KROKUS: Headhunter

Produced by Tom Allom

Released: 1983

Swiss rockers Krokus were the ultimate band-wagon jumpers, shamelessly changing their style, sound and look regularly in an attempt to cash in on whatever happened to be popular in the hard rock world. After struggling as a Genesis-like prog band, they decided to become AC/DC clones in the late 1970s, signed up Maltese Bon Scott-soundalike Marc Storace and began to pump out fairly undistinguished albums every twelve months or so. The album before this one had produced the minor US radio hit "Long Stick Goes Boom" as well as "Rock N Roll", a bald-faced rip-off of the Led Zeppelin song of the same name that exposed the band's greatest flaw: Krokus just sounded like a second-rate covers band. Headhunter was their fourth major label album, so it was probably time for them to make a decent record and they almost succeeded.

Judas Priest producer Tom Allom gave Krokus a harder-edged sound that made them sound a bit like Accept, who were just about to break through internationally themselves. The band continued to rely on near-plagarism and regurgitation as they mined the AC/DC riff catalogue mercilessly, but at least Headhunter had a consistency about it that everything else Krokus ever recorded lacked. Indeed, while the songs sound like they were stolen from an array of other bands, most of them aren't half bad. Both the title track and "Night Wolf" are frenzied metallic splats that drew inspiration from Accept's Restless and Wild, "Eat the Rich" and "Ready to Burn" are solid mid-paced rockers influenced by Screaming for Vengeance (Rob Halford actually sings on the second of these!) and the power ballad "Screaming in the Night" is perhaps their greatest achievement. It isn't spectacular, but Headhunter is actually a pretty enjoyable slab of party metal if you can put up with Storace's often try-hard vocals.

Krokus never came even remotely close to emulating Headhunter, instead slipping further and further into unintentional self-parody with every subsequent release. If nothing else, this minor classic proves that even the most ordinary band has at least one good record in them somewhere.

1. Headhunter
2. Eat the Rich
3. Screaming in the Night
4. Ready to Burn
5. Night Wolf
6. Stayed Awake All Night
7. Stand and Be Counted
8. White Din
9. Russian Winter

Rating: 72%