This is one of two albums that will be featured here that didn’t make the top 20 list and are worth a mention.
Satan Court in the Act 1983 (Neat)
Heavy Metal
A very late act on the NWOBHM stage.
The Verdict
Court in the Act was the debut album of Newcastle based band Satan and the album is often seen as one of the later classics to come out of the back end of the NWOBHM in the 1983/1984 period. Satan were formed from the ashes of fellow NWOBHM band Blitzkrieg who happen to have a track on the previous compilation featured here. Satan were certainly one of the better and more talented bands to appear on the influential Neat Records label at this time and the band displayed a then very contemporary speed/thrash metal inspired sound, that was extremely relevant to the metal scene of 1983 and 1984. The album starts with the atmospheric "Into the Fire" before mving into quality meaty cuts like “Trial By Fire"” and the truly kick-ass sounding “Blades of Steel” surely one of the tastiest cuts to be put out by a NWOBHM band ever. The rest of the tracks are good album material especially tracks like “Broken Treaties” and “Hunt You Down” which all demonstrate the band’s musical dexterity combined with their great melodies and choruses. The band even go in for an instrumental on “The Ritual” which is well placed later on the album and sits well with the songs either side of it. So how good were Satan at this time? Well the band had the songs along with that speed/thrash tempo that a lot of contemporary metal bands were putting out at this time and musically they had the chops to play it. But on the downside vocalist Brian Ross was distinctly lightweight for this type of music, especially considering that anybody at this time may well have been listening to either James Hetfield or Tom Araya on both the Metallica and Slayer debuts, and as history tells this is where this type of music was ultimately going and fans expected beef to go with beef as far as these bands were concerned. Also despite their great name, they were never able to display the truly sardonic sound of feel of a band like Venom and they certainly struggled with the extreme metal coming out of Europe at that time as well. For some unknown reason possibly at the request of the record label, Satan would undergo a name change in a few year and would become known as Blind Fury, almost immediately on this name change the band sunk without a trace.