METALLICA: Untitled

Produced by Bob Rock

Released: 1991

While their older fans would repeatedly yell "sell out" at the band for this (something they'd been accused of by some since Ride the Lightning), there can be little doubt that this is the album Metallica simply had to make. By the end of the 80s they were far too big to remain underground, but their old formulas weren't accessible enough for wider acceptance. They were a band at the crossroads, and they could either stay the same and remain big fish in a small pond to slowly dwindle and fade, or take the chance on a change in the hope that they could at last attain the real success to which they'd always aspired. With Untitled, they did the latter, and in the process went from being the biggest metal band in the world to being one of the biggest bands of any kind, ever. Quite simply, Untitled was a monster of an album. Released at a time when virtually ever other metal band was about to feel the repercussions from either the sudden death of the ridiculous hair-metal juggernaut or the dearth of ideas in thrash and older metal styles that would see the genre all but wiped out by the Seattle rock explosion, few could have genuinely anticipated that this album would debut at the top of the album charts almost simultaneously around the world.

What Metallica did here is the same thing that Judas Priest did on Killing Machine or what Rainbow did, even more drastically, on Down to Earth. They simplified their approach, in the process cutting down the track playing time to an average of five minutes. The end result was a bunch of catchy songs that, while no longer thrash, were clearly still metal and nowhere as vapid as Metallica was to become, but ultimately Untitled is really just not that interesting. There are good songs, which I'll get to shortly, but there's also duds like "Holier Than Thou" and "The Struggle Within" that do nothing but make this album about fifteen minutes too long. Even some of the best albums start to lose their spark after 40 minutes or so, and this is no exception. Nevertheless, Untitled isn't as bad as many make it out to be and certainly doesn't suck as hard as many would suggest. I'm sure we all could have lived without "Nothing Else Matters", but there's a group of tracks in the middle of the album that really make this worthwhile, headed by the brooding "Wherever I May Roam", the only song on this album to come close to Metallica's epic past. Following that is a couple of almost-thrashers in "Don't Tread On Me" and "Through the Never" that are reminiscent of stuff from ...And Justice For All, and then, skipping the puke-worthy eighth track, there's a good old galloper in "Of Wolf and Man" followed by the near-menace of "The God That Failed". Most of the rest are neither here nor there really, although "My Friend of Misery" lets Jason Newsted out of his box for once, which is interesting in itself.

The production is immaculate; this remains to date Metallica's best sounding album, but compared to most of the rest of their catalogue up to this point lifting the production standard wasn't really going to take much. Vocal-wise, Hetfield doesn't actually sound too bad but if there's one thing that's truly overdone here it's Kirk Hammett's use of the wah-wah pedal. Honestly, the guy hammers it like he's the first person to have ever used one and in the end all it really does is emphasise how unspectacular a lead guitarist he actually is.

As a watershed moment for heavy metal music, it's hard to argue with an album that sells nine million units, but as a watermark Untitled only ranks above the average.

1. Enter Sandman


2. Sad But True


3. Holier Than Thou


4. The Unforgiven


5. Wherever I May Roam


6. Don't Tread on Me


7. Through the Never


8. Nothing Else Matters


9. Of Wolf and Man


10. The God That Failed


11. My Friend of Misery


12. The Struggle Within

Rating: 76%

NEVERMORE: This Godless Endeavor

Produced by Andy Sneap

Released: 2005

A few years back and it looked like the wheels had fallen off for Nevermore. Following up Dead Heart in a Dead World was never going to be easy but the task was made harder by a miniscule budget and Kelly Gray’s disastrous production that all but ruined Enemies of Reality and, in the process, almost destroyed the band’s reputation. The remix of that album proved that some great songs existed beneath the murk, but it’s clear that Nevermore needed something big to help them bounce back from 2003’s disappointment.

Things don’t get much bigger than This Godless Endeavor, an immense heavy metal album that lets you know right from the first note that it is simply going to rule and that the band that created it is one of the most supremely gifted acts of their kind. ‘Born’ launches the album in a truly malevolent style, fierce thrash riffs, violent drumming and near-death metal growling that almost doesn’t sound like Nevermore at all. It’s immediately clear that this is a force to be reckoned with.

From here, This Godless Endeavor begins to sound like classic Nevermore again, but at the same time there is a further progression into darkness and rage. The introduction of Testament guitarist Steve Smyth to the line-up is a masterstroke as he and Jeff Loomis seem to make it their mission to push each other towards higher and higher pinnacles of achievement: scathing riffs, spectacular lead breaks and stunning injections of melody. Then of course there’s the singularly distinctive voice of Warrel Dane striking a perfectly controlled balance of mid-range melancholic howls and higher-end shrieks. For a man who could once barely stay in tune, he has now developed a genuinely unique style and his songwriting abilities are close to genius.

There are no dud moments on This Godless Endeavor. It is as near to the perfect embodiment of a modern metal album as anything is likely to come.

1. Born


2. Final Product


3. My Acid Words


4. Bittersweet Feast


5. Sentinent 6


6. Medicated Nation


7. The Holocaust of Thought


8. Sell My Heart for Stones


9. The Psalm of Lydia


10. A Future Uncertain


11. This Godless Endeavor

Rating: 95%

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE: Scream Aim Fire

Produced by Colin Richardson and Alec Cartio

Released: Today

It's getting hard to ignore Bullet For My Valentine with the push they're getting from Sony and the saturation coverage in the British music media. Even I was considered imporatnt enough to get an advance copy of this album more than a month ago so obviously no stones are being left unturned in getting this band as much publicity as possible. From the moment I first heard of them I got the impression without even needing to know what they sounded like that they would play exactly the sort of contrived commercial heavy rock that they do. Bullet For My Valentine has geared itself for as much worldwide success as possible with everything they do: rejecting an offer from Roadrunner to take up one with Sony (and who could blame them for that?), ditching their early nu-metal affectations for something more current, and making albums that are stupidly catchy but ludicrously predictable.

Scream Aim Fire is targeted directly at the teenage alternative market, a dangerously grey area where emo, pop-punk and melodic metal all pander to the same audience where moshability and the right level of angsty energy are the only prerequisites for acceptance. Bullet for My Valentine are right on the money in that respect, mixing all three of those styles but without really stamping themselves as any of them.

The band has long proclaimed its metal pretensions and the first two tracks go some way to establishing "metal" crudentials. Both the title track and "Eye of the Storm" draw easy comparisons to Trivium, but sounding almost exactly like a band that has itself been accused of being generic and derivative isn't necessarily a good thing. Nevertheless, it does show that Bullet For My Valentine has the chops to follow a metallic direction if they really wanted to.
Yet herein lies the problem, because the rest of the album shows a band that clearly can't decide in which direction its destiny lies. For all the metal riffs they throw together and for all of Michael Paget's metal-inspired soloing, at the very next turn it all comes off the rails in a confused effort to be everything to everyone.

With its nauseatingly twee title, "Hearts Burst Into Fire" is an emo-inflected pop-punk song not that far removed from something Simple Plan would do. "Deliver Us From Evil" sounds like it was left off the last My Chemical Romance album, although you can't fault it's catchiness. I was singing along to this bastard by the end of the second chorus. Elsewhere, tracks like "Waking the Demon" and "Disappear" don't know if they want to be metal or emo and end up in some kind of wasteland somewhere in between and "Take It Out On Me" is just a waste of six minutes. "Say Goodbye" is actually a half-decent attempt at a metal power ballad, but it's just too hard to get past Matthew Tuck's emo-style vocals. Everything has an infectious catchiness to it but there's very little to hold one's interest for very long. Some of these songs run for five minutes or more, which is simply far too long for tunes aimed at an attention-deficient audience.

Scream Aim Fire certainly isn't the aggressive metal album that Bullet For My Valentine promised it would be. It tries too hard to be safe and just ends up being confused and contrived as the band sacrifices substance and originality for style and predictability. Their desire to establish a serious metal following may be genuine, but to get there they need to start writing songs that are metal all the way through and Tuck has to stop using those irritating clean vocals. Even then, they may be already too late.

1. Scream Aim Fire


2. Eye of the Storm


3. Hearts Burst Into Fire


4. Waking the Demon


5. Disappear


6. Deliver Us From Evil


7. Take It Out on Me


8. Say Goodnight


9. End of Days


10. Last to Know


11. Forever and Always

Rating: 45%

PAGAN'S MIND: God's Equation

Produced by Pagan's Mind

Released: 2007

Pagan's Mind is one of those bands that I shouldn't like, but I do. "Progressive" power metal tends to get my goat even more than "regular" power metal because most of the time it simply isn't that progressive -- just contrived. Pagan's Mind is one of the few bands that does it more or less right however even if their last two albums sound exactly alike and while their latest didn't blow my mind it certainly kept me interested far longer than most others of a similar nature. Die-hard fans have apparently expressed some dismay over God's Equation but even if it isn't as good as they may have expected there is certainly much worse out there.

God's Equation is book-ended by two absolute corkers, the title track and "Osiris' Triumphant Return", that pretty much make this album worth buying by themselves. Pagan's Mind sound for all the world like a power metal version of Dream Theater on these tracks, which is exactly what this style of music should sound like. If all so-called "prog-power" was even half as good as this I wouldn't pick on it so often. Unfortunately, most of it is more like "United Alliance" and "Painted Skies", which are merely OK and really not much more than bog-standard songs for the genre although the lead guitar work -- and the guitar tone in general -- is outstanding throughout. "Atomic Firelight" is another stand-out, powered by an astonishing Meshuggah-type riff and featuring SYL-like filtered vocals, showing that these Norwegians truly deserve the "progressive" tag that is otherwise tossed around so recklessly. The ridiculously-named "Alien Kamikaze" is strikingly uncharacteristic of this band and has therefore taken some criticism; in reality it's actually pretty enjoyable rocking metal, albeit with plenty of cheese, but when an album is draped in such ludicrously clichéd art, cheese is to be expected somewhere. The presence of the Bowie cover "Hallo Spaceboy" in the middle of the running order is somewhat bemusing; the band adds nothing to it (they subtract from it, if anything) and it in turn adds nothing to the album. It's almost as if Pagan's Mind was looking for a classic song to fit to their spacey-mystical formula, but then couldn't quite figure out how to make it work.

Overall God's Equation isn't quite as consistent as Pagan's Mind has been in the past, but at least it doesn't sound like they've recorded Celestial Entrance yet again.

1. The Conception


2. God's Equation


3. United Alliance


4. Atomic Firelight


5. Hallo Spaceboy


6. Evolution Exceed


7. Alien Kamikaze


8. Painted Skies


9. Spirit Starcruiser


10. Farewell


11. Osiris' Triumphant Return

Rating: 72%

JUDAS PRIEST: Sad Wings of Destiny

Produced by Jeffrey Calvert, Max West and Judas Priest

Released: 1976

It's been said that Black Sabbath created metal, and Judas Priest made it heavy. This is how they did it. Sad Wings of Destiny is the first truly great heavy metal album, a savage and demonic piece of work that makes Sabbath look like hippies. 30 years on, it's difficult to image just what anyone could have made of this when it was first released, but it must have frightened the crap out of a lot of people.

Shortly after this came out, Priest signed to CBS and Gull whored Sad Wings of Destiny out to whomever wanted to license it. Most of those who did got the track listing arse-about, and CD versions invariably list "Prelude" as track 5 when it was originally the first song (my vinyl version from 1981 has the tracks listed correctly on the back of the sleeve but the label on the album itself has side 1 and 2 juxtaposed). I mention all this only because SWOD has more impact when the songs are listened to in the correct order. That is, with Glenn Tipton's eerie piano intro "Prelude" opening the way for the sinister "Tyrant" to redefine metal forever.

It is at this moment that metal became truly heavy. Not only that, but it also becomes fast, with a section near the end that can only be described as thrash, a term that wouldn't be used in a metal sense until after the turn of the following decade! With just one track, Judas Priest had already reinvented the musical style that their Birmingham compatriots Black Sabbath had unleashed six years before, but there's more to come: "Genocide" has to rank as perhaps the most vicious song ever conceived up to this point in time, rivalled only by "The Ripper" a few tracks later. True genre-defining stuff: outrageously heavy but stunningly melodic, and brooding with a sense of diabolical evil that even Ozzy and his mates had really only conjured once before, with their very first song. Not only that, but Rob Halford had the voice to carry it off and make it sound far more convincing. No atonal warbling here. Halford's vocals resonate with a dark malevolence as he sings of slaughter and tyranny, and his shriek in "The Ripper" remains blood-curdling to this day. Then, just when you think this album can't get any better, the unbeatable one-two whallop of "Dreamer Deceiver" and "Deceiver" come as two of the best songs ever to round out an album.

Judas Priest never quite sounded this way again, and after this album, neither did heavy metal. It would be almost five years before anything else came remotely close.

1. Prelude


2. Tyrant


3. Genocide


4. Epitaph


5. Island of Domination


6. Victim of Changes


7. The Ripper


8. Dreamer Deceiver


9. Deceiver

Rating: 94%

VARIOUS ARTISTS: Thunda From Downunda

Executive Producer: Who Cares?

Released: 1986

Because it's Australia Day, I felt obliged to take a look at an album that truly represents our country's musical heritage. But instead, I have decided to bring you this. Thunda From Downunda has got the lot: a cheesy title reflecting some kind of "Australian-ness", Ned Kelly, and a totally pointless version of the national anthem played through an over-driven guitar.

I originally got this off eBay as a collector's item with no intention of ever playing it until a colleague dropped me an email about it. Without even having to listen to it I knew what I was letting myself in for. The title, the cover art and the inane lyrics to some of the songs by a group of bands very few people have ever heard of all screamed "cheese" but they were screaming it in a pretty bad way.The cover of Thunda From Downunda features a guy in a Ned Kelly helmet, a leather jacket and a bullet belt, except instead of bullets in some of the slots there are TRS plugs! If that wasn't enough, on the back he's standing on top of a sand dune, throwing the horns. AND HE'S WEARING BROWN TROUSERS! I knew there was a reason I didn't buy this when it came out in 1986.

With the art out of the way, let's take a look at the music. Thunda From Downunda features ten tracks from eight artists, only half of whom I've actually heard of or remember. All the songs feature that typically thin 80s metal production that even more accomplished acts like Mortal Sin and Virgin Soldiers had to endure due to the fact that no one in Australia back then knew how to produce metal. Unlike those more accomplished acts, most of the groups collected on "The first all-Australian heavy metal compilation" really have nothing to recommend them.

Red Alert is the first of these and lo and behold it also happens to be the musical venture of the fellow who put the record out. They therefore get two songs on here, the first a bog-standard NWOBHM-inspired shout-along number and the second a ballad so dire that my awful meter buried its needle and stopped working. Lightning Rock was a band that seemed to be on every bill there was for a few years. Their track "The Quest" is energetic, anthemic 80s metal that's likeable but forgotten as soon as it's over. Godspeed was one of the first Sydney bands to try their hand at speed metal and their two contributions are both pretty reasonable. The first of these, "Lest We Forget", is apparently a tribute to Randy Rhoads and as such contains a suitably extended instrumental break with piles of guitar soloing. Side One is closed by a perfectly odious and completely unnecessary rendition of "Advance Australia Fair" by guitarist Warren Mason, who would later go on to join BB Steal. I have no idea what this track is meant to achieve, but that's a criticism I could expand to cover the entire album.

The Lotus track "Heavy Petting" opens side two in an impressively heavy and speedy fashion, showing them to have been the most prominent and competent band on the whole collection. After such a promising start, the second half of the album ends up being even worse than the first. The very strange and terrible "Honeymoon in East Berlin" by a mysterious bunch of clowns called Metal Mercenaries plumbs nether regions of awfulness unexplored by man or god. If the Sex Pistols had come from Blacktown, and had even less talent, they would have sounded something like this band. The next two songs aren't even metal. "Mesmerized" by Scott Abrahams (a guy who would go on to sing for a Hush reunion a couple of years later, or so I believe) is just bad rock and"Feelin' Fine" by Dearrow isn't much better. Things lift a little at the end thanks to Godspeed returning to close things off with "We Are Forever", a somewhat ironically named song considering nothing on here is particularly memorable.

Thunda From Downunda was, according to the survey sheet that came with my copy, supposedly the first release from a label that was to be "releasing Heavy Metal from around the world which is unavailable in Australia" (sic). Somewhat unsurprisingly, however, both Ocker Records and this compilation disappeared virtually without trace. To paraphrase the Metal Mercenaries, nice idea, shame about the result.

1. Red Alert - Red Alert
2. Lightning Rock - The Quest
3. Godspeed - Lest We Forget
4. Red Alert - To Love You
5. Warren Mason - Advance Australia Fair
6. Lotus - Heavy Petting
7. Metal Mercenaries - Honeymoon in East Berlin
8. Scott Abrahams - Mesmerized
9. Dearrow - Feelin' Fine
10. Godspeed - We Are Forever

Rating: 38%

CRYPTOPSY: None So Live

Released: 2003

I have to admit that sometimes Cryptopsy just sounds to me like there‘s too much going on without anyone actually getting anywhere. The overlapping technical riffs and Flo Mournier’s incredible drumming has made them one of the world’s state-of-the-art extreme metal bands, but to me they sometimes sound like just a muddle of ideas without direction. Nonetheless, whether you’re a committed fan or not, if you’ve ever wondered if they can pull it all off live, None So Live shows that Mournier at least can do everything on stage that he does in the studio.

Live albums are questionable at the best of times; over the course of this one’s twelve tracks the vocals and drums are so far at the fore of the mix that they virtually obliterate the rest of the band. This is but one of the album’s shortcomings, and indeed I’d be rather surprised if Cryptopsy’s fans didn’t feel somewhat ripped off by this obvious obligational release. Apart from the crap sound, the track-listing is pretty dubious. Out of the album’s twelve tracks, one is merely the crowd cheering before the band comes on stage and one is a drum solo. Cryptopsy is probably the only band on the planet today that can actually get away with featuring a drum solo on a live album, yet despite Mournier’s abilities on the sticks n’ skins his display here is pretty uninspiring. Thankfully, it’s only short.

Leaving room for only ten actual songs in total, most of which are taken from the first two albums (though “Born Headless” is noticeably absent), None So Live feels incomplete, little more than a stop-gap for the next studio album. Fans will love this; everyone else will most likely think it’s a rip-off.

1. Intro
2. Crown of Horns
3. White Worms
4. We Bleed
5. Open Face Surgery
6. Cold Hate, Warm Blood
7. Phobophile
8. Shroud
9. Grave of the Fathers
10. Drum Solo
11. Defenestration
12. Slit Your Guts

Rating: 45%

DEF LEPPARD: On Through the Night

Produced by Tom Allom

Released: 1980

As far as I'm concerned, Def Leppard never really topped this. Sure, they went on to become one of the biggest rock bands ever in the mid-80s, but to do so they moved from the metal arena and into the sphere of melodic radio rock, never again matching the spontaneity and enthusiasm they displayed on their debut. Quite simply, On Through the Night is one of the best examples of the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal ever recorded. It is a near perfect representation of a youthful and burgeoning scene, recorded by one of the youngest bands doing the rounds at the time. Rick Allen was only 16 when this was recorded and the average age of the rest of Def Leppard was 20.

Def Leppard was the first NWOBHM band to be offered a six-figure recording contract, and unleashed this rollicking collection exactly a month before Iron Maiden's self-titled debut. Stylistically, the two discs aren't really that different, except that On Through the Night is considerably more melodic. Bristling with catchy songs, the album opens with an absolute scorcher in the shape of "Rock Brigade" kicking in with clashing, ringing guitars and a heavy, driving beat. This is out and out youthful exuberance and really sets the tone for an album studded with heavy rocking gems. "It Could Be You" shows the Led Zeppelin influence that inspired the group's name and "Rocks Off" (complete with overdubbed crowd noise) is straight-up hard rocking glee. There are darker moments too, like the brooding "Sorrow is a Woman" and, spectacularly, a sprawling epic in the shape of "Overture" that climaxes the album in a way that Def Leppard would never again attempt. At almost eight minutes in length, this slowly building, forgotten gem of a track is NWOBHM's answer to "Stairway to Heaven", the godfather of all rock and metal epics. Even Iron Maiden would take until their third album to put a song together to match the majesty of "Overture".

While "Hello America" and "It Don't Matter" foreshadow the solidly commercial rock angle Def Leppard would later take, On Through the Night merely hints at this. Indeed, with the primitively raw production and the screaming and glorious guitar solos, it would have been impossible to tell from this recording that the slick, ultra-polished 16 million-selling Hysteria was anywhere in Def Leppard's future. Yet, from a metal perspective, the thin production job only enhances the material and makes it all the more enjoyable. From this point, Def Leppard would go on to become one of the biggest and finest -- if sometimes also rather tedious -- bands of their generation and never again sound anything like they do here. That to this day they pay On Through the Night little more than lip service is a crime, because it's easily one of the best early British metal albums of all.

1. Rock Brigade


2. Hello America


3. Sorrow is a Woman


4. It Could Be You


5. Satellite


6. When the Walls Came Tumblin' Down


7. Wasted


8. Rocks Off


9. It Don't Matter


10. Answer to the Master


11. Overture

Rating: 92%

ALCHEMIST: Jar of Kingdom

Produced by Alchemist and Brett Stanton

Released: 1993

Alchemist's Jar of Kingdom is one of the most tripped-out metal albums one is likely to hear. At the start of the 1990s, Australia's metal scene was really still in its infancy. Without the Internet or the benefit of the few metal-specific record labels like Modern Invasion and Warhead that would surface in subsequent years, the scene was far more underground than it is today. Very few bands had recorded or released full-length albums and most weren't well known outside of their hometowns as only the most well-established could be guaranteed crowds of a size that would make touring worthwhile. Despite this, it's unlikely that a band as strange as Alchemist could have remain undiscovered for very long.

No other metal band in the world was doing anything as remotely weird as this Canberra four-piece, and few do so even today. Jar of Kingdom is, succinctly described, rather like what a death metal album by Pink Floyd would sound like if Frank Zappa was their musical director. The arrangements are angular and virtually disjointed at times; the music is almost confusing in its quirkiness and the effect is sometimes harsh and otherworldly. At times, it's not like listening to a metal album at all.

Jar of Kingdom is a very strange album with some very strange elements. "Whale", for example, is the sound of a whale accompanied by some rather peculiar instrumentation. "Shell" contains some ethereal, slightly off-key keening by female vocalist Michelle Klemke, a strident counterpoint to Adam Agius' still-undeveloped death growls. The slide guitars and keyboards that dominate later Alchemist albums aren't as prevailing here but the grinding death metal undercurrent of the tracks are offset by abrupt, jarring, discordant guitar notes, strange psychedelic passages and swirling acoustic interludes. This is Alchemist at their rawest and most experimentally bizarre, a band pushing the envelope of creativity to such a point that even through the diabolical sound quality of the recording it remains clear that a dauntingly inventive musical outift has emerged. The ten tracks here marked Alchemist, then and now, as a band that plays by nobody's rules but their own. Jar of Kingdom is a journey that begins looking down on the world from the Moon, travels through the planes of the human psyche, conception and perception and ends far out beyond the reaches of the Solar System. It's a trip that is as wild and uncanny as it sounds and some may find it a just a little bit too odd to comprehend.

Jar of Kingdom was a groundbreaking album, not just for Alchemist but for the Australian metal scene. The original Lethal version is a rarity now, but the sound quality is so poor that only the most rabid collector would want to track it down. Fortunately, Alchemist remixed this album in late 1998 and reissued it the following year so that everyone could finally experience it the way it was meant to sound. Not only that, but they included tracks from their 91 demo as well, one of which, "Womb Syndromb", exceeds even Jar of Kingdom itself in weirdness.
Abstraction

1. Shell
2. Purple
3. Jar of Kingdom
4. Wandering and Wondering
5. Found
6. Enhancing Enigma
7. Whale
8. Bruma: A View From Pluto
9. World Within Worlds

Rating: 78%

BON JOVI: Slippery When Wet

Produced by Bruce Fairbairn

Released: 1986

As Bon Jovi plays a sold-out Sydney show tonight a few hundred metres from where I'm sitting, perhaps now is the time to reflect on the recording that made them one of the biggest bands ever.

The band was on borrowed time after the disastrous ham-fisted attempts at metal on 7800° Farenheit and they needed something incredible to keep them from going where thousands of other young groups with big label contracts had ended up. Slippery When Wet not only saved them it set them up for a career as superstars that continues to this day.

Jon Bon Jovi has never won serious critical plaudits because inane ramblings about his looks and hair have always seem to preclude any notions of him as a serious musician, but time and again on Slippery When Wet Bon Jovi and their small band of helpers pull off pop rock genius. They're not all gems, as fillers like "Social Disease" and "Without Love" make perfectly clear, but the bulk of the album is near-perfect anthemic rock. "Let it Rock" opens with a big keyboard flourish like some 70s pomp song then shifts gear into fist-pumping territory as Jon Bon Jovi leads his crew from one party tune to the next. His lyrics are cheese personified but the hooks he writes are so enormous that this just doesn't matter, sweeping the listener through pure good time rocking like "Raise Your Hands" and "Wild in the Streets" with occasional detours into power ballads like "Never Say Goodbye", one of the lighter-waving classics of the 80s. The three songs that truly made this album however are "You Give Love a Bad Name", "Livin' on a Prayer" and "Wanted Dead or Alive".

The first is a song so simple and so effective that Bon Jovi decided to keep it himself after originally penning it for Loverboy and reaped the ultimate reward when it became a #1 smash. "Livin' on a Prayer" was the Springsteen-like tale of two working-class lovers trying to make ends meet. Initially written off by him, Jon was only convinced to keep this song by right-hand man Richie Sambora, who therefore deserves kudos for rescuing one of the most enduring hits of the last 20 years from obscurity.

Yet it is "Wanted Dead or Alive", the ultimate in Springsteen worship, that remains the pinnacle of Bon Jovi's achievements. With its slow burning introduction, rousing choruses and passionate delivery, this song has become one of the all time classic rock tales and established the band's rock n' roll cowboy image they carried through to New Jersey and virtually everything they've done since (particularly Lost Highway, currently in its seventh month in the Top 10 on the Australia Country Music Chart).

Two further keys to the album's success were the contributions of Bruce Fairbairn and Desmond Child, experienced professionals who took the band's bunch of decent songs and helped turn them into massive hits. Fairbairn sensibly realised that Bon Jovi was not a heavy metal band and instead emphasised the pop elements of their music and Child provided a guiding hand to the two songs that would top the American charts. It wasn't the last time they would team with the band, doing much the same thing on New Jersey two years later.

Bon Jovi's success seems incapable of being effectively dammed even as they waver between genres and styles but they never made another album with the pure pop clout of Slippery When Wet, a collection that can still get a party going even now.

1. Let it Rock


2. You Give Love a Bad Name


3. Livin' on a Prayer


4. Social Disease


5. Wanted Dead or Alive


6. Raise Your Hands


7. Without Love


8. I'd Die For You


9. Never Say Goodbye


10. Wild in the Streets

Rating: 95%

DIRE STRAITS: Love Over Gold

Produced by Mark Knopfler

Released: 1982

This was one of the first albums I ever bought (as a present for my dad) and by the time I had
reached the end of "Telegraph Road" I felt that my life had been changed forever. Even though I was only 13, I knew I had just heard something special. When I listen to it 25 years later, on the original cracking and popping vinyl, there is still a trickle of anticipation when Pick Withers' drums gather speed and Mark Knopfler unleashes one of the epic rock guitar solos of all time.

The resounding success of the Springsteen-like Making Movies put them on the verge of being massive superstars, and Love Over Gold seems to have been conceived almost as a direct reaction to that album by being as far away from a pop record as possible. It could have been commercial suicide, but somehow it managed to work. Previously, Dire Straits had chugged their way through Cale-inspired blues tunes but here Knopfler applied his Dylan-like tales of workaday existence and melancholia to a broader, near-progressive rock framework. Unlike the highly contrived sound of most prog however, Knopfler's stripped-back approach makes each song flow naturally.

“Telegraph Road” ebbs and flows as it follows the rise and fall of an Anytown through ringing crescendos during the boom times to the quiet piano and crying guitar reflecting the crushing despair of shattered dreams. Like a world-weary character from Springsteen’s Born to Run, the man in the final verse of this 14 and a half minute epic is yearning only for a new beginning somewhere else where he no longer has to see “desperation explode into flames”; the marathon solo that follows echoes the same frustration.

Dire Straits follows this almost overwhelming track with “Private Investigations” where Knopfler plays the role of the jaded private eye looking at the world through the bottom of a whiskey bottle. The spoken, almost whispered lyrics reflecting the sombre mood of the piece with its gentle lilt that is carried toward its grand, almost orchestral finale of sudden crashing guitars by a sinister heartbeat-like bass throb.

“Industrial Disease” lightens the mood at this point, a jaunty romp laden with cheeky and satirical humour and built on a swirling organ riff. The sobering title track follows, a breathy ballad with a moral sting in its jazz-inflected tail that closes with the solemn observation “the things that you hold/Can fall and be shattered/Or run through your fingers like dust”. The album is then rounded out by “It Never Rains” in which Knopfler has a solid crack at channelling Bob Dylan circa 1965, ending proceedings much the way they began with a dark look at reality.

This was Dire Straits darkest and starkest album, perhaps their most evocative and certainly their most challenging one. Like the love over gold of its title, then band chose art over commercial success with this release. It was brave move and a uniquely satisfying though transient phase and of all their albums this one remains my solid favourite.

1. Telegraph Road


2. Private Investigations


3. Industrial Disease


4. Love Over Gold


5. It Never Rains

Rating: 95%

VARIOUS ARTISTS: A Blaze in the Southern Skies

Executive Producers: Glenn Dyson and Brad Wesson

Released: 2007

Prime Cuts is perhaps currently Australia's most prolific metal-specific record label and presently the home of a solid raft of bands from as far apart as Perth, Melbourne, Wagga Wagga and Auckland. Coupled with the Sound Works Touring arm of their operation, the Prime Cuts lads are doing more than almost anyone to fly the flag of Down Under metal at the moment, and to further prove this they have just unleashed an enormous double CD of what this part of the world has to offer. Those who still believe that metal begins with Slayer and ends with Celtic Frost may not be impressed by some of the artists represented, but, apart from the surprising omission of any really melodic bands, A Blaze in the Southern Skies is perhaps the most all-encompassing domestic metal compilation released in Australia in a long time and probably ever.

Disc one of Blaze features all the bands attached to the label's now quite expansive roster.

Among the 16 cuts that make up this first CD you'll find the irreverent hard rocking of Psychonaut's "Rosemary's Baby" (complete with a 'Hail Satan!' chorus), The Furor's slab-like "Rebirth Mark", Vespers Descent's sinister dedication to the immense Night's Dawn trilogy "Reality Disfunction" (sic), blast-beat fuelled black metal from Mytile Vey Lorth, classy metalcore hammering courtesy of Left Ablaze, technical brutality from Grotesque, complete porno-grind mischief from the wonderfully-named Cuntscrape and melodic thrasharama from Pathogen and Frankenbok. Dawn of Azazel and Malignant Monster make punishing contributions, Noctis delivers a short but stunning order of progressive death metal and Claim the Throne has some sort of interesting pagan thing going on. Only Human Extinction Project seems out of place with possibly the weakest track on the entire album; Humonic and Dyscord are also somewhat less remarkable.

The second disc contains 17 bands that Prime Cuts or Sound Works has dealt with in some significant way over the years. So here you'll find the berzerk technical blur of Psycroptic's "Alpha Breed", an uncharacteristically aggressive Alchemist serving up "Tongues & Knives", the insane blitzkriegs of Terrorust and Five Star Prison Cell, Ruins being thoroughly ominous, the legendary Mortal Sin and 8Ft Sativa sounding more brutal than ever. But it's the lesser known bands that bring a new dimension to what could otherwise have been just a collection of big names. And so we also have Picture The End's technical deathcore, Double Dragon, Black Asylum and Enlightened By Darkness opening up with some catchy thrash and Synthetic Breed throwing off some of their Fear Factory worship with a nicely developing style. The excellent Chaos Divine blend genres seamlessly with "Still Bleeding" and Darkest Dawn fuse a subtle trash element with dark melodic rock highlighted by contrasting male/female vocals. Tzun Tzu's thunderous death metal onslaught is surprisingly tempered by a female vocal track towards the end and Be'lakor's "Neither Shape nor Shadow" shows why they are becoming one of Melbourne's most talked about progressive extreme bands. Finally Guild of Destruction wraps thing up with a quirkily-arranged mixture of shrieking, growls, black metal tremolo picking and a stumbling death metal riff.

All in all A Blaze in the Southern Skies is a comprehensive and enjoyable journey through the best that the Aussies and the Kiwis have to offer and anyone who's into metal should find plenty to like. Every home should have a copy.

Disc 1:

1. Pathogen - Identity Theft


2. Frankenbok - Failure to Learn


3. Grotesque - Pulsating Cosmos


4. Dyscord - Senjo


5. Dawn of Azazel - Fornication Revelation


6. Malignant Monster - Drive the Nails


7. Vespers Descent - Reality Disfunction


8. The Furor - Rebirth Mark


9. Psychonaut - Rosemary's Baby


10. Mytile Vey Lorth - Caves of Blood


11. Left Ablaze - Step Inside


12. Humonic - The Prayer


13. Noctis - Remembrance of Death


14. Human Extinction Project - Consequence (Thanks for Fuck All)


15. Claim the Throne - Triumphant March of the Draconic Legion


16. Cuntscrape - Cactus Sack

Disc 2:

1. Psycroptic - Alpha Breed


2. Picture the End - They Swarmed Like Locusts


3. Alchemist - Tongues & Knives


4. Terrorust - Harvesting the Blood


5. Chaos Divine - Still Bleeding


6. Double Dragon - Dead But Still Killing


7. Ruins - Suicidal Pulse


8. 8ft Sativa - Emancipate


9. Five Star Prison Cell - M


10. Mortal Sin - Tears of Redemption


11. Darkest Dawn - Inflection in Bloom


12. Tzun Tzu - Kunoichi


13. Be'lakor - Neither Shape nor Shadow


14. Enlightened by Darkness - Whitechapel 1888


15. Synthetic Breed - Techno Sedation


16. Black Asylum - Don't Beg for Mercy


17. Guild of Destruciton - Prey

Rating: 95%

BRUCE DICKINSON: Tyranny of Souls

Produced by Roy Z

Released: 2005

In the eyes of many of his fans, Bruce Dickinson’s solo work easily eclipsed just about everything Iron Maiden did since the beginning of the 1990s; certainly Accident of Birth and The Chemical Wedding were vastly superior to Maiden’s releases from the same period and when he rejoined his old friends there was some small sighs of despair that Bruce’s solo career was at an end. Seven years and three Maiden albums later, Tyranny of Souls relaunches that career for one of the greatest metal singers of all.

Taking things at his own pace, Dickinson spent a long time on this album and the end result is one of the most diverse recordings he has ever made. This time chief colloborator Roy Z handled all the guitar work, and his production lays on some fine crunch in that area, making for a nicely heavy sound. With that said, Tyranny of Souls is not a complete triumph. There are definite highlights, but there is also some too-familiar generic moments and overall it doesn’t match the heights that Bruce’s two previous solo efforts attained.

After the strange spoken word intro “Mars Within” that doesn’t seem to serve a purpose, “Abduction” kicks in as the opener proper, a nice melodic and catchy track but one that isn’t too far removed from Dickinson’s contributions to Maiden albums over the years. The next two songs are somewhat better, with that aforementioned guitar crunch and heaviness, and some stellar work from Roy Z. “Soul Intruder” is easily one of the heaviest songs Bruce Dickinson has ever recorded and “Kill Devil Hill” has a nicely sinister feel. Another highlight is “Devil On a Hog”, which has a surprisingly rocking Judas Priest feel to it and isn’t that far removed from the demon-on-a-Harley thing Rob Halford likes to sing about.

The real surprise however is right in the middle of the album. “Navigate the Seas of the Sun” is a stripped-back acoustic track that shows a remarkably mellow side to Dickinson’s normally histrionic vocals. While it suffers a little from lyrical repetition, this works far better than Dance of Death’s “The Journeyman” and raises the question of whether there should be more songs like it. The rest of the cuts aren’t bad but they don’t really stand out either; nevertheless, Tyranny of Souls is without doubt an above average release and maintained Dickinson’s strong record for quality solo efforts.

1. Mars Within


2. Abduction


3. Soul Intruders


4. Kill Devil Hill


5. Navigate the Seas of the Sun


6. River of No Return


7. Power of the Sun


8. Devil on a Hog


9. Believil


10. A Tyranny of Souls

Rating: 78%

GAMMA RAY: Land of the Free II

Produced by The Spirit of Freedom

Released: 2007

In many ways power metal bands, particularly the European breed, are the pop groups of the metal world. Not that I don't mind the odd pop band but anyone who listens to commercial radio for longer than half an hour will realise that the majority of them are thoroughly generic, insipid and uninspired acts regurgitating the same similar-sounding over-produced rubbish again and again. It's for this reason I have endured a long love/hate relationship with power metal. At times I can get completely swept up in the exuberance of multi-tracked vocal melodies and galloping pace, but considerably more often I'm turned off by its plastic sound and utter predictability.

Gamma Ray is one power metal band I have always really enjoyed. Their music is made to be enjoyed after all, but they have long been able to do it in a way that elevates them beyond the morass of bands they inspired and even above that the group they sprang from. It says a lot about a group when they can maintain such a level of consistency for such a long time and with this band a lot of it has to do with Kai Hansen's keen sense of pop dynamics and his ability to mesh them with his old-school metal sensibilities. He is quite simply a genius at this and it's probably why, despite some good albums, Helloween has never been the same since he left.

Since 1995's Land of the Free Gamma Ray has lead while everyone else has merely followed. It was probably only a matter of time before they stumbled a little, and in attempting a sequel of one of the finest power metal albums of all time, that time seems to be now. Land of the Free II is a pretty decent half-an-album, with the other half seeming to suffer from the lack of inspiration that also afflicts many of this band's peers. All the standard Gamma Ray elements are soundly in place but occasionally it just falls apart.

"Into the Storm" starts things off in a typically ass-kicking fashion highlighting everything that Gamma Ray does right but they follow it up with a couple of generic songs that are fairly ordinary by this band's standards although "To Mother Earth" has an awesome solo. "Rain" is better, darker and heavier and while "Leaving Hell" is more pop-inflected it's catchier than a bad case of staph in an emergency ward. The next half of Land of the Free II is decidely ordinary, and a patchwork of boring songs like "Opportunity" and others that clearly rip off other bands. "When the World" has a riff in it that is almost exactly Iron Maiden's "Powerslave" and while "Real World" is a good solid foot-stomping metal cranker, it's main hook is lifted directly from "Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest! The enormous 11-minute "Insurrection" more than makes up for many of the album's weaknesses however, but one is left with the feeling that three or four of the songs from the last half of LoTF II could have been omitted without the album suffering in the slightest.

Gamma Ray is still miles out in front of almost everyone else doing this type of thing, but this has taken a bit of the polish off.

1. Into the Storm
2. From the Ashes
3. Rising Again
4. To Mother Earth
5. Rain
6. Leaving Hell
7. Empress
8. When the World
9. Opportunity
10. Real World
11. Hear Me Calling
12. Insurrection

Rating: 68%

JIMMY BARNES: Bodyswerve

Produced by Mark Opitz and Jimmy Barnes

Released: 1984

When Jimmy Barnes released this scream from the garage, the beast that had been Cold Chisel had only been dead for ten months; their final studio album had only just fallen off the charts. Bodyswerve lacks the polish and commercial appeal of his other albums and is totally bereft of the superstar duets and endless power ballads that littered those works. This is probably why his solo debut is one of the most overlooked recordings of his catalogue, but it is also the reason this remains one of my favourite Jimmy Barnes albums.

Barnes' songwriting has less finesse than either Don Walker or Steve Prestwich, but essentially Bodyswerve is very reminiscent of the earliest Cold Chisel outings. A balls-out uncompromising rock record, Bodyswerve alternates between the smouldering heavy blues of "Daylight" to flat-out belters like the hard-partying anthem "Paradise" to the fury of "Boys Cry Out for War" that is almost metallic in its raw intensity. "No Second Prize" is a simple, slow-burning rocker that highlights the sheer power of Barnes' voice and also lets guitarist Mal Eastick shine; the remixed version from For the Working Class Man dropped a vocal track over the long fade of this track, robbing it of some of its purity but here it is the stand out that remains solid even now. Some of the other songs aren't quite as memorable and the covers of "Piece of My Heart" and "A Change is Gonna Come" probably add little more than some extra minutes to the playing time. Barnes made better records both before and after this, but the energy and passion on display here makes this a pretty worthwhile hard rock album.

1. Vision


2. Daylight


3. Promise Me You'll Call


4. No Second Prize


5. Boys Cry Out for War


6. Paradise


7. A Change is Gonna Come


8. Thick Skinned


9. Piece of My Heart


10. Fire


11. World's on Fire

Rating: 65%

DECAPITATED: Nihility

Produced by Decapitated

Released: 2002

Some bands lead. Others follow. Decapitated showed fairly early that they certainly aren’t followers. While the style and execution of their unmitigated assault is clearly based on and influenced by death metal’s greats, this young Polish band realised that just churning out some carbon copy of Morbid Angel or Death simply wasn’t going to get them anywhere. That’s probably why, with Nihility they created what has to be one of the best albums of technical brutal death metal of all.

Very technical arrangements and sometimes oddly-placed guitar solos are very much a part of this band’s repertoire, and this alone put Decapitated several notches above the three-riffs-nine-different-ways, speed-is-all brigade. Indeed the album presents eight very different and original songs that aren’t afraid to step beyond established boundaries. During ‘Names’ they work in a stunning melodic passage that wouldn’t be out of place on an In Flames album, in ‘Spheres of Madness’ they almost step into a groove and elsewhere, and in ‘Babylon’s Pride’ and the remarkably techincal ‘Eternity Too Short’ they add short snatches of thrash, yet never do they allow it to compromise their solid crushing death metal attack.

Nihility also boasts a remarkably sharp production for a self-produced effort, and this was another facet that put Decapitated ahead of the crowd. With Nihility, Decapitated showed themselves to be among the ranks of bands like Nile who are constantly bringing new ideas and inspiration to the death metal genre. While it's true that the albums that followed weren't quite in the same league as this, particularly The Negation which was an abrupt disappointment, Decapitated was a remarkable band; it can only be hoped that they can somehow recover from the tragic loss of Vitek and come back with something incredible.

1. Perfect Dehumanization (The Answer?)


2. Eternity Too Short


3. Mother War


4. Nihility (Anti-Human Movement)


5. Names


6. Streets of Madness


7. Babylon's Pride


8. Symmetry of Zero

Rating: 92%

ARCH ENEMY - Rise of the Tyrant

Produced by Frederik Nordström and Michael Amott.

Released: 2007

After Doomsday Machine I feltthat Arch Enemy were really going to have to come up with something special to remain relevant as being a pretty decent band with a sexy vocalist isn't enough to sustain a band forever. With Rise of the Tyrant, they could well have done it. The time they spent apart seems to have re-honed the Amott brothers' songwriting and there's no doubt that Christopher's return has re-injected something into Arch Enemy.

Rise of the Tyrant rips from the opening seconds with a truly savage guitar sound and a rawer, more convincing vocal attack. Angela Gossow still has weaknesses in some areas of her technique but this time she's bravely gone without the double-tracking and layering thatwas all over the last album. If there's a distinctive flaw it is that the rhythm section is buried under the merciless wall of guitars, and when you have a rhythm section like this band, that's a bit of a crime. As killer a drummer as Daniel Erlandsson is however, one of the main reasons people listen to Arch Enemy is for the Amott brothers' twin guitar onslaught, and the soloing on Rise of the Tyrant is insane. Anyone who's got any sort of plans to be a shit-hot heavy metal guitarist needs to listen to this album at least a hundred a times because the shredding that's all over this is totally mind-blowing in places. "Blood on Your Hands", "Revolution Begins" and the title track should really be included in a primer on metal lead guitar playing because this is among some of the finest fretboard blazing you'll find anywhere.

Arch Enemy has also returned totheir best in the riffing stakes, in the energy and seeming immediacy of the delivery andin their ability to write killer songs. Everything here is a mammoth improvement on the last two albums, although there is still a tendency to recycle a pattern here and there but at least now they're nicking them from songsoff older albums and not from two tracks previous like they did last time around.

The production makes this a ridiculously guitar-heavy recording at the expense of Erlandsson and Sharlee D'Angelo, but in all other respects Arch Enemy has finally made another album that can stand next to their first four.

1. Blood On Your Hands
2. The Last Enemy
3. I Will Live Again
4. In this Shallow Grave
5. Revolution Begins
6. Rise of the Tyrant
7. The Day You Died
8. Intermezzo Liberté
9. Night Falls Fast
10. The Great Darkness
11. Vultures
    
    

Rating: 82%