Manilla Road at Myspace

Manilla Road is one of those bands that’s been around forever, but never managed to break into the mainstream in any way despite releasing some great material. Their first album, Invasion, dates all the way back to 1980. The production is about as rough as one would expect from an album self-released by a band from Kansas, hundreds of miles away from any of the major metal scenes at the time. Mark Shelton’s nasal, high-pitched voice is a bit of an acquired taste. There are also some incredibly cheesy parts, including the silly spoken intro to “Far Side of the Sun,” the terrible, cliche-ridden lyrics to “Cat and Mouse,” and the horrible trainwreck of studio effects that ends what was Side A on the original LP.

Yet for all these sins, there’s quite a bit of talent on display here. Shelton’s soloing is quite good, and the rhythm section is fine, if a bit workmanlike at times. It doesn’t really sound that much like the band’s later work, either musically or lyrically (there are no nods to the work of Lovecraft or Howard, for example). I especially enjoyed the 13-minute album closer, “The Empire,” which is closest to the epic feel that the band strove for on their later material. Invasion isn’t Manilla Road’s best album, but it’s a decent place to start.

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.

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.

Ozzy Osbourne at Myspace

This album’s a guilty pleasure for me. It’s billed as live but clearly heavily overdone in the studio, as the contrast between Ozzy’s drunken rambling and his vocals in the songs themselves is obvious. But still, I enjoy it. Ozzy doesn’t perform any of his solo material, but sticks to songs he performed in Black Sabbath exclusively. Apparently, this album was released in order to compete with the Dio-era Sabbath album “Live Evil”. Randy Rhoads had just died, so he isn’t on this, and he was replaced by Brad Gillis, who would become famous with the AOR band Night Ranger, and he’s really no replacement for either Rhoads or Tony Iommi.

So why do I like this album? For one thing, the bass is awesome. Rudy Sarzo of Quiet Riot and Whitesnake plays on this album, and it makes me wonder why he was wasting his time with those lame pop metal bands, as he’s awesome here with his fuzzy bass tone. But my favorite part of the album is Ozzy’s between-song banter. He is just gloriously drunk, and I kept cracking up over his cries of “LOWDAH! LOWDAH!”, him falsely taking credit for writing the song “Black Sabbath” and yelling “KEEP ON SMOKIN’ IT!” at the end of “Sweet Leaf”. Although I enjoy this album, I can’t really recommend it, but die-hard Sabbath and Ozzy fans might want to check it out.

NOTE: This album is no longer being produced, so check used CD stores or download it on iTunes if you want it. Also, it should be noted that early CD pressings are missing “Sweet Leaf”.