally Kerrang! called Screaming for Vengeance some years after its release, one of the finest metal albums released this century, high praise indeed and from an objective point of view I wouldn’t disagree with that, even if I still prefer the darker Stained Class over it.

Rob Halford- Vocals
K.K Downing- Guitar
Glenn Tipton- Guitar
Ian Hill- Bass
Dave Holland- Drums

Production- Tom Allom

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Plankton

This made me smile a bit. A friend and me wore that album out one summer. We'd do our best to try and match Halfords vocals, with little to no success. More karaoke sounding than anything really. That friend went on to be the singer for Zoetrope, a Chicago-Based Thrash Metal band that had some success but flopped after he joined.

Been years since I've gone through some Priest though. Now I gotta go make a compilation CD or something.

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