As an eighteen-year old just very --- and I mean very; my first album, as I've pointed out before, was Maiden's
The Number of the Beast --- recently into heavy metal, I tended to choose the albums the same way then, to an extent, as I do now, by the name or the cover. Oh yes, while the rest of you were getting into Scorpions, Alice Cooper, BOC, Accept and Aerosmith, I was checking out bands based on how cool their name or album cover was, which explained why so much of the really good metal in the early eighties passed me by. Back then, of course, lurid, explicit and downright stupid album covers were
de rigeur, and band names followed suit. So, to an impressionable teenager out to explore heavy metal, and with some disposable income to, well, dispose of, this naturally caught my eye in the pages of Kerrang!
I may end up being embarrassed to admit that this became part of
When Hell Won't Have You --- Split Beaver --- 1982 (Heavy Metal Records)
Oh yes, laugh now, but at the time I had no idea of the sexual innuendo inherent in the name of the band, and when you look at the label they were on, why it was a match made in Heaven, was it not? Thing is, I bought the album but to this day I could not tell you if I played it, or if I did, what I thought of it. My feelings, writing this now, is that it was --- how can I say this without giving offence? --- crap. It seems to me, now a lot older and perhaps a little wiser, that any band who goes to that much trouble thinking up a cool band name, getting some sexy cover art done and signs with the label who seem like they should have been signing all the local metal bands (surely either a coincidence or massive naivete on their part?) are unlikely to have bothered with such trifling details as song structure, lyrics or melodies. Hell, I'll be lucky if they can play! And yet, they were signed by a label, so they can't be totally terrible, can they? Can they?
This, you'll be totally unsurprised to hear I'm sure, was their first and only album. Though in fairness, it would seem, according to the very limited information I can get on them (the term is also an urban slang one, as I'm sure you know, and my search results have been, to say the least, interesting, none moreso than when I clicked on the link “images of split beaver”...) that this was mostly due to a traffic accident, and they reformed and toured for six years, even winning some Battle of the Bands competition in darkest Birmingham at one point, but they eventually called it quits as the nineties dawned. Mind you, with track titles like “Get out stay out”, “Savage” and “Gimme head”, I doubt we're going to be hearing any treatises on ultra-left neo-Marxist politics here, or ruminations on whether there is anything at the heart of a black hole... other than the remains of their career, that is.
Not too great a shock to find that neither of my music colossi have even heard of the band, so back to YouTube I go. It is something of a jolt however to find that even the mighty Y has nothing on their one and only album, and I have to go for single tracks. This does not sound encouraging. Be that as it may, the album opens on the aforementioned “Savage”, and ... they don't have it. You know what?
Fuck it: it's only thirty cents to buy the album from my vendor, so let me just click that and add it and .... there we go. We can now listen to this forgotten classic in all its ironic glory. Maybe.
So, that opening track. “Savage”, we said, didn't we? Well it has energy certainly, kind of a Ravenesque thing with some early Diamond Head in there, vocalist is not bad (guy called Darrel “Savage” Whitehouse apparently) and the bassist Alan “Hunk” Reese (I'm assuming they gave themselves these nicknames. Bless!) reels off a nice line there, while the frets are under the control of Mike “The Bike” Hoppett. Oh god! Please stop! You're killing me here! Oh yeah, the song. Meh, nothing terribly special. It's ok I suppose. They start rock-and-rollin' with a “Johnny B. Goode” riff as “Going straight” gets going. Again it has great energy and really wants to be a great song, but it just, well, isn't. It's not bad, but again nothing to write home about. Hoppett unleashes a pretty sweet solo I must say but the rest of the song does not match it.
There's a lot of the “One, two, three, four!” to introduce songs. This may work great onstage but on an album you get mighty tired of it. The backing vocals are mostly just shouted, and I don't honestly think I could review a song like “Gimme head” with a straight face. Subtle was obviously not in the playbook these guys used. Again, the only really shining light here is the guitar solos ripped off by Hoppett; the vocalist is really not up to it and the songwriting is pretty woeful so far. Mind you, they don't just want head, they want
good head! You'd think at this stage in their careers they would be happy to just get head, but no, it has to be good. Picky bastards. Oh dear god no! Sexually tittilating breathing at the end! Save me!
I wonder if “Cruisin'” might change things here? It's a six-minute monster and kicks off on a slow little blues line, with harmonica, and as I always say, you can't really go wrong with harmonica. Double vocal, so yeah, this could be good. I do like a slow blues tune, and whiel the lyric is nothing revolutionary, well the blues ain't about that. It's about simple, catchy and often very repetitive melodies, and this has all of that. A country mile ahead of the rest so far. And now here comes the blues guitar solo: lovely, with added harmonica. You know, I wonder if they switched to another vocalist for the previous track, cos once they get to “Levington Gardens” you can really hear how badly Whitehouse sucks. I would say it's the production, but the last track sounded great so it can't be that. Maybe he needs another singer to fill out the sound? Either way, this track is back to the basic banality of the album minus “Cruisin'”, which is a disappointment but not unexpected.
“Hounds of Hell” has a nice powerful guitar intro and then rocks along at speed, but again you can hear how bad Whitehouse is; it's almost as if the rest of the band are compensating for him. Not that this is such a great song, but everyone else seems to be competent whereas “Savage” is certainly failing to live up to his nickname. Hoppett sounds like he's wasted here; not in the drug or drink sense, but I just feel he should have been destined for better things. He certainly has the talent. “Like wise” starts out with a rip-off of the bassline from “Dancing in the moonlight”, but soon settles into its own groove, a real boogie-along but with really terrible lyric (
”Likewise baby/ You drive me crazy” --- see what I mean?), the song saved once again by a fine solo from Mike Hoppett.
Sounds like “Living in and out” might be the ballad on the album (eighties metal albums always had at least one ballad) and starts with a nice introspective guitar, though it does power up a little for the chorus before falling back again, and there's an emotional solo from Hoppett that turns into a real monster as the song heads towards its conclusion. Bit of an abrupt ending, sort of ruined it really. There's a nice groove underpinning “Get out stay out” but it's totally ruined by Whitehouse's below-par vocal, and even when he sings the title there's not the slightest hint of venom or recrimination in it. Reminds me of the way John Wetton sings “Judas” on Asia's
XXX. Once again Mike Hoppett comes to the rescue with a blistering solo that totally changes the song, but it's a weak track and I won't remember it, like the majority of this album, which is almost over now. One more track to go.
It may seem an odd title, but “The bailiff” turns out to be a lacklustre closer, with a very basic rock motif and another really terrible vocal. Even Hoppett can't save this one sadly.
TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS
1. Savage
2. Going straight
3. Gimme head
4. Cruisin'
5. Levington Gardens
6. Hounds of Hell
7. Likewise
8. Living in living out
9. Get out stay out
10. The bailiff
Yeah, well I suppose that just shows that you can't judge a book, or an album, by its cover. Poor in the worst sense, it's no surprise they didn't last. If they really did win a Battle of the Bands then all I can say is the competition must have been very weak. I feel like I begrudge even the thirty cents I paid for this album now, although in fairness “Cruisin'” makes up for it very slightly. And then there's the cover: guess that's worth thirty cents of anyone's money. Nothing else is though.