Judas Priest: Painkiller…finally got around to discovering this classic heavy metal album

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve recently been digging up a lot of classic heavy metal albums, particularly from the golden ’80s age of metal. In doing that, late last year I enquired: what is the best starting point for Judas Priest (and am I showing my ignorance or what)? Iron Maiden is the greatest band that ever was (don’t argue the point) and I love traditional heavy metal. Yet I just kind of never got into Judas Priest.

According to my sources, Painkiller was the definitive item in the Judas Priest discography, whereas the Screaming For Vengeance album was the most commercially successful. I promptly Painkiller album and not long after was left with a feeling comparable to “where has this album been all my life”.

I won’t go into excruciating detail about what I think makes the Painkiller album so great or why it’s so fantastically memorable — and so utterly goddamn metaaal! People who have been banging heads to it longer than I have can give you a view that’s better informed than mine, or even one that dissents from the usual praise norm.

That silver bloke on the cover? He’s that Painkiller chap you’ve heard so much about.

Historically, Painkiller was Judas Priest’s glorious 1990 move to heavier, proto-power and speed-ish metal after a couple of albums spent meandering around what was touted as a dated and overly happy or even synthy sound. Many fans nowadays feel it contains some of the best Judas Priest songs ever recorded, or at least some of the most popular, what with several cuts going on to become Judas Priest live staples. Personally, my favourite element on Painkiller is Rob Halford’s soaring operatic voice. It’s genuinely extreme — not because it sounds brutal or guttural (which it totally doesn’t), but because his almost comical high-pitched vocals manage to re-create inhuman sounds that most of us would never even contemplate attempting with our mere mortal vocal cords. Add to the mix the fact that Halford is wailing a dozen tales about, metal, leather, defiance, fire, come uppance and more metal, not to mention the fact that there’s all that other stuff going on, from the tremendously heavy opening drums on the title track to the superbly tight guitarmanship and, and, and… the whole experience is just so goddamn freakin’ METAL.

Painkiller is widely regarded as belonging right up there with classic metal albums. At the risk of getting all academic on the topic, I feel it’s a romanticised embodiment of everything that is great about heavy metal. And I’m a better for finally coming across a copy.

Not bad for an album that’s 23 years old

Heavy metal cat

This photo is from just after Christmas. Every year as the festive season approaches and friends and family inevitably ask what I want for Christmas, the response I give is always the same: gift vouchers from record stores

My birthday is close to Christmas so I often manage to accumulate a critical mass of vouchers — and no, in case you were wondering, I don’t get double the amount of presents. I can (if I’m especially well behaved) get away with combining both days into one 150 per cent above average size gift, but twice the volume would be greedy.

Still, it all makes for what is every music collector’s dream of awesomeness, that being a record store shopping spree.

While my preferred source of vouchers from those who are generous enough to get one (or more) for me is from HeartlandRecords, just outside of the Melbourne CBD, not everyone is able to go there in person, so I often end up with vouchers from elsewhere. In this instance I ended up with $100 in JB Hi Fi vouchers, resulting in the following album haul (read on why the cat's in the shot).

• ·         Judas Priest: Painkiller
• ·         Eizbrecher: Eiszeit
• ·         Devin Townsend Project: Epicloud
• ·         A six-pack of early Motörhead albums (what's not to love about Motörhead?
• ·         Manowar: Hail To England
• ·         Megadeth: Th1rt3en

Heavy metal cat.

As I was laying out the CDs for the pic I managed to snap all of one photo before Patapuss generously decided to ‘help’.

Now he’s a lovely cat and after stretching out and announcing his presence with a meow (he does that) he then decided he’d have a little scent of selected CDs.

I noticed the Devin Townsend Epicloud album received most of his attention, and a little bit also went to the Manowar album.

Just heavy metal.

I pointed this out on a Facebook post and the person who recommend Epicloud to me in the first place remarked that this was evidence of Devin Townsend’s awesomeness. I then pointed out that Patapuss didn’t so much as even touch Dave Mustaine's Megadeth CD.

“Clearly a cat of discrimination and good taste,” was the response.

Ouch!

Everyone should listen to at least one Motörhead album every day

UPDATE 16/06/2013: This story seems to have crept onto Google's top 10 results for the keywords "How long would it take to listen to every motorhead song"? I can't give you the answer to that, but I can tell you that everyone should listen to at least one Motörhead album every day.

A friend recently said something about Motörhead which I think very accurately describes what the band is to most people who aren’t necessarily devout fans: “I never really got into them but I never disliked what I heard.”

Founded in the mid ’70s by former Jimi Hendrix roadie and ex-Hawkwind bassist / vocalist, Lemmy Kilmister (how’s that for not one but two unbeatable claims to fame), Motörhead are easily one of the most influential bands of all time in hard rock and heavy metal. Thousands of bands proudly claim to have been directly influenced by them; they’re credited with ‘re-igniting’ the NWOBHM genre at a time when punk seemed like an unstoppable force; they’ve literally outlived countless more bands; the Joe Petagno-drawn War-Pig Motörhead logo with its heavy metal umlaut rates right up there with Iron Maiden’s Eddie in the world of metal mascots go; they’re said to have been indirectly responsible for creating speed-metal… That, and 67-year-old Lemmy continues to push out Motörhead albums, the most recent one being album number 20.

Seriously, what’s not to like about Motörhead?

Actually until very recently I found myself in the “never really got into them but I never disliked what I heard” brigade. But that seems to be changing.

I’ve mentioned before how I find it so much harder these days to discover new music that really gets me excited. Depending on who you ask there’s either a biological reason called “getting old” for why you hate all this damn young person’s music, or this phenomenon doesn’t really occur because all new music actually does suck and was always better back then. Whichever way you feel about it, in my case it goes some way to explain why over the last few years I’ve gotten my hands on a whole heap of classics, particularly ’80s heavy metal albums. Among them, is a haul of Motörhead albums.

 Kind of not the first Motörhead album.

 My first proper foray into Motörhead (other than a muffled cassette tape dub of Rock 'n' Roll that I came across when I was 12) didn’t quite blow me away. As I said, I was looking into more classic heavy metal albums, and I decided to pick up a Motörhead album at random from my local chain store. I ended up with a copy of On Parole — to the best of my understanding a proto-Motörhead album that was initially meant to be the band’s debut, but which their record label sat on for a couple of years. As far as I can tell, several tracks then made it onto the band’s debut, Motörhead: Motörhead.

As a stand-alone, On Parole has a rocking ’70s groove with a cool bluesy feel and some sharp lyrics (like the witty Vibrator and the visceral anti-record label Fools). However, it still didn’t quite feel like it had that “I never disliked what I heard” vibe. Perhaps because it was just a little bit too ’70s? Or maybe there wasn’t enough of the unmistakable ‘Lemmy from Motörhead’ gravelly voice?

So I decided to give it another shot and that’s when I stumbled upon this six-album set of the band’s next six albums. The Motörhead:Classic Album Selection is a nice budget-pack that, while housed in nice cardboard sleeves, does not come with any separate liner notes. It starts with the second album in the Motörhead discography, Overkill from 1980, and progresses through Bomber, Ace Of Spades, Iron Fist, Another Perfect Day and, finally, the No Sleep ’Till Hammersmith live album.

That’s when I realised I’d somehow managed to acquire all these albums in chronological order (save for the first album, which as I’ve mentioned I kind of already half-owned). Surely… this had to mean something? Motörhead had been absent in my life for so long and here was some kind of sign that I should start from the beginning. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to buy more music.

Motörhead albums galore.

To date I’ve happily managed to get through one full daily listen of Overkill and I’ve just commenced on Overkill. Everything is a blend of dirty 12-bar blues and fast, in your face, loud hard rock; and every song is about birds, drinking, and people getting their come-uppance. From there it’ll finally be onto Ace Of Spades, an album which I hate to say I’ve never heard before, save for the title track.

As I said, I’m busily digging (up) the classics.

The Motörhead: Classic Album Selection box would make for a superb starting point for the aspiring Motörhead listener. It’s classic hard rock and heavy metal from half a dozen albums that contain what are widely regarded as some of the best Motörhead songs ever written. It contains everything I could have possibly wished for and it has that unmistakeable Motörhead vibe. 

 Contains some of the best best Motörhead songs ever.

While we’re at it, here’s a video of Ace Of Spades, performed by Compressorhead: the “world’s heaviest metal band”. That’s a description to be taken literally by the way. After all, look at them…

Shouldn’t it be Compressörhead?

As I said, what’s not to like about Motörhead?

Fear Factory: Resurrection

I picked up this this like-new CD up from one of Heartland Records’ second-hand heavy metal bins. The release is Fear Factory: Resurrection, a three-track EP from 1998 which takes its lead track from Obsolete, the third full-length album in the Fear Factory discography.

This brought me back to my younger days. Like so many metal heads in the mid to late ’90s, I too was captivated Fear Factory’s Demanufacture album. If you were there, you’ll recall how this band which came from nowhere wowed everyone with their futuristic sound, smashing industrial edge, total lack of guitar solos, furious but clinically technical drumming and — I suspect to many the unmistakeable quality that helped get on everyone’s radar — the trademark dual rough-clean vocal delivery.

So when the follow-up Obsolete came out three years later it struck me as being not quite so out there as its predecessor. Whereas on Demanufacture the dual-vocals I just mentioned were an integral but nonetheless balanced element (which as I said, everyone just loved), on Obsolete Fear Factory I felt went overboard with the catchy vocal melodies. So much so that I felt there were noticeable moments where it seemed this band was sticking to the formula rather than crushing boundaries. Admittedly, it was a formula that Obsolete did well, but with so much expectation heaped onto this band’s third release, it just didn’t strike me as being one of the best Fear Factory albums ever.

Resurrection is not a bad song. It’s a superbly produced and almost entirely clean-sung metal ballad for lack of a better word that somehow combines melancholia with that unmistakable noisy Fear Factory instrument sound. There’s even a bit of what sounds like a string section towards the end, and the band’s vocalist, Burton C. Bell, rated it as one of the best Fear Factory songs.

Not the best Fear Factory track ever in my view. But Burton loves it.

However, it’s not quite my cup of tea. A real cynic might even suggest that this was Fear Factory’s attempt to cash in on a commercial hit (which they totally did with their cover of Gary Numan’s Cars not much later; again, it's not a bad track but it was nonetheless a recording released with the sole intention of cracking into the commercial charts).

Of far greater interest (to me personally anyway) on Resurrection is track two, a b-side called 0-0 (Where Evil Dwells). A jarring contrast to the smooth melody of the title track, it’s a cover that was originally done by an obscure ’80s industrial music collaboration by the name of Wiseblood.

It’s worth noting that Fear Factory vocalist Burton C. Bell never made a secret of his music influences. I recall once when I was a teenager how I was too young to see the band play live during a national Fear Factory tour, but I was nonetheless happy to hear Bell make an appearance on Triple JJJ’s national Three Hours Of Power metal radio show. The show host, Costa Zouliou, invited him to play some of his favourite and most influential tunes, so after the usual interview stuff was done Burton promptly played some very un-metal tracks, including the folky ballad-like Bonnie And Clyde by French musician Serge Gainsbourg.

In this case of the Resurrection EP I’m not entirely sure what the connection is with the
Wiseblood track, but I’d like to think it’s safe to say that there’s a real influence behind it. Wiseblood was an obscure collaboration between J. G. Thirlwell (misspelt “Thirwell” in the liner notes) — a native of my home-town Melbourne and real industrial music and noise sicko behind Foetus — and Roli Mosimann from Swans, a band which for some reason I’ve never gotten into.

The song 0-0 (Where Evil Dwells) is from the Wiseblood: Dirtdish album, released in 1987. The subject matter deals with a gruesome and highly sensationalised 1984 murder committed by Richard Kasso, aka ‘The Acid Killer’. The track is a superb example of in-your-face music — the way they used to make it, when industrial was a genuinely underground and taboo phenomenon. And this track has it all too: pounding percussion blasts, angst-ridden synths laced with tension, and Thirlwell’s obscene drawl recounting the shocking facts of a ritualised murder. That, and it was released in 1987.

It all translates uncannily well and sits comfortably among so many other Fear Factory songs. Especially the rapid-fire percussion parts, which are such a trademark element of the band’s sound. But is it influence or coincidence? As I said, I don’t know the full story. I'd like to imagine that the decision maker who urged the band to release the ever so radio-friendly Cars was a different beast to whoever said go right ahead with covering an obscure industrial act from the '80s that released a hellishly dark track about ritualised murder and mutilation.
I'd also like to think that two music dissidents who made a record in the ’80s had something to do with how Fear Factory sound like today. And even if that turns out not to be true, at least it’s still an excellent tune. 0-0 (Where Evil Dwells) is definitely my favourite track from Resurrection, more so than the catchy, melodic, radio-friendly, tuneful lead track.

Marduk: Swedish black metal hits Australia

I’m a firm believer in unplanned fun. That is, the less expected a night, event or catch-up is, the greater the likelihood of it turning into a memorable occasion.

Such was the case very recently when I found myself in the city and decided to catch a gig headlined by Swedish black metal masters Marduk. All unplanned of course.

I had been in the CBD to celebrate with my day job work colleagues (yes, I have respectable day-time employment ). The team would be moving back to our now-refurbished suburban office after three or so months of temporary work in the city, so I’d organised a table for a dozen people at Mrs. Parma’s restaurant. This place easily has the best chicken parmas in Melbourne — and a magnificent assortment of micro-brewery beers to boot — and after polishing off a Mexican parma (my favourite) and finally managing to sample the splendid 3 Ravens beer I’d heard so much about, a few of us hardier folk decided to kick on. As soon as we left, we found a bar almost directly next to where we’d just come from, but a few glances between us quickly resulted in a decision not to enter.

To quote a certain popular meme, one does not simply enter the first bar one finds when ‘kicking on’ for the night.

 

This never gets old.

So we bypassed that one and ended up at the Hofbrauhaus, where along with some fine Bier, I felt like a small part of my life had now been successfully fulfilled after I sampled the peach, chocolate and plum schnapps.

Sensing that the night was drawing to a close and feeling pretty good about everything so far, we bid our farewells and I headed to the train station. That’s when I spotted some long-haired, black-clad, bullet belt-ridden freaks — not an unusual sight in the city, but there were quite a few of them here, forming a line outside the well-known concert venue that is the The Hi-Fi bar.

Why of course, I remembered. Some Swedish black metal dudes were in town. And they’d be performing. Live. Playing Marduk's new album, 2012’s Serpent Sermon. Would it be… worth catching them live perhaps?

I will preface this by saying that I’m not much of a Marduk fan, at least in the sense that I own and know only one album in the entire Marduk discography: Heaven Shall Burn… When We Are Gathered (along with the accompanying Glorification EP).

So I’m not a huge fan in the sense that I don’t know that many Marduk songs.

On the other hand, Heaven Shall Burn… is one of my favourite metal albums of all time. Released in 1996, it has some of the best black metal I’ve ever heard. Tracks like Glorification Of The Black God, The Black Tormentor Of Satan and the simple-yet-utterly-awesome (and exceedingly difficult to pronounce) slow epic that is Dracul Va Domni Din Nou In Transilvania — these tracks rock my socks of every time I hear them, though I’m sure the true kvlt haters out there will disagree.

The best Marduk album I’ve ever heard. It’s also the only one I’ve ever heard.

So basically I love this one release and don’t know any other Marduk albums. Since I also love a lot of black metal in general I figured I’d call a mate, Nick, to find out if, just on the off chance, he might be attending tonight. It turned out he was, so we caught up five minutes later and I was at the door shelling out cash for a ticket.

But then… I quickly realised that I was confronted with a problem. As mentioned previously, I’d come directly from work. Here I was at an extreme underground black metal music gig and I was quite literally the only person there dressed in business shoes and corporate slacks. At least my (I’m told) expensive and genuinely non-knock-off Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt which I wear on special occasions (like social events with work colleagues) was black. Nonetheless, my heavy metal cred wouldn’t cop this for long. I quickly bee-lined to the Marduk merch table and acquired an Australian Tour Marduk shirt, which incidentally, in a dejected gesture of defeat, I exchanged five minutes later for the next size up. I might have to cut down on those lovely Mexican parmas…

IGNIVOMOUS, PORTAL, ORDER OF ORIAS AND MARDUK LIVE

The first band on the bill played what you might say had an ‘acquired’ taste. Ignivomous played not so much a blend but more of a solid brick of unrelenting, fast, never-ending brutal death metal. Every track was a plutonium-heavy rapid assault which, while I don’t mind in reasonably small doses, wouldn’t suffer from the addition of some variety, hinted at in the occasional creative riff change. Here’s some Ignivomous live video from a previous gig if that’s your cup of tea.

Next was Order Of Orias, a band I’ve seen several times and which I’ve blogged about previously. I rather like Inverse, Order Of Orias’ 2011 debut full-length album. It conveys a strongly fatalistic and malevolent atmosphere (remarkably, said to have been produced on a shoestring budget), even though I’ll concede that I probably couldn’t name most of the tracks from the album if I heard them come on my playlist. I just like chucking on this album — the operative word here being album, rather than individual tracks — and soaking up the bleakness as a whole, which is why at the time of writing this band ranked number 46 on my personal Last FM chart stats out of almost 1600 artists.

As they came on stage their opening track was preceded by an interesting (pre-recorded in this instance I think) somewhat ambient-leaning instrumental track. Nick pointed out that this was from new or in-progress material that he’d heard, describing some of it as “coming from outer space”. I agreed, and if this brief preview is indicative of material to come then surely there’s something here to get excited about.

Then the ‘real’ playing started. They were as tight and heavy as the last time I saw them, while vocalist Anthony, boot perched on the foldback, roared ferocious invocations, as if summoning some elder evil force. This is a band that I’d really like to think is going places. Literally in fact. Last year they played the DeathkultOpen Air festival in Germany. Hopefully when a new album comes out they’ll be doing more of that.

Australian black metal. Or blackened thrash. Or… hell, I can’t keep track of what the kids call it these days.
Order Orias. Live at Marduk. Surely you can tell from the high quality phone pic?

The curveball performance for the night was Portal. Despite the fact that there's a relatively long Wikipedia entry for Portal, an attempt to describe this band’s performance with mere words wouldn’t do justice to what actually occurred. It’s black metal. Death metal. Crazy metal. The below photo, thankfully of a slightly higher quality than the above pic, may give you some idea of what it was all about.

You totally had to be there.

I counted two eight-string guitars. Black hoods on all the members. A five-string bass. Mad drumming. The vocalist’s crazy headdress. And that totally dissonant and crazy, tempo-changing, blast-beatingly over the top dissonant sound that, combined with the intense volume, transformed the whole spectacle into a creeping blanket of occult noise.
Also, did I mention that they did their entire performance in that attire?

Yet despite the cacophony there appeared to be some intense musicianship going on here. Alas, if only I could hear it! I closely watched one of the guitarists and his hands slid up and down his instrument like some deranged octopus. “There’s some technical shit right there,” Nick pointed out.

The video below might somehow convey the overall effect, despite the loud volume completely obliterating the audio on my phone. I do feel that if Portal’s stage presence had been any less over the top then it’d be easy to dismiss them as laughable and gimmicky. Which admittedly, to some people, may very much be the case.
As it was, for those who dig it, the combination of technical musicianship (whether that’s your cup of tea or not), extreme volume, and impossible-to-look-away-from stage presence combined into what may best described as an overwhelming force that twisted things into another dimension.

Black metal TISM.

Finally Marduk hit the stage. Or rather, assailed it, blasting away and playing furiously to a whole bunch of songs that I would have almost certainly appreciated even more if I recognised even one of them. Alas, not a single cut from Heaven Shall Burn… When We Are Gathered was played that night. Still, I wasn’t complaining.

Mortuus, Marduk’s vocalist, showed himself to be an accomplished front-man, invoking the crowd into not so much a frenzy, to use that old cliché, but rather, a decent and vigorous amount of movement and head banging for those at the front and centre who chose to do so.

It was a contrast to the comparatively sedate motions of guitarist Morgan. You wouldn’t think he was the band’s founder and sole continuous member since Marduk’s uniquely-named first release (find it here — note: the album artwork at this link is NOT even remotely worksafe), or that he was a talented multi-instrumentalist. It didn’t stop him from playing all those killer black metal guitar riffs though.

It was also good to see this stompin’ evil Swedish black metal band show what resembled a sense of humour. At one point, Mortuus commanded the crowd to make some noise. The response was instantaneous, but he pulled a face and did a so-so gesture with his hand. He then commanded the crowd to try again. No, it wasn’t the funniest of stand-up comedy routines. But in comparison, the previous band performed an entire set draped in black hoods. So at least there was something resembling rapport…

 

Marduk live. Black metal goes Down Under.

The gig ended with an encore and as we stepped outside I instantly regretted not bringing ear plugs. For a full day afterwards all sounds were draped in an uncomfortably familar and unhealthy muffled filter.

So I went home, content in the knowledge that, at least for this week, I’d done my bit for heavy metal. I went to the gig. I supported the local Australian metal scene. I bought the World Serpent tour shirt. I even got a Marduk patch to add to my Iron Maiden jacket.

My only regret? Other than neglecting to use earplugs and suffering from tinnitus all weekend?

That awesome Mexican chicken parma. Much as I love ’em with all my stomach, they forcibly make themselves felt again the next day.

Not everyone has this reaction I hope (I’m not very big on chilli and spicy food) but in my case I’m certain it’s due to those jalapeno slices. I find them hotter than the blasphemous hellfire found in so many Marduk lyrics. And I got to relive — or is that relieve — it all again the next morning right after my first coffee…