Unknown Soldier

Album
Despite having a powerful melodic metal sound, Y&T hadn’t made that much of an impact on the US album charts with their best album to date the shattering Earthshaker, which had been relased the previous year (see review) So on the release of 1982’s Black Tiger the band were hoping to crack this particular nut this time around! Despite the huge commercial appeal of the album especially to a viable American audience, the album again yet again failed to enter the US top 100, but did manage to do so in the UK where it reached an inconspicuous no.53 spot on the UK album charts. The lack of chart success was certainly surprising given the band’s big live reputation on both sides of the Atlantic, along with their local reputation at the inspirational Starwood Club in LA. This was a location which was literally on fire around this time with its assortment of up and coming glam metal acts, who were honing their skills there on a weekly basis. Commercial success would eventually come to the band some years later and as is often the case it came after the best studio stuff had been released and it was also certainly nowhere near as grand as the band surely warranted in terms of their ability. The album Black Tiger is yet again dominated by the band’s trademark high volume sound and yet again its frontman David Meniketti that is the star of the show here and by and large the album matches the consistency of the previous Earthshaker overall, despite the fact that it does contain some obvious filler on the latter part of its b-side. The track “Open Fire” is the explosive album opener and it’s a track that would become a mainstay of the band’s live repertoire from now on and would also be covered by Swiss metal band Gotthard. “Don’t Wanna Lose” is another great commercial track right out of the Journey top drawer, a sound the band did as well as their Californian counterparts (just with more volume usually) “Hell or High Water” is a loud-mother of a track that has that anthem feel about it and then there is the gripping “Forever” which showcases the soulful voice of David Meniketti to wonderous effect. This lengthy tirade of quality tracks finally comes to an end with the title track “Black Tiger” and it’s on the strength of these tracks that the album Black Tiger can go toe-to-toe with Earthshaker. But it’s right after the title track that the album seriously nose-dives in terms in quality and luckily it only lasts for a couple of tracks with duffers like “Barroom Boogie” and “My Way or the Highway” and luckily things are salvaged with “Winds of Change” a very good track and nothing to do with the later Scorpion’s release of a similiar same name, which was “Wind of Change” of course. Y&T were always a big volume band and they’re one of my favourite listens from the early 1980’s, where metal went through a phase of being big, bold and brassy. This type of metal would soon really suffer though, due to the eventual onslaught of the extreme metal genres that would become a mainstay of the metal scene from the mid 1980s onwards.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album
The third straight strong album by the Michael Schenker Group and with Michael Schenker’s trademark Gibson Flying V guitar right on cue yet again. On the band’s previous album MSG, the band had reached what was probably their peak in terms of truly putting out a group effort, after having put out the more Michael Schenker focused debut the year before. The weak link as far as some fans were concerned over the first two albums, had been that of vocalist Gary Barden (personally I really dug his gruff voice and still do) had left the band and was now replaced by the higher profile Graham Bonnet. Graham Bonnet was one of the great vocal acrobats of this period and had been a prime mover on Rainbow’s highly commercial 1979 release Down to Earth (see review) before he fell foul of Ritchie Blackmore’s usual clearout of band members and left the band. Also despite just recording only one studio album with Rainbow, he had seen his stakes as a vocalist go through the roof, largely thanks to songs like “Since You’ve Been Gone” a huge track at the time and one of Rainbow’s best ever remembered commercial tracks, even though I always preferred “I Surrender” sung by Joe Lynn Turner over it. In the meantime though, Graham Bonnet had recorded his third studio album Line-Up in 1981 and this had included ex-MSG drumming master Cozy Powell, as well as producing the hit single “Night Games” which reached the UK top 10. The rest of that album though consisted of a number of medicore tracks which ultimately let it down and after this Graham Bonnet had the opportunity to step into the higher profile MSG. Given the transitory nature of Michael Schenker’s band, Chris Glen on bass did well to be retained, but high profile artists Paul Raymond and Cozy Powell had departed the band, with Ted Mckenna coming in on drums (ex-The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and ex-Rory Gallagher amongst others) The band was also trimmed down to just a quartet with keyboardist Tommy Eyre only down as an additional musician. The band also had their third different producer for the album in Martin Birch (now in-house for Iron Maiden) after both Ron Nevison and Roger Glover had produced on the previous two albums. As for the album, vocally I don’t think there’s actually too much of a difference between the vocals of Gary Barden and Graham Bonnet, as on songs like the title track “Assault Attack” the groovy hard rock of “Rock You to the Ground” the noble “Samurai” and the best song on the album “Desert Song” hell **** yer, Gary Barden could’ve performed on these songs imo just as well as Graham Bonnet did. But I guess the reason why Graham Bonnet was brought in, was to perform on obvious commercial fare like “Dancer” which btw is probably the only track of its type on the album. Overall the fit of Graham Bonnet was quite natural really, as he was used to working with a guitar maestro in Ritchie Blackmore and Michael Schenker who despite his own greatness had certainly been influenced by the neo-classical guitar lines of Ritchie Blackmore. Overall Assault Attack is probably not as strong as the previous two albums, despite the fact that a lot of MSG fans rate it at Michael Schenker’s best with MSG.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album
When producer Vini Poncia came on board for 1979’s Dynasty album, Kiss underwent a major change in their approach to the type of music that they were putting out. Because for that album they had drafed in some heavy pop and disco elements, which was a move that had alienated much of their hardcore fanbase. Internal strife was also high in the band, which eventually led to the permanent departure of drummer Peter Criss, who would firstly be replaced by Anton Fig before Eric Carr took over on the drum stool. Despite the mixed fortunes of Dynasty (see 1979 review) the band continued in much the same vein for 1980’s Unmasked, which despite having some great cuts like “Naked City” and “What Makes the World Go ‘Round” was still hardly the stuff that was going to appeal to the pure heavy metallers and hard rockers out there. It was also the album that finally saw the firing of Peter Criss from the band and despite quite liking this album, I still didn’t deem it strong enough for the 1980 year listings! But in 1981 the band would hit their all time low with the ill-advised concept album Music from “The Elder” and Bob Ezrin’s timely return on production for the album, hardly evoked another Destroyer style album for the band. Kiss had largely been criticised over their last few albums for not playing hard enough and it was thought that with Eric Carr coming in on drums, that he would push the band back into their more traditional hard rock direction. In fact the band had started out in this vein before scrapping things against Ace Frehley’s wishes, to instead churn out the heavy prog nonsense that would become Music from “The Elder”. So by the time of 1982’s Creatures of the Night, the pressure was really on the band to produce something palatable for the listener, so how did Creatures of the Night impress the Kiss doubters out there? Well there could be no doubt about one thing and that was the heavy drum feel provided by Eric Carr across the whole album (the star turn on the album) starting from the opening and title track “Creatures of the Night” and progressing this inspired feel throughout the rest of the album. This powerful offering on the drums, also refuelled both Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons to dish out some great Kiss staples like “Rock and Roll Hell” the stellar “War Machine” and the album’s best known track “I Love it Loud” which must’ve inspired the whole glam rock movement tenfold, along with the power ballad “I Still Love You”. The album is highly notable for its sheer consistency, making it’s easily their best since 1977’s Love Gun. Creatures of the Night is also one of the heaviest in the whole Kiss discography and certainly must’ve come as a shock, after the pop/prog orientated meanderings of their last three studio albums. Creatures of the Night would also be notable as an album for two other reasons as well. Firstly and crucially it saw the departure of Ace Frehley from the band (despite the fact that he didn’t play on the album) as a number of talented sessions musicans ranging from the likes of Steve Farris, Mike Pocaro and Vinnie Vincent etc played on the album instead and it would be one Vinnie Vincent who would end up being Ace Frehley’s permanent replacement as well, despite the fact that there had been a move to bring the high profile Eddie Van Halen into the band (he’d been having problems with David Lee Roth) Secondly it was also the last album of the period, before the band took off their trademark facepaint. This would be a big step for the band and in many ways it was hardly a surprising move, as previous Kiss tours had shown that the band’s look had gone somewhat stale as far as the general public were concerned.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

Y U NO POST MORE?!

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Unknown Soldier

No more what?

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

Posts in general. You've been largely MIA for weeks.

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Unknown Soldier

I've been posting here on a weekly basis but not so much in the other parts of the forum. The problem has been I've been glued first to the TV for the World Cup and now with the Tour de France, Should be back to normal soon I guess.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

I'm already aware of Europeans' bizarre obsession with that awful sport, but I was unaware that you people also cared for bicycling. I bicycle everywhere and I could still give a **** about the Tour de France.

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Unknown Soldier

Well it's a damn sight more exciting than those mind-numbing sports you play over there, which are loaded up with useless stats.

Cycling's not really popular here as a sport traditionally not like in Belgium, France, Italy, Holland and Spain, but because the UK has their best crop of riders ever its quite popular here now.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album
Witchfinder General were formed by Zeeb Parkes-vocals and Phil Cope-guitar/bass before then adding Graham Ditchfield-drums. The band hailed from Stourbridge in the West Midlands as did Diamond Head (the area was a real hotbed for the NWOBHM) but unlike Diamond Head who had focused on the musical dynamics of a band like Led Zeppelin, Witchfinder General were far more interested in putting out a post-Sabbath type grind instead. The band despite their lack of success, are commonly seen as one of the real pioneers of the doom metal scene and despite not being the oldest of these pioneer bands, were one of the first though to put out an album that resonated a doom metal sound. Since this journal started, there have been numerous bands that have had tracks that could be seen as big influences on doom metal and some of these are even older bands than Witchfinder General. For example a band like Pentagram had been playing a doomy sound well before their British counterparts, but Witchfinder General beat these bands when it came to issuing out a debut album, as well as also beating then fellow doomy newbies such as Saint Vitus and Trouble to debuts as well by a couple of years. Everything about Witchfinder General from the band name, which was delightfully chosen from the excellent Vincent Price horror flick the Witchfinder General 1968, right down to the lusty topless wench being put to death and was described as 'top tack' by Kerrang! shows just how meticulous the band were in laying down the foundations of their image (I’m joking here) This is compared to say the five minutes that Black Sabbath must’ve taken all those years ago in securing theirs! But whereas Black Sabbath emerged as musical metal maestros practically from the word go, Witchfinder General were always going to be a band looking just to make their niche somewhere in an ever-growing metal spectrum. The band had those obvious 70s influences right from the acoustic laid-back guitar intro on the album opener “Invisible Hate” before the song beefs itself up into the band’s typical Sabbath grind. This trend is then carried forth on tracks like “Death Penalty” the plodding tunefulness of “Burning a Sinner” and finally onto “R.I.P” with its stabby Devo type vocals. Now despite their doom metal associations, Witchfinder General well and truly also dug the faster dynamics of Black Sabbath as well and these can be heard on tracks like “Free Country” an obvious nod towards “Paranoid”. Vocalist Zeeb Parkes on the one hand suffers much like a number of other NWOBHM vocalists with his limited range, but much like say Kevin Heybourne of Angel Witch, the quality of the material on the album covers most of those those vocal inadequacies without too much of a problem. The album is littered with a bucketful of silly lyrics and some silly songs (yes those two about halfway through the album) but luckily Zeeb Parkes’ pseudo Ozzy Osbourne type vocals can pull the whole thing off, as do Phil Cope’s Tony Iommi inspired riffs. Now if such a thing exists, Death Penalty is a silly easy-listening doom metal/Sabbath style album that just happens to be pretty ace from start to finish.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History