Quote:
Originally Posted by Trollheart
Right, I'm just going to have to listen to that album, aren't I?  You've bigged it up so much, and I've liked what I've heard from Diamond Head so far anyway. Okay, it's moving up the list...
As for "Canterbury", I'd disagree that you wait till you're established before trying something like that. I think they were brave and quite forward-looking: while other metal bands were basically churning out the same old riffs and tunes, and mostly sounding a lot like each other, DH stepped into the unknown and tried to bridge the gap between metal and prog rock. After all, Rainbow had only the one album before they went all proggy with "Rising". Okay, Blackmore was already well known from Purple, so maybe bad example. But still...
I think people should have been more forgiving of DH, allowed them the opportunity to spread their wings, see what they could achieve. They could have been really big, like, bigger than the biggest thing you can think of! Sad really. Course, later Maiden moved in the same direction, but for a while there I would definitely have considered Diamond Head "the thinking metal fan's band"... |
The point I was making about
Canterbury, was that the band hadn't made their breakthrough commercially and by doing an album like Canterbury it wasn't going to happen, especially when rivals such as Iron maiden and Def Leppard were putting out what metalheads wanted to hear. As you say, Rainbow are not a great comparison as Ritchie Blackmore had just set up Rainbow after leaving Deep Purple one of the biggest acts in the world at that time.
Diamond Head were special, they had fantastic riffs, an evil edge, an amazing grasp of melody and were able to incorporate proggy rock and AOR into their sound.
There is one album I've just reviewed number 09 in the 1970 year by Stray. I reckon you'd really like this album as it was a big influence on Diamond Head and pre-dates them by a decade.