1122. Bon Jovi / Slippery When Wet. 1986. 4/5

By the time 1986 had come around, Bon Jovi had already been around for a few years, and had released two albums, the eponymous Bon Jovi released in 1984 and the follow up, 7800° Fahrenheit released in 1985. Both albums had been a moderate success and had managed to get themselves noticed by the, again, moderately successful singles, “Runaway” from the debut album and “In and Out of Love” from 7800° Fahrenheit. But the band was ambitious, and in their two main members, lead singer Jon Bon Jovi and guitarist Richie Sambora, they had a pair of song writers who had the ideas to get them there. But they decided that they needed some help to get them started on their next album if it was to achieve what they were hoping. They were looking for a more mainstream sound than they had had on their first two albums – though, from a personal perspective in this instance, what they were actually looking for was material that struck a chord rather than looking to be more commercial. So in putting together their new album, they made some, in retrospect, canny decisions. Bruce Fairbairn was brought in to produce the album, man who had already had success with Loverboy and Aerosmith, and would do so after this with bands such as AC/DC, Scorpions and Van Halen. Bob Rock, who would produce mega albums from bands such as Motley Crue and Metallica following this, was brought in to mix the album. And a phone call was made to the man known as “The Hit-Maker", Desmond Child, to help collaborate with Bon Jovi and Sambora on a few tracks to help them get the kind of sound and appeal that they were looking for. From all reports and interviews, the band put together something like 30 songs in the writing process, and eventually auditioned them to locals to judge which songs would eventually go on the album.Did hiring Desmond Child have an influence? Well, you would have to judge that for yourself I guess. Child co-wrote four songs on the album, the balladesque “Without Love” and rock ballad “I’d Die For You”, and also two other songs you may know, “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer”. So yeah, I’d say he was worth whatever he got paid for helping out in the writing department.

Slippery When Wet became a template for the most commercially successful albums through the second half of the 1980’s, and one that most hair metal bands in particular tried to follow to replicate this album’s success. It is a combined selection of rock tracks and unashamed soft rock ballads, of harder songs that don’t always get the attention of the million selling singles, and of slower tempo tracks. Because of the mega success of the singles released from the album, many people don’t even know half of the songs on the album, even though they probably have a copy of it at home.

The timing of the release of the singles from the album kept Slippery When Wet and Bon Jovi in the music charts and on the stereos of people worldwide for an 18 month period from mid-1986 through to the end of 1987 and beyond. Four singles were released, each spaced roughly four months apart so as not to step on the toes of each other. You know them all, and you know the words to them all as well. “You Give Love a Bad Name” was brought out a few weeks prior to the album’s release and immediately caught on radio and MTV which set up the album’s release perfectly. This was followed by “Livin’ on a Prayer” which is the song everyone still knows Bon Jovi for. It is the anthem that never stops being sung anywhere in the world, by the young and the young at heart. We’re always halfway there. It stayed on rotation on music video shows for a year, and feels as though it has never left radio rotation for the last 35 years. Six months later came “Wanted Dead or Alive”, a completely different tempo song with the acoustic guitars which again caught the attention of the 16-30 years olds and made them swoon over Bon Jovi and Sambora all over again. And the fourth and final single was the rock ballad “Never Say Goodbye”, surely always tagged as being a single and one they would have hoped would be a winner. And it did well but given the amazing success of the album’s first three singles it was probably always on a hiding to nothing.
On the back of these singles, the album was a raging success. Both “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer” went to number one around the world including the US and Australia, while “Wanted Dead or Alive” reached top ten. This meant that Slippery When Wet became to the first album of the metal genre to have three top ten singles on it.

But an album can’t be considered great on the singles alone, and as much as I enjoy those three main singles released from the album, they aren’t what just makes this album terrific – because if you were only putting the album on for those songs you would eventually be sorely disappointed. You have to take a look at the rest of the contributors to realise what makes this album so special. The opening blast of “Let it Rock” actually is the perfect set up for the album, the mid-tempo anthemic chanting draws you in from the start, making you feel a part of the crowd and the experience itself. Once the two multi-million selling singles follow this you have “Social Disease” which is just as important in the scheme of the album and not far behind them regarding great Bon Jovi songs. “Raise Your Hands” is probably still my favourite song from the album, it is the hardest track on the album as far as I’m concerned, and in regard to getting the blood pumping it is the winner here.
For the lovers of the soft rock ballads, the back half of the album is where they are hiding, and if you enjoy that part of the genre then this is the money shot for you. “Without Love” is very much in this category, for me a little whiny on vocals. “I’d Die For You” harks back to the early Bon Jovi years, and indeed reminds me constantly of their first single “Runaway” such is the dominance of the keyboards here. Then the final single “Never Say Goodbye”, where the band goes into full-on soft ballad mode. The album is then concluded by the hard rocking “Wild in the Streets”, concluding the album the way it started on a positive note.

The album spanned musical tastes and the generations. Radio listeners loved it, pop fans loved it, rock fans loved it, metal fans loved it. The album was loved by primary school kids and adults from 20 to 50. Everyone could find something on here to their musical taste, and once the album had that in, it was able to drag them into enjoying the rest of it.
On the other side of the coin, I doubt that the album has the same impact on those that didn’t grow up with it at the time of its release. It’s popularity today is based more on the blanket warmth of memories that it inspires rather than the relevance and timelessness of the songs the album produced. Many from the following generations indeed appear bemused when this album is brought up in conversation as one of the great albums, and you can see why that would be. Not only have parts of this album dated over time, anchored to the decade that it was written and recorded, Bon Jovi’s recession into an almost easy-listening act in recent times does nothing when trying to articulate just how huge and important this album was back when it was released. Perhaps today, on the 35th anniversary of its release, it is a day for reflection on that. Because in its time it was an album that almost every music fan of every genre of music owned a copy of. And that more than anything else showed its importance of its age.

Rating:  "Oooohhhh, we're halfway there..."  4/5

1121. Powerwolf / Call of the Wild. 2021. 3.5/5

Powerwolf has been proficient in releasing albums, with Call of the Wild being their eighth studio album. In amongst that they have had songs that have charted in countries through their native Germany and other parts of Europe, including “We Drink Your Blood”, “Sanctified with Dynamite” and “Demons Are a Girl’s Best Friend”. The lyrics of the band are characterised by the treatment of Christianity and ancient Romanian legends. Indeed, werewolves and vampires are just a part of the Powerwolf lyrical mysticism, with creatures and beasts from legends throughout other parts of the world also being using as the basis of their songs. They also mix in religious overtones, without coming out and specifying what particular side of the divide they may inhabit themselves. Powerwolf, however, do not consider themselves a religious band, but rather call themselves spiritual. In an interview with Metal Hammer in 2019, titled “Too many bands take themselves too seriously”, Matthew Greywolf was asked if he considered himself to be a Christian or a Satanist. His answer was perfect: "I am a metallist, a metal fan. Metal is my religion. Look at all these people, what unites them? I can tell you, it's the fucking metal." Now THAT’S the kind of answer you want to hear from someone in that position!

Powerwolf play a different type of the power metal genre than most bands who get lumped into that faction. While the keyboards are always prevalent and add a lot to the atmospheric sound that the band utilises, they do not dominate in the way that power metal bands usually have them, as a duelling role against the single guitar that most of these bands possess. Here the keyboards are an important component of the music, but in a keyboard/guitar trade off. With two guitarists, they still dominate the main passages of the songs, which is what gives them their edge over those power metal bands that only have a single guitarist.

For the fans of Powerwolf they do cover most bases here on Call of the Wild. There is even their power ballad, something they have kept clear of for most of their career, which has been a point I have admired of them to this time. “Alive or Undead” pushes their boundaries in a direction hitherto unexplored, but as you would expect they do a great job of it without resorting to making it overly emotional and (to be honest) boring. If you have to do a power ballad, this is the way to make it work. And as always there is their slightly left of appropriate song, this time the catchy and fun “Undress to Confess”, a song that may draw some negative comments from some on social media, but for me just reinforces the fun that this band has with its music. Because of the grand design of keyboards and even organ on this album that is making its presence felt more on this album, there is a certain symphonic sound to their music which, if you are not a fan of it will probably make it harder to get yourself into this album, given the way the band has been developing over recent albums. Songs such as “Glaubenskraft” and “Blood for Blood” have that congregational feel to them, something that some fans have trouble reconciling. But for others the speed and heavier guitaring from songs like the title track “Call of the Wild”, the opening track “Faster Than the Flame”, “Dancing With the Dead”, “Vercolac”, “Sermon of Swords” and the first single “Beast of Gevaudan” are more likely to be your style. It isn’t hard to pick up the band’s stated influences, certainly in some of the guitar solos where their love of Iron Maiden is obvious, and in their gothic atmosphere their love of Mercyful Fate and Forbidden comes through.

I was surprised just how much I enjoyed this album from the first time I put it on. I initially came across the band the way I generally find new bands in this day and age, by the annual rating charts of albums on the rateyourmusic.com website that I have been a part of for over 15 years. From that I found their covers album and then The Sacrament of Sin album, and from that point I went backwards and checked out their entire discography. But for some reason this album resonated with me immediately. I enjoy all of their other albums, but perhaps not all of them in their entirety. Here on Call of the Wild, I pretty much enjoy the entire album from start to finish, and that includes the power ballad “Alive or Undead”, only the band’s second true power ballad in their existence. As much as I enjoy it, I hope it isn’t something they decide to do more of!

Rating: "And at night we're going wild when we set the world on fire" 3.5/5

1120. Yngwie Malmsteen / Parabellum. 2021. 4/5

Yngwie Malmsteen has had a long and storied career in the music industry. He made his name with his amazing guitar skills, and a slew of albums through the 1980’s including Rising Force, Marching Out, Trilogy and Odyssey that sent his reputation soaring. His desire to become a commercial hit drove him constantly and meant an ever-changing and mass rotation of band members and song styles that often found his star either glowing or waning depending on which stanza you found him at. This was especially true of his lead vocalists, who came and went as though through a revolving door. His reputation for perfection and for being difficult to work with meant that sooner or later you felt that the only way he was going to be able to keep producing albums that he wanted to hear was to actually work on them himself, and write and record them pretty much on his lonesome. And to the great surprise of no one, that is eventually the road he went down. In recent years, and certainly here in the case of Parabellum, Yngwie plays all of the guitars, all of the bass, does all of the drum programming, and where it becomes necessary, provides all of the vocals.
In an interview with Guitar World magazine from May this year, Yngwie was quoted about what went in to recording this new album: “I always try to push myself on every album I do, and attempt things which are more extreme than previously. But what has helped this time is that I wasn't able to go on the road because of the pandemic. It meant I could take much longer in the studio, both to write and record. Because I am usually always on tour, which is great, I haven't had the luxury of spending a lot of time working on new music for more than 20 years. But I suddenly had no pressure at all on that front. And I feel the album has benefited enormously as a result.”

While Yngwie’s albums have generally employed a lead vocalist for a majority of the songs through his career, in his most recent albums and also again here on Parabellum, Yngwie has ditched the lead vocalist, and done all of the vocals himself. This has inevitably led to more songs once again becoming just instrumentals as Yngwie lets his guitar doing the talking instead. Indeed, just four songs on Parabellum have lyrics. And his vocals aren’t bad as such, but they aren’t a strong lead vocal like fans were used to when people like Mark Boals, Joe Lynn Turner, Doogie White and Jeff Scott Soto. Of the four songs that contain vocals, there is a mixture in the quality. “Wolves at the Door”, “Relentless Fury” and “(Fight) The Good Fight” all, for the most part, sound very similar. This comes about because the sections where Yngwie is singing all have the same double time double kick operating underneath a rhythm riff that is basically just filler, allowing him to sing over the top of it. And, to be fair, his vocals as I said are not strong, and also sit in a very narrow range that doesn’t really ever change. So while they aren’t terrible, they just aren’t very interesting either, adding little to those songs. Now, once the songs break out of the vocals part, and Yngwie gets back to doing what he is good at which is playing elaborate guitar solos, then each of these songs is on the improve.
“Eternal Bliss” though is sadly a terrible attempt at the power ballad. Terrible. It is slightly reminiscent of his days in the early 90’s when he hoped to be a commercial success, and for me at least turned me off his music for about a decade. This song is the glaringly awful song on the album, the one that sucks a great deal of the joy one feels about it just by being there.
The remainder of the album is a collection of great instrumental tracks in the best Yngwie Malmsteen method. His guitaring has returned here to his neoclassical roots, and his fingers fly over the fretboard to keep us all entertained. “Presto Vivace in C# minor” - yep, that’s the name of the track – is fantastic, reminding us all how proficient he is at playing classically written music on the guitar. The title track “Parabellum” is another hard packed guitar track, charging to its conclusion with riffs that must have made his fingers bleed. “Toccata” and “Magic Bullet” are also great fast paced songs that will remind you of Yngwie’s heyday. “God Particle” is a slightly different song from the others on the album, mixing the vibe with classical guitar and electrified shredding, while the closing track “Sea of Tranquillity” is another beauty, though perhaps if one is to be slightly picky, it does feel as though it goes on a bit long toward the end of the track.

Maybe Yngwie is right in suggesting that because he had time to sit down and write and record this album because he couldn’t do anything else because of the covid 19 pandemic, that this makes this album the best he has done for some time. Because I really feel that listening to this album. The last Yngwie album I really got excited about and enjoyed was 2005’s Unleash the Fury with Doogie White on vocals. Prior to that you’d probably have to go back to 1988’s Odyssey. In between there have been albums I was excited about, such as 1990’s Eclipse and 2008’s Perpetual Flame, but in both of those cases I felt extremely let down and indeed steered clear of Yngwie for a time after both of those albums.
Here on Parabellum it sounds as though he has the mix right again. The majority of the songs here are just Yngwie banging away on his guitar, producing the amazing sounds that are the reason we all discovered him in the first place. And more importantly, they are brilliant guitar sounds, showcasing his wonderful talent without trying to find a format or written way to express himself. If he just spent his time over this last 12 months just hammering away with licks and riffs, and then found the best way to put them together into songs, then he should be doing that all the time from now on, because this really works terrifically well.

Rating: No need for lyrics, the master is back. 4/5

1119. W.A.S.P. / Unholy Terror. 2001. 4/5

The band W.A.S.P. had had a lot of ups and downs in the decade leading up to the recording of this album. Blackie Lawless remained the only original member of the band to survive throughout the 1990’s, with guitarist and hero to the masses Chris Holmes having first left the band after The Headless Children album, and then having returned following advances from Blackie to do so in 1995, which led to two albums being recorded with the dynamic duo intact in K.F.D. and Helldorado. Both were albums with a completely different focus, with K.F.D. having been a very serious and hardline album, focusing on a more serious nature and a more dour approach to the music and lyrics, while Helldorado had been a return to the early W.A.S.P. form with fun-loving sexual innuendo mixed with high tempo fast paced hard rocking tracks.Then followed a period of two years between 1999 and 2001 where this album was formulated written and then recorded, and by Blackie’s own words was a painful process, as he proclaims most writing periods are for him. The fact that he had taken on the role as sole writer of the songs probably didn’t help this, but it was also the way he was taking the band as a whole.
In the liner notes of the album, Blackie goes into detail on what he was thinking during the writing and recording of this album, and a lot of it lines up with the direction he was heading both spiritually and in his life and career. Having been brought up in a strict religious environment he had more or less shrugged that off in his adulthood – but here he appears to be in conflict with his beliefs, and this time and album appears to be where he was tipping back towards becoming the born again Christian he eventually became. It isn’t as if the whole album is in that direction, but lyrically Blackie seems to be struggling with the concept. He does write that there was much of his upbringing that he was uncomfortable with, the idea that good always triumphed over evil. This rings true in songs such as “Unholy Terror” and “Charisma”, which deal with the madmen of the past two thousand years, and “Loco-motive Man” which is about the gunmen who go into schools and start shooting innocent victims, Blackie’s belief it is all being about their need to be seen and to gain attention to themselves. The senselessness of these things is what is explored in these songs, and Blackie seems to be searching for answers, ones that theoretically he returned to religion to find.

Beyond the deepening thoughts that Blackie delved into to create the material for this album, the songs themselves stand up well, and any fan of W.A.S.P.’s work will find plenty here to enjoy. Apart from a couple of exceptions, the tracks are the high octane hard rock that W.A.S.P. built its reputation on, uncompromising and fast and furious through to the conclusion. Blackie again handles vocals and guitar duties throughout, Mike Duda returns on bass guitar and supporting vocals, while Frankie Banali and Stet Howland again share drumming duties on different songs throughout the album. As always, Stet’s double kick is prominent and a redeeming feature in the songs he was asked to perform on.
Where there is conjecture is over the contribution of long time W.A.S.P. guitaring legend Chris Holmes himself. Holmes himself still insists he didn't play one note on the album despite being on the liner notes. And listening to the album, this is quite obvious. Because the songs lack his presence to lift this above the standard that it is at. There are no memorable solos or slick licks like you expect from these kinds of songs. Don’t get me wrong, I still love them, but you do notice the absence of his trademark guitar.

This was the maturing of W.A.S.P. the band, and Blackie’s changing persona was probably a huge part of that. But the band had been together for some time now, and the sound that they produce had been drummed in to them like everything else about it. It was regimented, it has formulated, and it works. The music continues to be great. Aside from the Chris Holmes factor, the rhythm guitars always do the job, while the bass and drums stick together like glue. Like all of W.A.S.P throughout their history, the hardest part has been in making the vocals work in a live environment. Here in the studio, Blackie gets them sounding perfect, the harmonies and everything to do with the vocals sound brilliant. It never works as well live because the vocals are so layered on the albums, and he isn’t capable of producing the same on stage even given Duda’s efforts in support.

This album for me is highly underrated, because it is so difficult to compare it to the two previous releases. Here, the balance was restored for me. The music is brilliant, the subject matter of the songs worthy and enjoyable. You could sing these songs without cringing at the over seriousness of the subject matter or shaking your head at the silliness of it. The opening three songs are killer W.A.S.P. songs - “Let it Roar” hot off the plate, “Hate to Love Me’ hard hitting and catchy, and “Loco-Motive Man” straight out of that late 80’s W.A.S.P brilliance. And it really is here that you notice Chris isn’t playing, because his signature is nowhere to be heard, which would have only lifted these songs even higher with brilliance. “Unholy Terror” is the first of the slow acoustic driven tracks, and the sister track “Charisma” works fine as the segue. “Who Slayed Baby Jane” is classic W.A.S.P, and “Ravenheart” is of a similar ilk, but is wedged between the quiet instrumental “Euphoria” and then “Evermore”, where it is obvious that Blackie is trying to recreate the next “Forever Free” – now, you’ve already done “Forever Free”. It’s been done Blackie, don’t try and let history repeat. The rampant closing track “Wasted White Boys” is a beauty, with Roy Z laying waste to the song with a ripping closing guitar solo. He is only listed as playing the solo on this and “Who Slayed Baby Jane”, but given Chris’s information, I imagine that enlisting Roy to make a few additions to a few of the other songs would have also been handy.

When this album first came out I just loved it. Apart from the songs “Unholy Terror”, “Euphoria” and probably “Evermore”, I loved the energy of what had been produced. I loved the way that the different parts of the band’s past had been tinkered and ironed and then brought out on this collection. Yes, the disappointment that Chris Holmes was gone from the band forever was a disappointment, but it still sat in my CD player for that 3-4 months period that the good new albums did. As it turns out, even though I have enjoyed most of the albums the band has released after this, it was probably the last time I felt REALLY good about a new W.A.S.P. album.

Rating: "No love for killer babies, my pain is written on your walls" 4/5