Oh definitely but there was a big explosion of one album only bands on scores of independent labels just like Punk so there is a lot of crap to wade through to find some real class.

Yer Tank were great and This Means War and Honour & Blood are also on the include list. BTW I always liked Power of the Hunter as it showed a more polished sound, something some of the NWOBHM bands were starting to put out around that time anyway.

Jackhammer has summed it up perfectly, but I`d also add it was strongly about image as well, with nearly all the future thrash bands basically looking the same as the NWOBHM bands and as said most of the thrash bands just took the punk and hardcore ethos along with the NWOBHM sound and just basically Americanized it to sound faster and more aggressive. Its safe to say that if there were no NWOBHM there wouldn`t have been a thrash metal movement out of San Francisco a few years later.

There were also a number of bands, one or two of which I`ve included in the list that musically were not really NWOBHM, but because their origin and the timescales match they were grouped in with the NWOBHM but in hindsight they were stylistically different.

got that Witchfinder General and that Diamond Head (from an earlier post)

will be spinning them soon

Two great albums but that Diamond Head album is one of the greatest metal albums ever released imo.

Next up a band that often get mentioned on other threads.


Girlschool were certainly a novelty of their time and served as the first ever all-female metal band (as far as I know) at that time punk and punk related bands had some all-female line-ups such as the X-Ray Specs and the Runaways, and hard rock had the Wilson sisters fronting Heart. Girlschool had five dedicated handbangers who just happened to be women and played their metal albeit with a heavy punk and straight up rock approach with the grit of any male band. Music wise though, I don`t actually think Girlschool ever released a great album! But if you take the best songs off their early albums you`d have a great complilation of this band as they have some great individual songs that really added to the NWOBHM movement, but the real appeal of this band was just seeing them perform live and they gained real recognition here in the UK largely due to their association with Motorhead, with whom they recorded the St.Valentine`s Day Massacre EP in 1981.

Girlschool were sorta like the chick version of Motorhead, but I actually liked them better than Motorhead. They were just way more fun to listen to.

C'mon. Tell me this doesn't make you wanna party.

^Nice. I think this is the first I've heard them. I can definitely see why you'd compare them to Motörhead.

And here they are with Motorhead doing a cover song, from what I think is Top of the Pops (A british pop show) circa 1980. The performance cracks me up:laughing:


motorhead-girlschool - YouTube

Not to mention Girlschool covering Motorhead.

Both the above songs are on the St.Valentines Day Massacre EP they did together.

A long forgotten album.


Hailing from the West Midlands like fellow bands Diamond Head and Witchfinder General, Cloven Hoof didn`t put out their first album until 1984 despite forming in the late 1970s and by then a lot of the existing bands had already established themselves or fallen by the wayside. Nevertheless on their debut album, Cloven Hoof captured the power and energy of the NWOBHM releases from 1980 and 1981, and had their debut been released a couple of years earlier, it probably would`ve been held in much higher esteem. After this debut though, band line-up changes would find the band steering into a power metal direction, making them one of the early British purveyors of power metal.

The great opening track on the album:


Cloven Hoof - "Cloven Hoof" - YouTube

i got that Def Lep album (High N Dry) for a lark

mostly cos somebody on another board said it sounded like AC/DC

And you think it sounds like AC/DC?

haven't spun it yet but i am a fan of their later "hair metal" stuff - Adrenalise is in my top 50 best rock albums

As you know Def Lep are very light as far as metal bands go and High N Dry was a great light metal album for its time, easy to listen to with plenty of what is now regarded as cliched metal hooks and tunes, it sets the stage for their best album Pyromania.

isn't it time for you to update this thread, US?

once you're back from your hols?

Who's stopping you from posting something interesting? Ya lazy bastard.

I'll probably update this thread in the next week or so.

Have you ever heard this?
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...SYD8HLY1HKq75A

Yes the cover is absolutely awful but this little gem from '83 is well worth a listen and is definitely an undiscovered gem. If you can't find it just holler and I will up it for you.

Hahaha, wow, that album cover is amazing!

The boots alone are worth the price of admission. I actually have this on lp, solid record beginning to end. And the artwork is indeed astounding in its potential for hilarity. Power from the universe was another decent effort from them, I'll have to dust it off and give it a listen.

I was gonna mention those. The dude sorta looks like the most badass Eskimo ever. :rofl:

I know the name but that is about it. but will definitely check this out soon. Have some more stuff that I'm putting up on here soon as well.

One of my favourite bands of the NWOBHM were Praying Mantis who were fronted by the Troy brothers (Tino and Chris) A lot of the bands of the NWOBHM genre were melodic but Praying Mantis took it to another level and at the time sounded more like an American AOR band than a British metal act. Praying Mantis showed that it was possible to marry metal with AOR and produce great melodic singing with muscle metal riffs to complement. Praying Mantis despite never garnering much success, are still going strong today and released their last album only a couple of years ago. This album their debut is probably their best album.

Hell I love these songs.


Praying Mantis - Lovers To The Grave - YouTube


Praying Mantis Panic In The Streets - YouTube

Praying Mantis are one of those bands that I've been meaning to listen to for years and years, but have always slept on for whatever reason. I'll have to remedy that.

Edit: Glorious. They've found a new way to make metal cheesy.

If It's a REALLY underrated NWOBHM album you want...

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l9...nH/o141371.jpg

That band use to have bagpipes as well, seems like Korn copied them on that score.

There just never seems to be and end to melody amongst the NWOBHM bands and Fist were no exception to the rule and played a fair amount of ballady songs as well, along with occult influenced lyrics. Hailing from South Shields in the North East the band probably spent too much time listening to both ACDC and Deep Purple with their large amount of cliched riffs. Apart from this the singing and those riffs were top notch and this was another band that success sadly passed by. Like a lot of these bands their debut is one of their best (They only did three albums)

Fist - The Watcher - YouTube

getting more and more obscure

and more and more interesting

Some people would call it scrapping the barrel, but this particular barrel has a lot of good stuff stuck on the bottom.

"Turn the Hell On" has got to be the greatest name for an album EVER. If I ever record an album, I'm gonna rip them off and name it "Turn the Hell Up" and not give them any credit.

Now Urban has already beaten me to this one.

Vardis were an outfit from Wakefield, Yorkshire and seemed to have the credentials to put out some great biker style NWOBHM metal Saxon style. The Saxon contrast was also with their with frontman Steve Zodiac, who sounded at times somewhat similiar to the legendary Saxon frontman Bill Byford. As for the album, well the group kicked off with a LIVE debut album, evoking memories of the classic MC5 debut Kick Out the Jams a decade earlier. Song wise, the band were probably not the most talented and I'd say they were at their best when the lead vocalist did less singing, because it was the guitars in this band that stole the show. Vardis were a band that used the metal energy that was flowing around the UK at that time, rather than being super talented. The band put out several studio albums upto the mid 1980s but this is their best remembered release.

Guitar solos to get you all hot and excited!


VARDIS - 1980 02 "Move Along" - YouTube

Despite their occultish name and gory album cover, the Demon debut had more in common with the more melodic heavy acts of the 1970s such as UFO and the melodic guitar riffs of Thin Lizzy, than they did with the style of Black Sabbath. The band hailed from Staffordshire, its seems like a huge percentage of NWOBHM acts originated from either the West Midlands or North East regions of the UK! The band's lack of eventual success, could be pointed down to the fact, that they were probably about several years too late sound-wise as their style of sound was more indebted to 70's hard rock acts than to the then emerging fellow acts of the NWOBHM.

Demon - "Father Of Time" - YouTube

^^whatever made you decide to update this thread?

will check out this Demon

Every now and again I remember its here and because I'm listening to a lot of 70s and 80s metal at the moment. When I see something from the NWOBHM and I think its good I put it up here.

Its an interesting album, disjointed at times as the band can't always decide which way they quite want to go but the songs are there.