Blue Cheer are widely regarded as one of the very first metal bands. Vincebus Eruptum was their first album, which was released in 1968, two years before Black Sabbath’s debut. It’s not hard to see why they’re considered to be metal; unlike other bands in the San Francisco psychedelic scene, they used a heavily distorted guitar tone that was extremely unusual at the time.

Vincebus Eruptum is a pretty good album; it’s fairly tame by modern standards, but one has to wonder what went through listeners’ heads as they heard this for the first time. It’s short, clocking in at just over half an hour, with just six songs, but they’re all fairly good. There are three originals and three covers; the album opener, a cover of Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues, is the band’s best known song. There are some rather dull moments, such as the too-long solos in “Doctor Please” and “Second Time Around”, but for the most part, Vincebus Eruptum doesn’t have many wasted moments. The bass is easily audible throughout, which is also a plus.

One has to wonder why Blue Cheer isn’t better known, since they were one of the first metal bands. This is probably due to two factors. One is the fact that the band went through a series of tumultuous lineup changes following their second album, Outsideinside, and broke up in the early 70s. The band did not reunite until the mid-80s. Another factor is that while many metal bands owe much to Blue Cheer musically, their lyrics and atmosphere were a holdover from 60s psych rock. Blue Cheer’s lyrics weren’t gloomy, like Black Sabbath, or epic, like Led Zeppelin’s lyrics; they’re pretty much a product of the time.

I highly recommend Vincebus Eruptum to those who are curious about the early history of metal, or who also enjoy 60′s psych rock or blues.

Metallica at Myspace

I didn’t have high hopes for the new Metallica album and since you’ve all heard at least the singles from “St Anger” I’m sure you know why. According to producer Bob Rock the reason “St Anger” failed was because it had “no real songs” and one look at the half a hook monstrosity that was the title track would conclude most of us to agree. Others would say the real issue was Metallica’s continuing divergence away from metal. “Load” and “Reload” were both decent if not inspiring bluesy hard rock pieces, and “St Anger” was basically a more aggressive version of those works but without any of the songwriting skill.

The questions we have to ask therefore are; are Metallica metal once again and can they write real songs? The answer to both of those questions is in the affirmative. The music on “Death Magnetic” takes influence from both Thrash Metal and Hard Rock but it’s the former that’s in the ascendance here and the songwriting is as complex and progressive as Metallica’s mid 80’s glory days whilst still bearing the infectious catchiness of the black album. This is easily their best album since the black album by a long long margin and although it doesn’t touch their classic stuff, it still blows quite a good portion of the 21st century releases by 80’s metal bands out of the water

Stylistically the music draws not only from the first 5 Metallica albums but surprisingly from other metal bands as well. I can’t be the only one who remembers one of Metallica (I think it was James) proclaiming his love for the White stripes and Interpol in interviews around the time of St Anger’s release and saying he didn’t really listen to much metal anymore. Well it looks like they do now, as “Death Magnetic” shows they’ve been listening around to quite a few of their contemporaries from the 80’s thrash scene. You cannot deny the influence of Slayer on this album, and the occasional section of riffs brings to mind the likes of Anthrax and Exodus more than it does Metallica. This is still an album that is definitely Metallica through and through though.

It’s not all good news though; there are some tracks which just don’t work. “All Nightmare Long” is the albums most chaotic and adventurous track but for all those wild and reckless solo’s, the track seems to be on the fast lane to nowhere in particular and just seems to be an excuse for Kirk and James to prove they can still shred as fast as they did on “Kill Em All”. The worse track however is “The Unforgiven III” which is so bad I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it on “St Anger”. It’s cheesy, pretentious and mawkish though bizzarely at 5:42 it has the best solo on the album; a bluesy Randy Rhoads style number which is wasted on such a musical turd.

The positives however outweigh the negatives considerably with “That Was Just Your Life” getting the album off to a flying start with a whiskey fuelled vicous kick to the face. “Broken, Beat and Scarred” features an anthemic bridge that seemingly can’t be topped until you hear the even more anthemic chorus. The standout track though is “The Judas Kiss” which is easily the best thing Metallica have done for eighteen years. It has everything you could want from a Metallica song; riffs clashing against riffs, supercharged solos, and a racing chorus that gets stuck in your head like an Aqua song but except in a good way.

“The Judas Kiss” with its “Masters of Puppets” meets “The Black Album” sensibility is a contender for one of the best dozen or so metal songs of 2008 at least at this stage in the year, but “Death Magnetic” is more in the top 50 albums of the year so far than the top ten. It’s pretty good and its better than the recent albums by Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Megadeth, but I don’t think it measures up to the latest albums by the likes of Nachtmystium, The Rotted and Earth in terms of quality in the scheme of things. Metallica are of their time, but if for the next few years they keep making decent pieces of 80’s style heavy metal like this, I doubt they will get too many complaints. It’s not “St Anger mark II” but it’s not “Master of Puppets Mark II” either. It’s a pretty good metal album, and five years ago I didn’t think Metallica were still capable of that, so who knows what they can pull out of the hat for their next album.

First of the Styigan at Myspace

As a way of getting your music out there as a new band handing out your demo to random passers-by at a metal festival is certainly a novel approach, but it’s the one that Wales First of the Stygian took and I guess since it got them this review it’s worked to some extent. First of the Stygian describe their music as “Progressive power thrash” and at least two thirds of that is true. Their straight up heavy metal approach is too straight forward to be progressive, but for what it is, it’s very promising. Taking influence from Judas Priest, Overkill, King Diamond, Helloween and Metal Church, these boys have a style that is both rooted firmly in the 80’s but is original enough to with enough songs of this calibre evolve into their own distinct sound.

Of particular interest are vocalist Tyrone Leigh Williams who seems to be able to perfectly mimic both King Diamonds hissing voice and James Hetfield circa Ride the Lightning along with coming up with a death metal growl, and bassist James Macdonald who can play one mean bass solo if he needs to. It’s not quite the finished product yet, but it’s certainly very good for a new band.

Alestorm at Myspace

If you haven’t heard the term “Battle Metal”, then you haven’t had the misfortune of reading Metal Hammer UK recently. After previously covering Oasis and the The Verve in the 90’s and in recent memory given My Chemical Romance and other emo bands front covers, said magazine has now decided it is “the defender of the faith of metal”. As part of this transformation, they have been promoting “battle metal” which seems to be name one can give to any bunch of keyboard wielding attention seekers in comedy costumes playing a piss poor combination of Power Metal, Folk Metal and AOR.

Alestorm are one of the only UK bands to come under this bizarre label and play something called “True Scottish Pirate Metal” that is unique though I’m not sure if it’s a good thing. All of the folk influences have been picked up second hand from mostly Finnish folk metal bands rather than drawing any influence from Scottish folk music or indeed actual folk music itself. Alestorm have two modes of operating. One as exhibited on the first few tracks of the album such as “Captain Morgan’s Revenge” and “Nancy the Tavern Wrench” is to play mid paced plodding power metal for the “randomness” crowd. These songs combine the Keyboard drenched cheese of Turisas with the faux-old world sound of the Dropkick Murphys with lyrics full of cheesy references to pirates clichés that even “Pirates of the Caribbean” would be ashamed of.

On “Death before the Mast” and “Terror on the High Seas” a different approach is taken. A fast paced punky take on traditional heavy metal is infused with some funky Janne Wirmann style synth theatrics. The high tempo and razor sharp riffs get the heart racing and on these songs the band stays the right side of cheesiness. When they try and combine this approach with the more generic Turisas-esque approach that was mentioned in the last paragraph it just doesn’t gel at all. An example of this, “Set Sail and Conquer” proves this with any momentum and excitement being drowned out in a thousand musical and lyrical clichés. It’s no surprise that the two tracks stand above the rest of the offering on this album were the most lyrically subdued.

For every “funny if you are 16 years old” line such as “I want more wrenches/more wrenches and mead” there are 4 or 5 clearly audible cringeworthy ones that not even the biggest fan of “randomness” can stomach. The most embarrassing moment is their awful power metal cover of the Scottish nationalist ditty “Flower of Scotland” which is terrible beyond words. Alestorm have the capability of being more than just another gimmick band for teenage “random metal LOL” fans, but on this album at least, there are too many lumbering cliché fests to see whether they can weather the storm when this type of metal eventually becomes unpopular.

Dio at Myspace

The trend of bands performing entire albums in concert seems to be pretty popular these days (I have Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung Live” and 2 out of 3 of Dream Theater’s “Official Bootleg” series), and Dio continues it with this 2-disc set where every song from “Holy Diver” is performed.

Dio’s voice has its ups and downs. He’s awfully hoarse on some songs on the first disc (the title track especially), but he’s awesome on others (especially when you remember he’s over 60. The band is in fine form throughout, with “Gypsy” and “Shame on the Night” containing drum and guitar solos, respectively, which are lengthy but remain interesting throughout. Disc 2 was my favorite part; it contains two songs from Dio’s sophomore effort “The Last in Line”, as well as covers from his stints with Rainbow and Black Sabbath. Another part I enjoyed was the end of the song “Gypsy” after the drum solo; a pre-recorded version of Holst’s “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” bursts out and the drummer plays along with it. It has to be one of the silliest moments in metal that I’ve ever experienced, but I love silliness in metal so it’s all fine with me. This wouldn’t be the best place to start with Dio (stick to the original Holy Diver for that), but fans of his work will enjoy this album.