1300. Scorpions / World Wide Live. 1985. 5/5

By the time the Scorpions had reached the middle of the 1980’s decade, their popularity had reached a peak that they could only have ever imagined that they would ever achieve. While they had had big selling albums through the 1970’s, their surge on the back of their 1980’s album such as “Animal Magnetism”, “Blackout” and “Love at First Sting” had been on another level entirely, and their tour around the world on the back of “Love at First Sting” had seen record crowds and sales especially from the singles “Rock You Like a Hurricane” and “Still Loving You”.
In 1978, with the news that guitarist Uli Jon Roth had decided to leave the band, Scorpions released their first double live album titled “Tokyo Tapes”, one that highlighted the very best songs the band had recorded over the first five albums of their career. It acted as a nice way to conclude that era of the band. The arrival of Matthias Jabs as his replacement brought about a change in style for the band, one that saw a slightly heavier direction taken, one that not only reflected the changing tide of music early in the 1980’s decade but also to suit the arrival of the new guitarist and his style.
With the band riding the crest of that wave, the decision was made to record several shows on their tour to release their second live album. At some point, the decision was made that the album would include only songs from the albums since “Tokyo Tapes” had been released, that being the three albums released in the 1980’s, along with Jabs’ first album with the band, 1979’s “Lovedrive”. In hindsight this was a savvy move. It meant that, when listening to both of the live albums back to back, it not only gives a wonderful anthology of the band’s great songs from their first release right through to their ninth studio album, there are no repeat tracks. It gives more of the 1980’s hits a chance to get their live rendition recorded for posterity, and though at the time there was some blowback from older fans saying that the band had abandoned their earlier material, the way it was been constructed has indeed turned out to be the best format the band could have achieved.
This the band released their second live album “World Wide Live”, an album that not only showcased the greatness of the band in the live setting, but proved to be my introduction to their amazing music.

My usual spiel about live albums remains the same as I talk you through this album – that a live album should be an automatic 5/5 album, because you get the band’s best material in its best environment, the stage that it has been written to be performed on. And I can say that without question that this is the case for “World Wide Live”. It has the band’s best tracks from their previous four albums all represented, and they all sound brilliant here, in some cases maybe even better than their studio versions.
“Coming Home” is the perfect opening track for the album, with lyrics that relate the band’s feelings about its fan base, while also doubling as an allternative story as well. But simply saying that “I know for me it is like... coming home”, that brings the crowd into the show from the outset, and sets up what is to come. It’s a great song, jumping and jivy, one that brings the crowd to its feet. This crashes straight into the brilliant “Blackout”, one of the band’s best, a song that should never be out of its setlist. Klaus Meine’s vocals here set the scene along with Rudolph Schenker’s excellent rhythm guitar riff. This then enters the crawling guitar riff that opens “Bad Boys Running Wild”, another great anthemic track with a super guitar riff and singalong lyrics that offers the best of the band. These opening three tracks on the album find a great chord from the outset.
The version here of “Loving You Sunday Morning” is one of the best proof in points of live tracks that can make studio versions pop. This song, that opens the “Lovedrive” album is a terrific track in its own right, but perhaps is a slight plodder on the album itself. Here, it sparkles, with all of the great spots on the song brought to life and made all sparkly. The riff is a bit heavier, the pace is a bit faster, and it all seems to fit better in the live setting. A great track. The same can be said for the next two tracks as well. Both songs are good on their particular studio albums, but they sound better in this environment. “Make it Real” from “Animal Magnetism” and “Big City Nights” from “Love at First Sting” have more potency and a better feel all round on this album, and make the middle of the first album worthy of its content. It is topped off by the always brilliant instrumental track “Coast to Coast”, with Rudolph’s riffing throughout backed by the excellent rhythm section of Herman Rarebell’s titanic drum beat and Francis Buchholz’s metronomic bass line setting the base that makes this song so special.
The band then puts together their two enormous power ballads back to back, something that would always seem to be a dangerous thing in the live setting, chancing bringing the nights momentum to a standstill. But these are no ordinary power ballads, and Scorpions are no ordinary band. They pull this off perfectly, playing just the first half of “Holiday”, which then segues perfectly into “Still Loving You”. The way the band emotes during these tracks, musically and vocally, not only makes these a highlight, but showcases the side of the band that actually attracted a lot of fans to the band in the first place.
Not me though, because what attracted me to the band was their hard rock classics, and that is where the album heads now. “Rock You Like a Hurricane” crashes in to restore heavy loud order to the album, as anthemic as ever and a great live version. Following up is the brilliant “Can’t Live Without You”, perfectly introduced through the beginning of the song, and that bursts with energy throughout. Even when just listening to this section of the album, you can see the fun the band is having on stage while playing these songs, it is infectious. From here the drive through the back half of the album continues with Lovedrive’s “Another Piece of Meat” and on to the closing track of the gig, “Dynamite”, another song with such power and energy it takes you along for the ride. Everything the band had kept in reserve while performing their power ballad duo has been expended by the conclusion of these four tracks.
The encore starts with the quite magnificent “The Zoo”, one of the band’s best, and another where Rudolph’s rhythm riff dominates the track with its groove and perfect setting. They then bust into “No One Like You”, another song that has its highlights from the dual guitars, the delightful squeals from Matthias’s guitar complemented by Schenker pure riffing underneath holding the song together. The album and gig then conclude with “Can’t Get Enough”, including a solo spot from Matthias Jabs to remind everyone that he is still the gunslinger in the band alongside the band leader Schenker. All in all, 16 songs that remain almost unmatched in the band’s career, collected here to sit in posterity forever.

Back in the first half of 1986, I was beginning my heavy metal journey, one that mostly involved my heavy metal music dealer being asked to record me albums that he had brought up in conversation that he thought were excellent. I would find a blank cassette at home that had something on it that I didn’t want (or on rare occasions when I had some cash, I would buy new ones), and would bring them to school, and he would take them home overnight and bring them back the next day with new offerings for me to dine out on. On occasions when I had requested an album and he asked ‘what do you want on the other side of the cassette?’ I would suggest that he could put on something that he thought I might like. This occurred for me sometime during the first half of 1986, when on the back side of an album he recorded for me was the album “World Wide Live” by Scorpions – or at least, however much would fit on the space available. It was my first real meeting with the band, and I was immediately smitten. The great songs keep rolling into each other, they are upbeat and pacey with great riffs and those amazing unique vocals. Everything came together, and I caught the bug.
It would be a couple of years before I started to get the studio albums of the band, not until I began university and sought out a particular second hand record shop in Wollongong, but this album was enough in the meantime. The riffs from Rudolph Schenker, that became the mainstay of each song, were just superb. Matthias Jabs soloing and squeals and intricate pieces he kept throwing in – case in point the opening scrawling guitar to “Bad Boys Running Wild” - are wonderful, and his trademark to the band on those four albums to that point in time he had played on. And Klaus Meine’s vocals are out of this world.
For the past week my CD copy of this album has been back in my stereo, and I have relived it over and over, and it has brought back so many great memories of those school days when I was first introduced to it. It will always do that, because it is very much tied to that time of my life. And now having done that, I just want to go back and listen to the four albums that these songs were taken from and relive them as well. It is a difficult thing to rank live albums in the scheme of things. My heart tells me this is one of the best lives albums I own of any band. I am more certain that it is the best live album that the Scorpions have released. But as a vehicle to discovering the band, for me it was the perfect introduction.

1299. Paradise Lost / Draconian Times. 1995. 4/5

The journey taken by Paradise Lost over the first few albums of their development showcased quite the journey, and one that saw them making a mark in European countries that were well versed in the music that the band stylised their own output as, but with little recognition in their own home in the UK. Those earliest albums focused on a death and doom metal style, musically and also within the vocal stylings of vocalist Nick Holmes. Having been signed by Music for Nations, they released their third album “Shades of God”, where the progression away from this began in earnest. The band's musical approach certainly evolved within the structure of this album, with the addition of quieter passages in the song's compositions, the softening of vocalist Nick Holmes's death growl, and Gregor Mackintosh's incorporation of acoustic guitar to his sound. The follow up album to this, “Icon”, continued down the path that had been lain, and further cemented the band’s popularity in Europe.
Coming into what became “Draconian Times”, Paradise Lost found themselves on the very edge of a possible major breakthrough. The release of four albums in four years, though it had been a regular occurrence for bands in the decades of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, had become a lost artform, and by not only achieving this themselves, but in the process having created a pathway for the morphing of their own identity into an evolving sound, they had tapped into a fan base that was looking for exactly what they were producing. This even led to the band – through a photo of lead vocalist Nick Holmes – being splashed over the front cover of Kerrang’s issue 549 on June 10 1995 with the headline “The New Metallica – The Band You Need to Hear”. That is a massive statement, and one that threw an enormous amount of pressure and weight onto the back of the band on the eve of the release of their fifth studio album. The question to be asked was, could Paradise Lost and their new album live up to that kind of hype?

Something that I read out there on the internet I think actually provides an interesting analysis of the evolving nature of Paradise Lost up to this album, about how the themes would have been approached by the band at various stages of their career. And here it is: 5 years earlier, it would have been about anger and inhumanity; 4 years earlier, it would have been about guilt and self-denial; 3 years earlier, about religion and sin; 2 years earlier, about loneliness and judgement. In 1995, it was shadowy and indefinite, the lyrics very open and symbolic, still dark, but in a different way. And although this album became incredibly important in setting a template for the genre extension of gothic metal, of the first five Paradise Lost albums, “Draconian Times” seems to have the least distinct character. That isn’t a criticism, it is just an observation.
Much of this album continues to remind me of artists and influences that may well not have been those of the band, but the music and its style and progression undeniably find these comparisons inevitable. The obvious one that is always spoken of is of Metallica’s black album, in tempo and riffage of the music and the style of vocals used by Nick Holmes here, though I will always hear a muted version of Burton C. Bell and Peter Steele as well. But when I have this on in the background, I absolutely catch snatches of Joy Division and The Smiths and Morrissey, which again has been referenced at points during the band’s career.
Much is made of the evolution of Holmes’s vocals from those first two albums to this album. The growl became less prevalent along the way until we reach this album where it is non-existent. And there is no doubt that, along with the music the band was writing, this created an inference and a belief that this is a more commercial album than the early works, or indeed that that was what the band was aiming for. I’ve never really believed that. Having started out in the late 1980’s where thrash metal was still reigning; and then moving through the early 1990’s where grunge took over the commerciality of the music world, the maturing of Paradise Lost’s sound mirrors other artists in the way they approached their music. Smashing Pumpkins on their outstanding album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” were mixing grunge and alternative with pure heavy metal in places, and the angst of the lyrics and vocals were not following a plan for commercial success. And I think the same stands true for “Draconian Times”. While the path had been set to a degree from “Shades of God” to “Icon” to this album, it doesn’t come across as a deliberate ploy with an endgame in sight.
Why does this album work so well then? Why is it generally considered to be one of the band’s best, and to have been so influential when it comes to this style of metal? The simple answer is – because it is written and performed so well. The tempo of the album is set from very early on. There is no real wriggle room when it comes to that, but what that does is allows you to settle into the album like you would a comfortable chair, just find your comfort spot and let the album do the rest. New drummer Lee Morris has obviously been well versed for exactly what is expected of him on this album, and he does it superbly. Stephen Edmondson on bass guitar settles in alongside Aaron Aedy’s rhythm guitar perfectly, combining to produce the thick heavy undertone of each song that is the defining aspect of the album. Greog Mackintosh’s leads on this album are understated, not as outstandingly prominent as they have been in the past, but the perfunctory way they intersperse the songs is the perfect rejoinder for them. And yes, Nick Holmes’s vocals are masterful, drawing in an emotional aspect that draws the whole album together. There is a natural flow from song to song, something that if it isn’t done well, the songs can begin to feel a bit too samey, like there has been no definition between one to the next. That isn’t the case here, each song has its own individuality, each casting its own monolith over the album.

When it comes to putting together episodes for this podcast, inevitably there will come times when I am strapped for time, or have so many albums that have come up for their anniversary in the times frames I have set as the parameters for this podcast, that I am forced to put aside some albums, and hope that this podcast is still going in five years time so that I can give them the episode they deserve on that next anniversary. And there have also been some rare occasions when I have been personally sequestered by members of the public - who are much appreciated avid listeners and promotors of this podcast - who have asked if I am going to do an episode on a particular album that is coming up for its anniversary. And if my answer has not been to their liking, they then make it a demand. Such is the position that I have been placed in by two much respected listeners about this particular album, when I waffled on whether or not this album would be one of the ones that received an episode or if it would be cut from the list. Part of the problem with either result is that there is every chance that they may well get their wish in having an album receive its episode, as is the case here, but they may also not like what I have to say about it. Which is why I certainly do NOT encourage requests. Anyway, to Kirsty from Perth, and Jeff AKA Doomy – your demands have been met. And I truly appreciate the love both of you have shown for me and my little inconsequential podcast.
I have never been a big listener to Paradise Lost, or other bands in the same sphere such as My Dying Bride and Katatonia. I have albums by them, I listen to them on occasions, I admire much of their work, but they just aren’t on my go to list. But sometimes certain albums or songs grab your ear at the most interesting times, and from there you have an entry point that never seems to go away. And with Paradise Lost it happened to be this particular album, though not on its release, which is perhaps a shame, for during the year of 1995 it would have been a handy addition to my playlist. It was a couple of years later, when we were living in the inner city suburb of Sydney called Erskineville. The music most listened to by my wife Helen and her friend group from work included bands like I’ve already mentioned here today – The Smiths, Morrissey, Smashing Pumpkins, along with P.J. Harvey, The Cure and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. There’s a lot of desolate work there, and one of these friends of ours whose musical tastes took in these bands but also lent to my own music tastes, one day said “Bill, I’ve got an album that will mix with this perfectly, and you’ll like it too”. So one night he introduced us all to Paradise Lost and “Draconian Times”, and while it didn’t become a hit for those others in the group, they were happy to have it on. Occasionally. Maybe not for long, but long enough. And that was my introduction. I got a copy of the album recorded for me on cassette, and it resided in my car until we moved back home to Kiama in 1999, at which point it was lost. It wasn’t until the 2010’s, when I began the long journey back into bands that I had once heard material from and began to catch up on their catalogues that I met up with Paradise Lost again, and this album in particular. And that journey continues to today. This past week I have again delved back into the wonderful moodiness of this album, on one particular evening on my lonesome in a darkened room as this album played twice in succession without interruption, and I found myself entranced once again by the tones of emotion that both calmed and overwhelmed me as I listened. Is this the perfect state to listen to this album? For me I believe that it is. Having the album channel through me without any other distractions still allows me to gain the most from everything this album and band has to offer.
I am loathe to offer a ranking of this album within the Paradise Lost catalogue, firstly because as I have mentioned I am not a massive listener to the band’s albums, and secondly this album was my entry point to the band, and will therefore have an unfair advantage over the others. Best just to say that having listened to this album more than any others over the years, and it still enchants me to this day in a way that not many albums do.

1298. W.A.S.P. / Still Not Black Enough. 1995. 3/5

From the band’s inception through to 1990, and the tour to promote the release of their fourth studio album “The Headless Children”, W.A.S.P. had been on an inexorable rise in the heavy metal scene. Four excellent albums and one live album had seen their profile rise across the world and their stage shows had created an enthusiasm and a horror at turning up to one of their shows. The rise in tensions within the band, especially between band leader Blackie Lawless and guitar hero Chris Holmes had seen Holmes quit the band, and eventually following the conclusion of the tour the band broke up.
In its place, Lawless went about creating a solo album, a writing and recording process that took over two years to complete. A concept based around a rather autobiographical character named Johnathon Steel, the album came to be called “The Crimson Idol”. However, his plans to release it as a solo album were thwarted by his record company and promotors, who insisted that it should be released under the band name W.A.S.P. Lawless eventually acceded to their wishes, and the album and following tour enjoyed great reviews and sales. This did not save the band as such, with the end of the tour once again seeing Lawless retreat on his own, and begin to compose his next album, which, once again, he was determined to release as a solo artist.
This time however, although the sounds and themes were familiar, there was to be no hiding behind a fictitious character, or to create a story that took elements that he knew and experienced and create a story around them. For this follow up album, the words coming out onto the page were of Blackie’s own stark and sometimes desolate emotions. Whereas “The Crimson Idol” had been deliberately written as a rock opera, a story that utilised fictional characters to represent the story that he had wanted to tell, his follow up to that, a solo album, was Blackie Lawless speaking from the heart, about things he had known and experienced, and hiding behind no mask. He also added some cover songs, as he had done in the past of W.A.S.P. albums, to fill out his album. Once again, though, despite his desire to release this as a solo album, his record company convinced him that it needed to be released under the W.A.S.P. name in order to be able to promote it. Unlike “The Crimson Idol” though, this was not an album with a purpose, it was a letter to his fans describing his inner turmoil, not designed to be an album released by a band. And thus, with the release of “Still Not Black Enough”, the one member of W.A.S.P. and his paid assistants brought out an album that seemed to promise something that it was not – a fully fledged album by the band.

Still Not Black Enough can be seen to be a collection of dark, introspective tunes that extended the Crimson Idol mythology, this time with Blackie speaking directly to his audience about his own feelings. As we will discuss, this album lacks the cohesiveness of its predecessor even as the lyrics explored similar topics to Crimson Idol: being an outcast and misfit, the pressures of fame and society, and the search for love. This album has several different track listings and also tracks, with each version being different from the other, so rather than trying to combine all of those into one review, I will be going off my CD version of the album and reviewing it in that order.
The title track “Still Not Black Enough” is straight away the same style lyrically and musically as “The Crimson Idol”, so much so that it really is almost a cut and paste or colour by numbers reimagining of any numbers of songs from the album. And look, Blackie wrote that album and he wrote this album, so he can perform however he wants. But even the drumming and drum rolls in the song mimic what has come three years earlier on that album. It’s a bit disconcerting from the outset. Blackie offers us lyrics that also reference the darker side of his conceptual magnum opus such as “I can't go on till I get off, for me it's still not black enough, with darkness gone, my fear is seen, my fear is real, my fear is me”. Yes, this is Blackie talking and not Jonathan, but as we all know they are mostly one and the same, and so is this song. “Skinwalker” follows another similar structure musically as Blackie walks us through the torment of his mind, questioning his sanity and how he can fight his way out of the darkness and find his way back to normality. “Black Forever” has Blackie further expunging his fears and doubt and regret, making everything black forever, but wanting to hold it inside and keep it there forever.
The first real change up musically comes from “Scared to Death”, an excellent mid-tempo hard rocking track with a great riff chugging through the main part of the track as Blackie once again spews froth with his fears and the contents of his blackened soul. Bob Kulick offers a great solo through the middle of the song, but the fact that the album has moved beyond its Crimson Idol melodies is what makes this song far more accessible on this album. It doesn’t last for long though, as the similarities return on “Goodbye America”. We have spoken word passages at the start and in the breakdown in the middle, and then Blackie preaching to us about how his country is broken. It reveals more about Blackie’s political ties than it does anything else, and as a poor man’s “Chainsaw Charlie” it doesn’t quite live up to what has come before this. It then, perhaps strangely, is followed up by a cover of the popular 60’s track “Somebody to Love” which was popularised by Jefferson Airplane. Is it a statement from Blackie on what he has been singing about to this point of the album? Is he looking for somebody to love, or vice versa? The cover is fine, but it asks more questions than it answers. This again is followed by the next step with the ballad “Keep Holding On”, acoustically based and with harmony vocals from Blackie himself. Now W.A.S.P. and Blackie know how to do power ballads, and they have some beauties in the past. But this one comes across half-arsed and just there for the sake of throwing in a ballad on the back of the emotional outpouring he has been making lyrically on this album.
There’s a bit of a bounce now though, as “Rock and Roll to Death” channels not only 60’s rock and roll but an old school W.A.S.P version of it, and adds that lyrically as well. It brings a bit of sanity back into the mix here and a feel for traditional W.A.S.P. into the album. It is short-lived though, because then we are accosted by a second power ballad, this one called “Breathe”, which is attempting to channel “Hold on to Your Heart” from the previous related concept album. Again though, it is the poor cousin of that. It lacks the emotive yet powerful element that that particular song enshrines. And if that isn’t enough, then we have the further recycling of musical passages and riff and drum beats to create “I Can’t”. And I get that by now you are probably wondering whether or not I am amplifying the purported similarities of the songs on this album to the previous album, and that I am perhaps being harsh in that comparison. But it really is inevitable when you listen to the album, you cannot help but hear that this is just an offshoot of that album. “No Way Out of Here” does make a much better mix of those characteristics, once again pulling together the themes of this album with the colours of red and black again being brought into play to describe Blackie’s state of mind. “One Tribe” closes out the main part of the album with Blackie crying out for love, whether it is on a personal basis or a part of his whole world.
Following this are two more cover songs which do not appear to be connected to the emotional outpouring that Blackie has done on this album, but are surely just because he loves the songs and the artists. The versions here of Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down” and AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie” are faithful and you can hear the joy as Blackie plays them, and is a good way to finish off the album.

Given that this album came out in what for me was the black hole year of 1995, I didn’t actually pick this album up until the early months of 1996 once my life had settled down a little again. I had bought the greatest hits CD called “First Blood, Last Cuts” that had kept me company through most of that preceding year, so that when I saw this in Utopia Records when I walked in one day it was very exciting. W.A.S.P. had grown into one of my favourite bands, especially on the back of both “The Headless Children” and then “The Crimson Idol”, so seeing “Still Not Black Enough” meant for me more of the same. Surely! It is fair to say that this album was not what I expected, but looking back from this long length of time I don’t know why I didn’t expect it. As you have heard, this album is almost a direct continuation of “The Crimson Idol” both musically and lyrically. It could almost be a sister as such. But what it truly lacks is that fable story, the one with the start and the finish, and with the songs written to tell that story chronologically. Here Blackie expels his heart into song, but this is now his story and not a characters story, and that gives a point of difference to the way this album plays out. And for me, at that time, having been through a year where emotionally I had been completely wrung out, I probably wasn’t in the best headspace to get the most out of this album at that time.
So don’t get me wrong, I listened to this album the usual required amount that you do when you buy a new album, and eventually came to the conclusion that if it came to a choice between listening to this album or “The Crimson Idol”, then the latter would win hands down every time, and that was the direction I followed.
Over the preceding years this has been played sporadically. I have never not enjoyed it, but again when it comes to W.A.S.P. there are any number of other albums that I would prefer to listen to when it came to me wanting to listen to something from that band. The most recent time before the past week was a few months ago when I was a guest on Uncle Steve’s Mega Maiden Zone and we waffled on for three hours on a W.A.S.P. retrospective that was very enjoyable to do.
And so we come to this week, and my CD has come out again, and I have had a lot of fun reliving the album again on multiple occasions. And I still consider this to be a Blackie Lawless solo album, just under the W.A.S.P. moniker. And I think if you accept it as that you’ll find you can get more out of it, because you aren’t searching for things that just aren’t there. If you allow yourself to compare it to the previous album you will walk away disappointed. If you give it a chance, you will find some songs here that are worth your while checking out. And it does rank low on my list of W.A.S.P. albums. Of the 15 studio albums the band has released I rank this at #14.
Not for the first time this could have been the end for W.A.S.P. and yet once again they were pulled from the flames at the last instance, or perhaps it was the phoenix rising from the ashes. Because the return of the prodigal son set up the phase the band’s career, and set them on a musical course that was as at the furthest reaches of the spectrum that you could possibly imagine over their next three releases... but that’s a story for another episode...