Valkyrie - Man Of Two Visions (2008)

I really wanted to love this album. It's just the sort of thing I would. Ostensibly doom metal, it's basically a combination of the St. Vitus/Pentagram kind of sound, lots of Thin Lizzy, some NWOBHM - a more mid-tempo version of Slough Feg, maybe, or kissing-cousins to Witchcraft.

The problem is, the album never really seems to get going. There's two nice, chuggy enough songs to begin with - but they feel more like warm-ups. Then, just when you're ready for the main course, there's an instrumental. It's dreamy and a bit insubstantial. Then comes the centrepiece of the album, 'Apocalypse Unleashed', a totally brilliant Thin Lizzyesque epic, all groovy riffing and folksy melody. It seems like the party is finally under way, even if the next song, while good, isn't up to the same level. Then - kaPOW - another instrumental! A nice little acoustic workout, but one that begins to overstay its welcome at over 5 minutes. Fortunately, the title track, which closes the album, is another knockout, but that's not enough punch to make for a really classic album. And at just around 37 minutes, this is a pretty concise offering in any case.

Of course, what there is of this album ranges from the nice, if disposable, to the really quite cool. It doesn't descend into tedium, but it never really scales the heights either. A decent filler between doom metal/classic-style heavy metal main features.

5/B

Dio - 'The Last In Line'
1984

This was one of the first CDs I ever bought, and the first to be stolen by some bastard with no morals and great taste in music. I recently picked up a replacement copy, and I've been rediscovering what a great album this is. It might just be Dio's finest moment as a band. Holy Diver was a great album, bursting at the seams with energy and enthusiasm, leavened by a couple of Ronnie James Dio's effective exercises in creating epic centerpieces that would stand as worthwhile succesors to the classic songs he created with Black Sabbath and Rainbow. Still, it's a lot more rock n' roll hyperboogie than metal in many places and it also has the slightly nebulous sense of identity many debut solo efforts do. On the follow-up, however, I believe there's a stronger sense of identity and direction, as well as a truly democratic group dynamic that doesn't seem to be there on a lot of Dio's later albums.

The mix of songs is great, and the flow of the album is immaculate. From the opening shot of 'We Rock', through the more intricate (but concise - the song is just over 5 minutes long) considerations of 'The Last In Line', the album continues on a winning streak with pacey, gutsty tracks like 'Breathless' (with a great Campbell solo) and the proto-speed metal blast of 'I Speed At Night'. 'One Night In The City' seems like a throwback to some of the more boogified moments on the previous album, but it rapidly takes on an epic feel with some tasteful mid-tempo arrangements and Ronnie James Dio in full storyteller mode. 'Evil Eyes' sizzles with some seriously scorching riffage, and keyboard motifs that actually accentuate the heaviness. 'Mystery', in contrast, sounds more like a typical mid-80s commercial hard rock radio staple, down to the cheesy keyboards. Still, it has all the (melo?)drama of the more metallic material, and the heavy stadium groove of the 'Eat Your Heart Out' gets things back on track. If the epic tracks on 'Holy Diver' built from Ronnie James Dio's work with Black Sabbath, the album closer 'Egypt (The Chains Are On)' looks back at the eastern-flavoured epics on the early Rainbow albums with its leaden, pusling riffs and snakecharmer-music keyboard embellishments. It's a great way to close out the album - a slowed-down grinding assault to finish what the speedy artillery of the opening track started.

I haven't mentioned highlights from individual songs, but what really makes this album stand out for me are the little fills and frills that Vivian Campbell, Jimmy Bain and Vinny Appice throw out all over the place. A band of competent musicians can just play it straight, sticking to the script except for pre-agreed solo spots, and put out a perfectly servicable album. But if there's real chemistry between them, everyone is spurred on to add that little bit extra that doesn't serve as a showcase of individual worth, but instead adds to the mood and atmosphere of each song. They produce bass slides and runs, drum fills and incidental guitar flourishes that are individually easy to play, but placed in the right spots to lift the song from a rote exercise to something really compelling.

This album is full of that sort of magic, and I don't think that Dio the band ever sounded this together and excited again. They continued to put out some great albums, of course, but to me this will always be the big one, the one where the thrill of having put out a totally killer debut, and the evolution from a thrown-together band to a real heavy rocking ensemble seem to have contributed to some of the finest moments in Ronnie James Dio's already-legendary career.

'Devin Townsend Presents Ziltoid The Omniscient'
2007

A madman with a solid work ethic, Devin Townsend played everything on this album himself, except the drums, which were programmed using Meshuggah's "Drumkit From Hell". Heavy Devvy's done a lot of great music before, but this is his first concept album - and the good news is, the concept is a total hoot. It's about this intergalactic marauder named Ziltoid who is on a quest for the universe's ultimate cup of coffee. He comes to earth and asks for our best of coffee - which however turns out to be far from good (no doubt, the hapless Ziltoid touched down somewhere in the USA where they drink this acrid black secretion instead. A cup of steaming South Indian filter coffee would have inspired him to declare himself humanity's lifelong protector). Ziltoid then determines to destroy the planet. Woe is us! Or are we? For you see, Captain Spectacular has seen through his facade and now sets out to expose Ziltoid for what he really is - a nerd.

I won't give away any more of the plot, but it's all super fun, a classic B-grade SF movie filtered through a seriously warped sense of humour and an equally warped and totally brilliant musical mind. The music is as strong as anything Townsend's ever done, ranging from really heavy semi-industrial fare like 'By Your Command' or the ferocious 'Ziltoidia Attaxx' to the many moods and soaring melodies of 'Solar Winds', the more melodic and mid-tempo 'Hyperdrive', the demented 'Planet Smasher' or the epic 'Colour Your World', which has as much right to be called prog as anything by Dream Theater.

I think they'll be calling this one an eccentric masterpiece in the years to come. You could say that about all Townsend's music, of course, but his hijacking of B-movie thematics and OTT narrative interludes is so utterly corny - yet artistically succesfull - that I'd rate it pretty high. It'll make you laugh and it'll impress you too.

U.D.O. - 'Mastercutor'
2007

Give the little devil his due - Accept's Udo Dirkschneider's stature isn't much removed from Ronnie James Dio's, literally or in the sense of his place in the pantheon of metal vocalists fans like me carry around in our heads. His voice has the raucous, spitfire attack of Brian Johnson and the larynx-ripping menace of Rob Halford, along with a sense of snotty in-your-faceness and incredibly catchy hookiness that's Udo's own.

I haven't really followed his career with his solo band, U.D.O. all that closely, even though Accept is one of my favourite classic metal bands. When I heard there was a new one out this year, I reckoned I might as well give it a whirl for shits and giggles. Of course, this album is worth a lot more than just a few laughs, if you've got any room at all for classic, kickass metal in your blackened little heart.

The introductory track 'Mastercutor' starts things off with a sort of game show theme song pastiche over which your host, the Mastercutor is introduced, and the festivities are kicked off as a huge, melodic power chord based intro shifts into one of those classic early 80s metal riffs. Udo is in fine form vocally - maybe just a little more raspy than in his earlier days, but more than just okay for a 55 year old. He launches into one of those huge, singalong choruses that manage to be both catchy and incredibly kickass at the same time, and that's it - I'm sold.

What follows is a very strong set of rocking metal songs with infectious, headbanging riffs, melodic guitar parts, and irresistably metallic vocal hooks. 'The Wrong Side Of Midnight' piles on the menace, 'The Instigator' is one of those fast, punchy songs 80s metal bands used to love starting their records with - you know the sort of thing I mean - 'One Lone Voice' and 'Tears Of A Clown' allow Udo to showcase a more melodic side to his voice, without wandering into the out and out cheese of some of Accept's early balladry attempts. 'We Do - For You' is a great arena-filling anthem, 'Walker In The Dark' is a stalker song with another irresistable chorus and great shifts between power chord riffs and arpeggiated passages, 'The Devil Walks Alone' and 'Dead Man's Eyes' are two more great distillations of classic metal attitude that make sure the second half of the album doesn't slump.

There are weak spots though - both 'Vendetta' and 'Crash Bang Crash' fail to really distinguish themselves melodically or by way of riffs. Also - and this is both a failing and a virtue - the songs are all so concise. Udo and his band rock out the under-5-minute thrashers as if it was 1982 all over again. Some of the songs have serious epic potential, and the lack of some really extended (some might say self-indulgent, but there's a place for that and this would have been one of them) soloing or perhaps an extra riff or three to take some of the songs a bit further does make the overall experience feel a trifle insubstantial.

Still, what we have here are 12 kickass pure heavy metal tracks from one of the genre's most distinctive and definitive singers, and a crack squad of talented musicians. If you're in that Balls To The Wall/British Steel sort of frame of mind, you could do a lot worse than to try out the Mastercutor's latest gig. Don't forget - you have to be in it to kill it!

Slough Feg - 'Down Among The Dead Men'
2000

A lot of recent bands that try to play traditional NWOBHM-influenced metal sound really fake to me, because they're too polished and slick. Even when the original NOWBHM bands were impeccable as musicians, there was always this raw edge to their music that really sealed the deal. Something that wasn't amateurish or simplistic like punk, but similarly immediate, which gave the impression of a band with no time for artifice, for anything except simple inspiration and pure energy.

The Lord Weird Slough Feg, or simply, Slough Feg, appear to have listened long and hard to their old Iron Maiden, Angel Witch and Omen records (and, just as important, probably picked out some classic Thin Lizzy as well) and learned their lessons well. While their musicianship and songwriting are great, they're never so slick and polished that I feel like puking a little into a silken barfbag instead of headbanging along. Their main man Mike Scalzi, who both sings and plays guitar is an especialy treasure - he has a great, very Brit-sounding voice that hits those heroic, bombastic pitches and cadences really well, without ever sounding like he's singing a national anthem or a hymn. His riffs are as good, chunky and catchy, irresistably energetic and driving but melodic too.

The song-sequence that consists of 'Beast In The Broch', 'Heavy Metal Monk', 'Fergus Mach Roich' and 'Cauldron Blood' is just great, a real metal epic. 'Warriors Dawn', 'Sky Chariots' and 'Death Machine' are flamboyant, heroic tracks that don't sound self important or stale, and the OTT lyrics of 'Troll Pack' show that the band can retain a crucial sense of humour amongst their more earnest mythical content.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Juicy, infectious metal that reminds you of the best of NOWBHM without sounding like a cheap nostalgia act. I didn't think it was possible to play Maiden-inspired riffs and melodies and still sound so fresh and original. Well done!

Scariot - 'Momentum Shift'
2007

I listen to a fair variety of metal music, but like any metalhead I have my checklist of elements I like to hear in my favourite kind of metal. Something about as heavy as, say, Megadeth's Rust In Peace or the later Death albums, as technical as them too, with great solos and riffs and kickass drumming, but not so polished that it starts sounding more like prog, melodic without sounding like a damn national anthem, moshworthy but groovy too and emotional without compromising on the aggression. To make it clearer, my favourite metal band right now is probably Nevermore. And Scariot seems to have a lot of the same strengths as Nevermore, including, on this album, an added bonus for a sometime-bassist like me - Steve DiGiorgio!

The songs on this album move effortlessly from really thrashy and heavy riffs with pounding double bass to melodic, almost symphonically dramatic passages. The drums lockstep with the guitar rhythms when reguired, and ride roughshod over them at other times, which is something metal drums need to do sometimes, you know? The guitar work is equally convincing from the precise, rhythmically exciting rhythm work to the melodic, flowing and imaginative lead work. The vocals are great as well, clean and soaring without being cheesy and predictable like that fellow in Hammerfall. And when I'd be happy to settle for a good thud and maybe some clanky cut-through on bass, with everything else so awesome, there's Steve DiGiorgio cooking up a storm underneath it all!

The mini-epic 'Forming Humans' is probably my favourite at the moment, packing in some really impressive shifts and melodies in just over 5 minutes. 'Sickening World' contains perhaps my favourite lyrical statement (guess what it is!) and a kickass cover of Death's 'Symbolic' manages to do for that song what Death once did for Judas Priest's 'Painkiller', and makes their musical lineage pretty clear, as if there were any doubt. I never did buy into the opportunist Schuldiner worship that accompanied his illness and sad demise, but he certainly was a great metal songwriter and musician, and and I'm sure he'd approve of Scariot's take on his song. They do that rarest of things - make the vocals of the original more melodic without totally defanging the vocal lines. Good work.

I understand that this album was released after considerable line-up changes. I'd certainly like to hear more by this line-up - and investigate Scariot's previous discography on the strength of this album, which is about what you'd want the first album you hear by a band to do.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Thrashy progressive metal that stands alongside the relatively traditionally metallic likes of Nevermore, rather than the more arty flights of Opeth. An album of real power and artistry, with a certified lunatic on bass guitar. In not so many words, bring it on!

Testament - 'Low'
1994

This is a fierce album. After losing Alex Skolnic and the push me-pull you musical differences that made 'The Ritual' such a moderate album, singer Chuck Billy and guitarist Eric Peterson felt liberated, free to be as heavy as they wanted to - and that's precisely what they proceeded to be. This album scales the aggression back up to Practice What You Preach levels - and heavier. While 'The Ritual' fit in with the overall trend of thrash acts mellowing out in the mid-90s, 'Low' took a few lessons from the more extreme metal of recent times to create an album that thrashed and grooved ten times more than anything they'd done before. Death metal guitar hero James Murphy helped them up the ante, contributing solos and textures that combined the new emphasis on brutality with as much skill as Skolnic had graced the band with.

A heavier musical direction was matched by more venomous lyrics and vocals. The title song, 'Low', with its stacatto, broken-up riffs and sledgehammer double bass only further hammers in the fierce scorn Chuck Billy directs at opportunistic political exploiters. And just think of the sheer shock to the system it was, after 'The Ritual', to hear this song and hear incredibly tight double bass and riffing...and growling! Billy hadn't shed the more shouty or tuneful sides to his voice, but this new growl - oh, my! 'Legions (In Hiding)' just kept the intensity building with its build-up into sheer groovy riffmania and Billy's vituperation directed at families that conceal dark secrets and 'keep spinning the wheels of abuse'. 'Shades Of War', 'PC' 'All I Could Bleed' carry on the trend of political and social comment, coupled with tight, groovy and heavy riffing.

'Hail Mary' and 'Dog Faced Gods' fit in more with Testament's older occult and anti-religious themes. 'Hail Mary' is like a blasphemous twin to 'Low' in its intense perfection, while 'Dog Faced Gods' ups both the intensity with positively death metallish sequences and some of the most atmospheric passages on the album, superbly conjuring up images of dark rituals in ancient Egypt. I'd say that 'Dog Faced Gods' is the real pinnacle of the album and a total vindication of the decision to forge ahead with a heavier direction rather than rely on thrash nostalgia or radio friendly homogenisation. 'Chasing Fear' is more of a general paean to mental disturbance, but just as sharp and focussed musically as anything else here, kicking in with some incredible soloing straight off the bat. 'Ride' is more paced-out, but just as intense, with great yell-along choruses that hark back to their earliest days as snotty thash kids kicking up a racket somewhere in the background while Metallica and Slayer dominated the scene.

'Trail Of Tears' is a ballad, and it veers a little too close to 'Return To Serenity' territory musically, although the lyrics are about the plight of native American tribes whose lands were usurped by the white man. That leaves two instrumentals. 'Urotsukidoji' is named for a tentacle-rape Jap comic, it's quite an instrumental workout, including some very fluid and kickass soloing by bassist Eric Peterson. 'Last Call' is a more groovy piece, with a great, unique atmosphere and a cool way to close out an album.

By now it should be clear to anyone with half a brain that sticking to your guns and progressing in heaviness is what works best for metal bands. Judas Priest discovered it before Testament, and Testament used that lesson well. If only more people had heeded the example of 'Low', bands like Kreator, Megadeth and others may never have had to get around to doing a comeback album in the first place.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Thrash metal gets a heaviness upgrade for a decade that, sadly, didn't really appreciate Testament's efforts as much as they deserved. Definitely a peak in Testament's already notable career, and as fresh and fierce today as it sounded 13 years ago.

Alabama Thunderpussy - 'Open Fire'
2007

This album sounds a lot like Arch Enemy guitarist Michael Ammot's side-band, Spiritual Beggars. Classic hard rock/heavy metal worshipping riffs, melodic and expressive solos, and great, full-throated rock vocals. A lot of the time I really felt like I was listening to something from Spiritual Beggars' awesome 'Ad Astra' or 'Demons' albums.

To be honest, it also sounds a bit closer to what I was hoping for with the new Clutch album - songs like 'The Cleansing', 'Greed' or 'Whiskey War' have solid southern-rock inspired grooves, but they're also heavy to an extent that a lot of the material on 'From Beale Street To Oblivion' isn't. I wouldn't declare a definitive preference one way or the other at this point (I am a moral coward), but I will say that, upon sober (and also completely drunk) consideration, 'Open Fire' is looking better and better as a contender for that personal year's best listing I was blathering about recently.

I'm also encouraged by the sound of this album. I'd peg the sound as general-purpose heavy music - not stoner, or southern or sludge or whatever. At a time when heavy music seems divided into an excess of sub-genres, many of which are self-limiting rather than self-defining, a band like Alabama Thunderpussy that hits so hard, taking no hostages while opening fire, without declaring an allegiance to any genre other than rocking kickassery in its broadest form is a bit of a rare and fine thing.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: This one should get a dumb grin cracking your face open the same way a really good spliff will. If it doesn't, please go to Muzak Jail, and turn in all your rock and metal CDs at the gate. Come on! It even has a marauding barbarian on the cover - what more do you want??!!

Testament - 'The Legacy'
1987

Rating - 9/A

A whole gang of people are reviewing this album on their blogs, which of course inspired me to dust out and listen to my own copy and weigh in with my own review, as is my wont.

First of all, I'd like to say there will be no comparisons, after this paragraph, to the famous thrash bands everyone knows - y'know, Metallica, Megadeth & Slayer. I see Testament as their absolute equal in cumulative musicianship, songwriting and heaviness, and perhaps the superior of some of these in terms of sustained integrity and creativity. There, I've said it. I've always thought of Testament as The Little Band That Could (And Can), and I'll bet that the album being put together by the reunited original line-up will blow away anything any other thrash band (except perhaps Exodus) might release around the same. And I say this knowing that Megadeth has an album coming out soon. Hah!

Well, so much for my armchair bravado. Now to the review.

'The Legacy', titled in a nod to Testament's original name, sees vocalist Chuck Billy flexing an impressive set of pipes all over a bunch of songs mostly co-written by another thrash legend, Steve 'Zetro' Souza - and doing a bloody good job of it. To my ears, the vocal patterns and some of the intonations are more Souza than Billy, but Billy never falters. If anything, he has the throatier and more range-y voice, and brings a power and aggression to the vocals that ensure that Souza won't be missed. Listen to him bark out the title on 'COTLOD' (Curse Of The Legions Of Death) - brutal!

The rest of the band shines as well - the interplay between guitarists Alex Skolnic and Eric Peterson is downright preternatural and it's frankly terrifying to think that Skolnic was just 19 at the time. His playing is so intelligently conceived and lucidly executed, you'd never expect such accomplished playing on the debut album by a bunch of snotty heavy metal kids - until you heard this album. Check out those blinding runs on 'Burnt Offerings'! The rhythm section - bassist Greg Christian and drummer Louie Clemente are no slouches either, and the whole band succeeds admirably in creating that glorious wall of sound you always get with the best '80s thrash.

The music is unrelentingly heavy, a cornucopia of textbook thrash riffing, although time is taken to build things up from a clean, almost neo-classical opening on 'Burnt Offerings' and 'Apocalyptic City'. Old school gang vocals bolster Billy's already blasting vocals on songs like 'Over The Wall' and 'Do Or Die' , the only song co-written by Billy easily stands up to anything else on the album. 'Alone In The Dark' stands out a bit with it's soaring choruses and melodies, but thrashing riffs and those gang vocals ensure that it's as heavy as everything else on this album.


The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: 20 years later, 'The Legacy' has lost none of its intensity and sheer heaviness. It still has the power to take a listener aback with its sheer vehement aggression and the quality of the music. A thrash metal dream team of a belting vocalist, guitarists with huge chops and a slamming rhythm section delivers the goods - and not for the last time in Testament's career, either!

Gojira - 'From Mars To Sirius'
2005

Rating: 9/A

Gojira gets compared a lot to Mastodon (having a whale on the cover might be one reason), and listening to this, their third full-length album, I can hear some of the reasons for that. This is pumelling metal with a solid death influence, but also progressive aspirations, and vocals that alternate between a hoarse yell and a more clean shout. For all I know, Mastodon is an influence on these French metalheads, but I'm personally reminded as much of bands like Meshuggah, and maybe a touch of Fear Factory. But all this is a little beside the point, in your quilt-oriented reviewer's downy opinion. I was given both Mastodon's much-vaunted breakout, Leviathan (which I've reviewed here too, and I liked just fine) and this album at the same time and I have to say that Gojira received just as much repeated spinning on my CD player.

The reason for this is twofold - groove and feel. For all their bludgeon, and the crisp, blitzing drumming (a real highlight), Gojira have a real sense of groove underyling their compositions - and groove, my friends, is the underlying ingredient that will get me nodding along unthinkingly to a band, opening the way for the songs to insidiously embed themselves in my mind. And that's where the feel comes in. I like metal bands where there is an atmosphere to the sound - something large and tangible that I can loose myself in. I get that from bands as diverse as Nevermore (RESPECT!) and My Dying Bride, Clutch and Cannibal Corpse and I get that here. This is all very subjective, but heavy music seems to be where my opinions are most governed by subjective attachments.

To be honest, I'm even a little more drawn to Gojira than to some of their more famous contemporaries because there just seems a stronger songwriting instinct at work here - the individual parts, interludes and bridges really build together into gripping pieces of music that carry distinctive moods and images with them. While the over-60 minute length of the album can seem a bit much for someone used to the days of 45 minute or at most 60 minute albums on tape, there's no denying that Gojira have used all this time well, giving the heavier moments (the majority of the album) enough space to breathe amongst melodic or mid-tempo sections, notching up the cumulative impact that much more. Gojira knows when to hit you over the head with a ten-tonne sledgehammer, and when to lull you with an arpeggiated melody or momentarily pacify you with a more sonorous, ringing medium-paced riff. These are very simple heavy metal dynamics really- you can learn them by listening to Black Sabbath's 'Master Of Reality' a few dozen times, or even just the 'Embryo/Children Of The Grave' sequence, but it's a lesson that can get lost in the rush to be huge and heavy and stomp your way by sheer force of decimation and ambition, and I'm glad to see these relatively young musicians have their sensibilities as firmly in place as their chops and their hunger for heaviness.

I haven't even commented on the ecological theme of this album - I'll just say, yes, bugger, I agree, but if you don't it's okay - you can't make out the lyrics so easily anyway. Just let that music wash over you like a sonic Ocean Planet.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Technical, super-heavy modern metal with solid songwriting values and a really engrossing feel. God, that drummer is great. Does he use triggers? No matter, this is great stuff anyway. Metal is alive and well in this 21st century of ours.

Hawkwind - 'Warrior On The Edge Of Time'
1975

Rating - 8/B

This is a dicey album, really, for all that I rather like it. Hawkwind were a bit of a community deal, with assorted friends and hangers-on being allowed to contribute poetry, dance routines and suchlike to their stage act. That's the principle on which fantasy writer Michael Moorcock (one of my personal favourite writers), who shared similar creative and recreational interests with the members of Hawkwind became involved in shaping concepts with the band and writing poetic interludes for either himself or a handy Hawk, usually Rob Calvert, to declaim. There are three such interludes on this album, two of which are actually recited by Moorcock himself. These echo-drenched spoken-word pieces with background musical gestures probably contribute conceptually to what appears to be an album loosely structured around Moorcock's Eternal Champion, but are among the most drastic self-imposed barriers to the appreciation of an otherwise fine set of songs I've encountered since King Diamond chose to sing on every album he's ever made. Oh, I crack me up. These interludes might well have been very cool live, with swirling lights, the amazonian Stacia twirling around garbed in nothing but body paint, the smell of spliff rising through the air and a blotter melting slowly in your mouth, but they break up the musical flow of the album in a distinctly jarring fashion.

Once you either accept and learn to live with this, or to program your CD player to skip these tracks, what we have is one of the strongest studio efforts from the classic Hawkwind era. The album opener,'Assault & Battery' hits hard with a typically monolithic Dave Brock riff, ushered in and underpinned by a great Lemmy bassline, layered with spacey keyboard swirls and topped with an instantly anthemic refrain. 'The Golden Void' follows through commendably, first taking us soaring through astral realms with sax peeps from Nik Turner and cosmic keys by Simon House, and then settling onto a crunching, heavy riff around which swirl whisps of psychedelic sound. And then - oof - Moorcock recites a piece called 'The Wizard Blew His Horn' while the band makes a few dramatic noises behind him. It's a bit of a googly, but we're quickly reassured by the steady pulse of Lemmy's bass ushering in the intrumental, 'Opa-Loka' (written, oddly, by the two drummers, Simon King and Alan Powell). Seagull squalls frame the introspective, acoustic musings of Brock's 'The Demented Man', one of the most gorgeous songs in the Hawkwind canon. 'Magnu' brings the bombast back with its epic length and pleas to some sort of magical steed, and another striaghtforward, chugging Brock riff, emebellished with vaguely eastern keyboard noodles. Then it's poetry time again with 'Standing On The Edge', another Moorcock incursion, another matter of taste (or lack thereof). Keyboardist Simon House quickly restores things with his intrumental composition, 'Spiral Galaxy 28948', a soaring, trippy track that positively oozes LSD-fuelled starbound vibes. The proceedings are somewhat compromised by another poetic bit and Nik Turner's song, 'Dying Seas' which seems to lack in focus or a central hook or riff. But the closing song on the original album, 'Kings Of Speed' makes for a strong ending. It's a very normal hard-rocking beast, at heart, but is treated with Moorcock lyrics - thankfully sung by Brock - and those ever-churning keyboard layers. The CD release extra track is a little ditty called 'Motorhead' - yes, the same tune and name carried over by Lemmy for his new band when he was fired from the band soon after. It's fun to hear that slab of primal heavy metal with added violin and flute. Flute! Hah!! That crazy Nik Turner! Hawkwind were never musical virtuosos, but when confronted with a good riff and a strong hook, they could always be counted on to work it to perfection, and layer it with all the outer-space charm you'd want.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Eiderdown: A pretty essential studio offering from what may well have been Hawkwind's strongest and most creative line-up. The spoken-word bits are a very questionable addition to the cosmic experience, but you mustn't let them bias you against either Michael Moorcock or this album, which is why I'm more or less ignoring them and increasing my rating from an initial 7.

Blue Cheer 'Vincebus Eruptum'
1968

Rating - 5/C

Blue Cheer's first album consists of 6 songs, 3 of which are originals and 3 of which are covers. The covers have mostly all been done, and covered by far more adept bands in more definitive performances, but that's a part of the slipshod charm of this band. They aren't the best at what they do, even when they're among the first to do it, and if you can get over their primitiveness, or see it as a partial virtue, you can actually enjoy this as a raw, ragged but glorious noise rather than turning off for the horrid racket it also sounds like. Critics talk about Black Sabbath being raw and shoddy, I suppose they don't even mention Blue Cheer because, by their standards, words wouldn't suffice.

A lot of these songs sound like they want to be Hendrix' Purple Haze. Or Fire. Or Manic Depression. Even the covers. Listen to Summertime Blues - tell me they're not trying to slip the Purple Haze riff in there! And the original song, Doctor Please, cops dynamics off Manic Depression. It even sounds at moments like a very, very tone-deaf and musically challenged youngster's attempt to play Manic Depression, if you squint your ears and listen sideways! The solos are all pentatonic-destroying squalls from a guitar that thought that this lovely thick tone (gotta give credit) meant it was going to get to wail out like Jimi's baby. But, no, instead it's put through the silliest sub-par attempts to channel Hendrix this side of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Erm. Scratch that last bit, I like SRV, peacock tattoo and all. There's a moment on Second Time Around where the guitar comes back in after a quiet bit, and you can hear it screaming 'no, mama, no!!!! I wanted to wail them cozmik electric ladyland blues! Not THIS!!!! SAVE ME!!!!!!'

Stil, it's not all Experience-whackery. Second Time Around and Out Of Focus, two more originals, both have fairly distinct riffs and nice dynamics. The vocals sound really good a lot of the time - totally raw and raucous and with a limited range, but somehow they work. It's only against the mellower verse backing on Doctor Please that the vocals seem really bad, because they have no convincing soulful or mellow settings at all. The cover of Rock Me Baby suffers from some silly attempts at dramatic noise making, but Parchment Farm is nice enough. Their blues isn't very authentic, but their heavy-rockisation of blues is fun to listen to. It would be a lot worse if these people tried to do an authentic blues jam.

Interestingly, apart from the jammy length of these songs there isn't any trace of the psychedelic feel to be found on the first few songs on their second album, released later the same year. Maybe that was an attempt to sell out? They were from San Francisco, after all. Wo knows? The second album's better, anyway.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Pretty raw stuff. They are moved by their betters to play sped-up power-trio blues rock, but shine because of energy and enthusiasm rather than technical prowess. Still, it is proto-metal of a sort, and that may be one reason to hear it. Another would be that it can be great fun.

Celtic Frost - 'Morbid Tales'
1984

Rating - 8/B

Morbid Tales was Celtic Frost's debut album, and it thrashes! It's certainly furious - the riffs are simply crushing, whether speedy or played at a grinding mid-tempo and the drumming certainly keeps up, even if sessions drummer Stephen Priestly isn't a Dave Lombardo or Lars Ulrich. Thom Warrior's vocals are hoarse, barked out, kinda corny in their sense of menacing relish and wonderfully raw. Bassist Martin Ain achieves the average extreme metal bassist's lifelong ambition of doing nothing at all to stand out, while presumably being as tight and fast as the guitarist.

The mood here is dark, evil and menacing. It's not epic, or debauched, or angry, just downright dark. While this atmosphere is largely achieved through the traditional metal-band tools listed above, there are two glimmers of the extensive expriments CF would later perform on the genre. The exceptions are the two odd and disturbing interludes based on what are probably voice samples, Human and Danse Macabre. Just as soon as the souls-in-torment vibe of Human gets to you, the speedy, heavy riffs of Into The Crypts Of Rays crashes in. A song that screams 'this one will influence metal kids for years to come', it's one of CF's best thrashers ever, and features Warrior's trademark grunt-snarl vocals, often rushed to fit with the riffing to great effect. 'Into the crypts of rays - inna'th'crypsofrays!' Great! Other great tracks include Procreation (Of The Wicked), framed around a supremely hypnotic mid-tempo riff, the heavy-yet-groovy Dethroned Emperor, with its dark, mammoth atmosphere and the thrashy title track. All of these have Warrior barking out the titles in a suitably memorable way, and can be the basis for comedy if you are very immune to the pure, simple pleasures of metal music.

Echoes of this album can be heard all over the metal world - just check out Obituary, Carcass, Sepultura, Deicide and whatnot after listening to this album. But it isn't just a worthy historical document - Warrior's instinct for rhythms that both energise a mosh-pit and menace the living daylights out of the listener is almost unerring at this point and even if there is a fair amount of less memorable material his songwriting is strong enough to ensure that at least half of these songs will have either a riff or a vocal hook stuck in your head right away.

This album was rereleased with a few tracks from 1985's Emperor's Return EP tacked on at the end. The production on the EP songs is far muddier, for some reason, which makes them subside into a generic thrashy sludge at first listen, but at Circle Of The Tyrants, at least, will repay closer listening. Still, these songs and some of the more regular thrash pieces on Morbid Tales do come across as a bit interchangable.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Are you morbid?! This album is essential for anyone into dark music, sludgy riffing and metal in general. A primer for many bands to come, but also a strong, memorable metal debut outside of all the context.

Blue Cheer - 'InsideOutside'
1968

Rating - 6/C+

What a peculiar album. It's a strange mix of hippy-ish psychedelia, crude but catchy bashing-rock glory and all wrapped up with some smatterings of poor taste and delivered with questionable musicianship. For all that, it's mostly okay to listen to - everything's done with a sort of joyous excess that is never nearly as menacing as the metal it supposedly inspired but is cvertainly riotous. If it weren't for the simple-minded inability to stretch beyond three-chord rock jams and what was beginning to be called heaviness, this would just be another album by a late-60s blues-rock based power trio ensemble, distinguished largely by an inability to match the prowess or invention of more notable examples of such assemblages.

Indeed, it isn't all that much more than that, but the fact of chronology does place it as an important early rumble towards the hard rock and heavy metal sounds you, me and your step-aunt enjoy with such mad abandon. What saves this album in my opinion is basically that same simple-mindedness - the only really egregious over-reaching here is in attempts to match the fretboard fury of early Hendrix. If you can excuse that for the nonce you have a very fun album, and it's the fun aspect that makes it potentially endearing.

As to the individual songs, the best one here has to be Come And Get It. This song sounds exactly the way you'd expect Blue Cheer, influential and ragged early forefathers of metal to sound like - basically 60s rock n' roll overdriven and played at ridiculous speed and volume. 'Let me hear, let me hear the way you feel'! Yeah! The vocals are kinda thin and whiny, but full of energy and enthusiasm, the guitars are primitive but loud and fast, the rhythm section isn't monumental but it is suitably thunderous. That's great then, that Blue Cheer heavy good-time rock n' roll there. Devil horns!

Oh, right. There's 8 more songs on the album. Alright, let me elucidate thereof. The next best song here is Just A Little Bit, which is just as endearingly frantic as Come And Get It, but a little more chaotic and confused. Babylon starts with a rather nifty riff, and can be safely cited in your paper on metal influences. However, it wanders into a generic mid-tempo bluesy rock a bit too soon and has an especially atrocious solo followed by a clumsily introduced and rather perfunctory climatic-ending manouver. Feathers From Your Tree, Sun Cycle and Gypsy Ball are full of the heavy guitar tone, but are more mid-tempo although there are some neat riffs here, as on Gypsy Ball. There's a more psychedelic vibe running through these songs - this was the psychedelic era, after all, and acid was the best new nutritional supplement since Calcium Sandoz. Someone even seems to have played a little piano on one or the other of these songs, but don't let that bother you. The riffs are really huge. The little instrumental Magnolia Caboose Babyfinger is riffy and groovy, even if the title suggests a bluegrass excursion on a jam-band bootleg.

All this is fine - a little lacking in technical finesse, but very catchy, energetic and raw in the right way. Some really memorable songs and the okay songs aren't awful. So naturally the good lads of Blue Cheer had to throw in a couple of covers that definitely make me downgrade my impression of their collective IQ (not especially high to begin with) and my rating of this album.

They may have listened to a lot of blues, but these guys couldn't play it for nuts. Their take on Booker T Jones' The Hunter is total cornball, a passably enthusiastic and stomping cover version that would sound okay from a high school band, not a pro (I use the term strictly in its literal sense) trio on their second studio outing. For extra insight, contrast and compare with the 'call me the hunter' sections on How Many More Times off Led Zep's debut, released the same year. Page and Co. may have been too vain to credit their cover, but damnit, they reinvented it with a verve and skill that weathers better than this sloppy fanboyism. Even worse, because genuinely offensive instead of just embarrasingly hammy, is their attempt to Blue Cheerize the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction. You'd think they really hated it! Like any college band band trying to be hard and original they speed up the riff so much it sounds like a ridiculous parody of itself, they try a variety of guitar tones, each of which is uglier than the previous ones, and the singer reminds you that, energetic and well-meaning as he is, he's no Jagger. It's not a good idea covering material that's so vastly better than your own, really.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: And look at that! I've spent more words beating Blue Cheer up than praising them! Still, remember that this platter of midway-between-r&b and hard rock music, with its psychedelic touches, isn't a crap album - it would have to be downright unlistenable for that. Approach as simple, honest fun rendered influential by history alone and you'll be fine. It'll look good in your record collection too, up there with Black Sabbath and Budgie like the slightly retarded elder brother everyone loves and cleans up after.

Judas Priest 'British Steel'
1980
Rating - 9/A

In my Sin After Sin review I mumbled about the importance of formulae in metal, and how Priest's greatest contribution to the genre was their introduction of a patent-leather-and-chrome gleaming-and-roaring guaranteed 98%-effective formula for the production of a proper heavy metal album. It was a formula they would (and do) turn to whenever excursions into compositional sleepwalking, synthesised tedium or simply having a different singer and trying to get with the nu stomp and the death dissonance had compromised awe and adulation amongst the metallic masses. That formula reaches a point of near-perfection on this nearly-perfect metal album. Rather than try to elucidate this formula, I shall let a description of this album, British Steel, serve instead. Which is handy, because this is supposed to be a British Steel review.

First, the thrash. The album begins with another straight-for-the-jugular opening stab, Rapid Fire. It's incredibly tight and ferocious, with an incessant single-string pedal-point pattern looping over a steady, throbbing power chord base. The song is played with so much power and passion that even a 21st-century postmodern ironist (supposing you want to be such a quaint thing at this point) might just feel the urge to wave a fist about and sing along as Halford intones lyrics about 'Pounding the world...like a ba-tter-ing ram!' and so forth. Next, the big, anthemic feel. And look, here we have Metal Gods, a more mid-tempo number with lyrics that glorify Judas Priest and metal and a simple iteration of the title for the chorus that still drives the fans wild in the Budokan! Oh, and then we need to be incredibly catchy because otherwise only a very small hardcore faction will bang along, and no one will ever bring their girlfriends along to the show! And stepping up to bat are: Breaking The Law and Living After Midnight. These are both superdupermegabumper hits of course, but it has to be said - they deserve to be. Breaking is simple in construction, fierce in execution and has just the right blend of antisocial angst and heroic rebellion to fire up the metal fan (that's me, in case you refuse). It's also wonderfully concise, at around 2 and a half minutes, so even incessant overplay at pubs or on radio can't make the experience too bitter. Living After Midnight has a fantastic pop-metal melody and hook, one that KISS would kill for - but with added power and guitaristic lead glory that KISS never came close to.

Once you have all these elements in place, the trick is not to let things slide over the rest of the album. Sadly, some of that does happen which is why I can't quite give this album a perfect A+. United is their second attempt at a Queen-esque stadium chant for the brothers and sisters of metal, and like any blatantly populist manouver, it doesn't have much staying power, or none at all if you're over the age of 13 when you first hear it (I wasn't, but I'm pretty much over it now). Similarly, the song You Don't Have To Be Old To Be Wise has some nice vocal hooks, but the main riff is too simplified to count, even if they strum and chug at those 4 or 5 chords a little more than would be the case on the minimalistic Point Of Entry album.

There are still a few decent tracks left to sit through, though. Grinder has an incredibly silly chorus, but the vocals are great and the riffs rule. I personally treasure The Rage - it has an oddly reggae-ish opening that doesn't sound like a silly, cheesy experiment but instead finds a potential for purposeful menace in their modification of the bouncy reggae groove. The ghost of Marley shudders and faints with the rage! The song itself is very compelling with it's 'we are a breed apart, despised yet proud' thematics and nicely screechy lead breaks. Steeler isn't on par with Rapid Fire, but it is a rather pounding thrasher and a fitting way to an end a metal album (unless you opt to go with an extended epic track, but that can be dicey unless it is really good).

The remaster muddles the effectiveness of the running order a bit by adding an unreleased outake (a deservedly unreleased song which is a nearly unlistenable stab at pseudo-patriotic anthemicness with power ballad stylistics) and a redundant live version of Grinder. But that's what the Stop button is for.

A couple of things stand out in this iteration of the Priest formula. The first is the conciseness. None of these songs aspire to potentialy tedious beyond-6-minute lengths, and most of them deliver the goods in around 3. This also helps keep a sense of overall dynamism going, as you move from one track to another without too much delay. Secondly, there's a great deal of restraint on this album - Halford doesn't hit the highest registers of his voice a whole lot, and that makes his voice sound more warm and anthemic than banshee-like. Similarly, Tipton and Downing don't just go for the flash, but play breaks that mostly add a layer to an already good song - heck Breaking The Law dispenses with the solo break altogether and nothing's lost. Looks like restraint - within set patterns of excess - can be an important part of that formula, too.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: As near-perfect a set of tight, fierce and catchy metal songs as you can get. There are hints of the compositional parsimony that would make some future releases seem weaker, but for now this is all-out heavy duty British Steel.

Mastodon - 'Leviathan'
2004

Rating - 9/A-

Mastodon have certainly mastered a broad lexicon of metal approaches. And that's saying something, really. When nu-metal bands can blatantly rip off stale Iron Maiden melodies and score major hits, secure that none of the Adidas-wearing teenie-angsters slurping up their product will be able to spot the thievery, just the fact that here is a band that has dedicated serious time to learning the different ways in which you can make metal heavy is sure to bring a tear of joy and a fond smile to a fogey metalhead (which I suppose I must qualify as in spirit at least). There's a good variety of approaches to the basically post-thrash riffy sound on Leviathan. I Am Ahab is pure thrash fury, for instance, while Aqua Dementia is stonerish melodic metal, complete with vaguely Ozzy-ish whiny vocals. Thrash, stoner, a bit of death and a touch of prog are basically the flavours of metal on aural display here and it's a pretty good mix on an absolute scale, not just for these cheapjack times.

What really matters of course is what Mastodon do with all this, and thankfully the end result - the songs - are pretty strong. The guitar tone is thick and organic, the drums are thunderous and heavy (but also pretty complex), the melodies are sonorous and pulsating, the riffs pounding and suitably mosh-worthy. The band sounds huge and the songs hold together well. The vocals mostly vary between a shouty growl and the slightly more whiny tone mentioned earlier, which is okay. It can get a bit one-dimensional at times, but that's pretty true of any metal band - the actual dimension in question is all that varies, mostly.

Having said all that, I will confess that this album takes some time to sink in. It's a pretty long, complex album and there aren't really a whole lot of hooks to pull you in at first. The catchiness of the album either works by way of the sheer heaviness and complexity, or through little details that can pull you in on further study. Also, even though the Moby-Dick inspired theme runs fairly thin a few songs in, the songs themselves all feel like part of a larger whole, with the emphasis on cumulative impact. And with a cumulative impact as strong as this, I won't complain. I still think several of these songs will emerge as metal classics given time - the songs I mentioned above, Iron Tusk, the epic Megalodon, the other epic Hearts Alive. That instrumental at the end is great too, although I can't see what poor Joseph Merrick has to do with all this aquatic monstrosity. I miss a sense of emotional resonance, although the music itself is not unable to evoke mood and emotion.

There's a slight shortage of really memorable musical motifs, but this is a relatively new band still, for all that everybody was calling this the future of metal at one point. Yes, it is one of the very best metal albums, and by a new band, in a while, but let's calm down. Remember what a huge leap there is between, say, Rust In Peace and Killing Is My Business in Megadeth's discography? And what an even huger leap in the wrong direction between RIP and Risk? My point is, second album is still an early stage, so (even though the third album is now out) it's early to make those kinds of statements. In the meantime, metal is thanfully alive and well in some places in the 21st century, and here's one of those places.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Mastodon play huge, heavy, unapologetic metal. This album has variety, artistry, intelligence and sheer bludgeon-power enough to keep the demanding metalhead happy and at least give the non-metalhead a moment's pause.