Quote:
Originally Posted by Trollheart
Wheels of steel --- Saxon --- 1980 (Carrere)
Okay, so the album cover betrays a worrying sense of Nazi Germany, but to my knowledge that's purely coincidental. After all, the Romans were the first ones to use the eagle as their sigil, and Saxon are a British band, and so far as I know, have no connections whatever with Nazism or fascism. I should point out too that this album has already been reviewed in part by me in my series on the NWOBHM, but here I'd like to take a deeper look at an album that really helped introduce me to the rawer side, for me, of Heavy Metal.
|
The Batlord approves of this message.
When I was first getting into metal it was the same as most people around my age. I heard Metallica on the radio. Then I went on to the rest of the Big Four and Iron Maiden. Then I bought a book called
The Sound of the Beast that pretty much gave me a crash course in all things metal. I have a clear memory of reading the introduction and then downloading the first two bands I saw mentioned: Celtic Frost and Saxon. Don't ask me why they were mentioned together. I checked out CF first cause, come on, Celtic Frost is one of the best band names ever, but I wasn't too thrilled by
To Mega Therion so I went on to
Wheels of Steel. Blew my mind then and still does. The second half may be kinda meh, but the first half is one of my favorite things to listen to on Earth. I've been obsessed with the riff to the title track for over a decade and I still get pumped when I turn it on.
And "Suzie Hold On" is wonderful. It shows them to be working class numbskulls who don't really know how to express that kind of strong emotion, but it has an honesty to it that still gets to you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trollheart
Dante XXI --- Sepultura --- 2006 (SPV)
I knew that if I was running Metal Month I would eventually have to tackle at least some death metal bands, so with The Batlord's advice ringing in my ears that "ALL death metal bands are growlers, dude!" I steeled myself and began looking. Having heard good things about Sepultura I was intrigued to find that they had an album based on the concept of Dante's "Inferno", and as I've read this I thought this might be interesting. So I'm starting off with this one.
|
I know you didn't want anyone telling you that you should have listened to this or that album over the one you reviewed but you really shouldn't have picked this one. Sepultura hadn't been relevant for about a decade by this point and they'd lost their original vocalist to boot. You pretty much just started listening to Iron Maiden by listening to
The X Factor. I doubt you'd like them regardless, but
Beneath the Remains or
Chaos A.D. would have been far more appropriate.