1138. Men at Work / Business as Usual. 1981. 4/5

Similarities have been made in the past between Australia’s Men at Work and England’s The Police. Certainly both bands use the saxophone in their music, which is often a staple of New Wave bands and their style. Along with this is the utilisation of reggae in different ways, although for me it is much more subtle and not as prominent with Men at Work’s songs as it is with The Police, certainly in their early albums. Both bands have a lead vocalist with an automatically recognisable singing style and voice. And both bands eventually had quite a shortened career, The Police with five albums between 1978 and 1983, and Men at Work three albums between 1981 and 1985.Men at Work actually formed in 1979 in Melbourne, and consisted of the Greg Ham on flute, saxophone, keyboards and vocals; Colin Hay on vocals and guitar; John Rees on bass guitar; Jerry Speiser on drums and backing vocals; and Ron Strykert on lead guitar and vocals. From mid-1979 to mid-1981 they built themselves into one of the hardest working and more popular pub rock bands on the east coast of Australia. They had released two singles, one a self-financed independent release of “Keypunch Operator” (whose B-side was a little ditty called “Down Under”), and the second after having been signed by CBS titled “Who Can it Be Now”, the single that topped the Australian singles charts and remained in the charts for 24 weeks. It was with this success that Men at Work had entered the studio to write and record their debut album, one that was released 40 years ago today on November 9, 1981. A week prior to this, the band released the attached single, a song that they had rearranged from a previous version to place on the first album, and that the record company hoped would prove a success in promoting the band nationally and internationally, as well as push sales of the album. That single was “Down Under”.

Business as Usual fits very comfortably into the albums of the era in which it was released. It has the three main singles that were released from the album, all of which were popular on the radio and gave the band the national and international coverage it would have hoped for. This flows into the other tracks on the album, almost all of which are enjoyable on the same scale as those heavy hitters. “Who Can it Be Now” is a great opening track and showcases everything that is great about the band from the outset, including the sax and other great instrumentation throughout the song. This is followed by the mainstream soft rock stylings of “I Can See it in Your Eyes” which I think gets run down a little given the two songs it is sandwiched between. In the end it acts as quite a nice conduit between the opening song and then the overly familiarised strains of “Down Under” which follows it.
“Underground” continues the upbeat progression of the opening tracks, with the fast paced 4/4 timing of the drums and the punctuation of the sax driving the song along with plenty of energy. “Helpless Automation” follows and is written by Greg Ham, who also provides the lead vocal for the track as well. It closes out the first side of the album wonderfully well, with high tempo and once again great drumming from Speiser pushing the song along.
The second side opens with “People Just Love to Play With Words”, and a song that begins to show a different influence in the music, with John Rees dominating throughout with his roving bass riff throughout. This leads into the third single form the album, “Be Good Johnny”, still one of the band’s best. I still love how the song tells the story, without detracting from the actual song at all. It has been sung for generations now, with the name Johnny being substituted with any of a hundred thousand other people's name to suit the situation it gets brought up in.
The final three songs on the album take a much different style than what has come before them. “Touching the Untouchables” slows the tempo right back down to almost a lounge club act, allowing Colin to go back to crooning his vocals throughout with Greg’s sax coming into the mix with a greater influence. “Catch a Star” is very much in the reggae groove, the most noticeable of all the songs here that that genre is an influence on the band’s music. “Down By the Sea” closes out the album in a slower moodier pace than much of the album before it, resting on Colin Hay’s vocals dominating the sludgy pace of the track and the saxophone creating the atmosphere of the last moments of the album.

Most of you will know the story of the album’s most famous track “Down Under”. It helped propel the album to number one in the US, an amazing achievement for an Australian band’s debut album. It then became the unofficial anthem of Australia II’s campaign to be the first foreign based syndicate to life yachting’s most famous trophy, the America’s Cup, which they duly did in September 1983, and gave the song another lifespan in the charts. And then in 2010 there was the court case that claimed – and subsequently won – that the signature flute tune in the song had been ‘borrowed’ from the famous ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gumtree’ song from the 1930’s. Greg Ham, who had introduced the flute piece into the rejigged song that found its way onto the album, took the decision hard, believing that now he would always be known as the man who had plagiarised the piece. He suffered from anxiety and depression as a result. Two years after the decision, Greg Ham was found dead in his home after suffering a fatal heart attack at the age of 58.

With radio being a dominant force when it came to listening to music in those early days of the 1980’s, I knew all three singles from the album long before I was able to get this album. It wasn’t until sometime in 1984 that I purchased by cassette copy of Business as Usual, and it was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money, and it was on the back of those three singles. And once I got it I enjoyed the whole album and didn’t just concentrate on those songs I had, by that time, known so well. As you might imagine from my review here, it was the first two-thirds of the album that really captured my attention and that remains the same now. The final three tracks on the album aren’t poor, they are just different in style from those that came before it, and so I could quite happily not listen to them if I chose that way.
This remains one of the best albums ever released by an Australian artist. It topped the charts in Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK, and was followed up by the excellent Cargo which also sold extremely well. Not only was it the best selling album in Australia through 1982, it was the 12th best selling album in Australia in 1983, two years after its initial release. That's the sign of a terrific album.

1137. Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin [IV]. 1971. 3.5/5

Back in the days when bands released albums almost at the drop of a hat, Led Zeppelin came out and released their first three albums in an 18 month period in 1969-70. All three had been well received by the fans, although the final of those three albums, Led Zeppelin III, had been a bit cool with the music critics, something that hadn’t sat well with the band. Apparently as a result of this, the band decided that their fourth album would not have a title at all, and would be represented by four symbols on the inside sleeve, with each of the members of the band – Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham – designing one. Given the difficulty this would have in both promoting the album and selling the album, let alone when people wanted to discuss the album, it has almost universally been labelled as Led Zeppelin [IV]. In interviews, Page and Plant have mostly only ever referred to it as ‘the fourth album’.To write and record the album, the band moved to Hampshire into a place called Headley Grange, an old house built in 1795 where several bands had rehearsed and recorded – indeed Led Zeppelin had utilised it in the past also. It was here that perhaps their best known album and songs were written and recorded. Once recorded, the album was originally set to be released in April, but the band disliked the original mix, so after tour dates were played Page remixed it entirely. There was then some debate over the cover of the album, and also whether or not all of the songs the band had recorded should be included to make it a double album, but eventually the format that was released was the one that was confirmed, and fifty years ago it hit the shelves to an adoring public.

The quieter, acoustic-like songs still seem to dominate the album despite the appearance of the big hitters here. “The Battle of Evermore” is basically Jimmy Page playing on the mandolin, while Plant duets the song with Sandy Denny, who was the lead vocalist of British folk-rock band Fairport Convention. It is an interesting segue on side one of the album, as it passes from the two opening rock tracks and then into the number one hit that follows it. No John Bonham for quite a length of time through that period. “Misty Mountain Hop” mixes moments of that same folk rock with a more progressive rock sound, with Page’s guitar riffing in the back half of the song showcasing the sound that he brought to music, and is similar in that era that Brian May of Queen also began using. “Going to California” is a much quieter, acoustic number, with interviews from both Plant and page saying that it was inspired by the music of Joni Mitchell. You can certainly tie her sound to this track. “Four Sticks” lifts the tempo and barometer of the second side as Bonham gets his moment to impress, while the closing track is a cover of an old blues song “When the Levee Breaks”, and allows all four members to improvise their way in the music that is a heavy base to their own style.
That leaves the three most famous songs from the album, ones where even if you don’t know their names you would know if you heard them. Two of them you have already heard here. “Black Dog” is always known by Plant’s opening monologue, while “Rock and Roll” for me is dominated by John Bonham’s drumkit, which he pounds into oblivion throughout the song. It must have been something to witness live.
Led Zeppelin was one of those bands that I was always told I should be listening heavily to, but in general I just cherry picked at the songs and moments that actually enticed me and left the rest of the carcass for the other listeners. That wasn’t my way of being blasé about a band that had a crucial and massive part in forming the genre of heavy metal at its core. It was more about the fact that a lot of their songs for me just weren’t in anyway near the sphere of music that I enjoyed, and so rather than pushing blindly through these types of dongs constantly in order to appease others, or to find some way to enjoy them myself, I generally just left them, happy to enjoy those songs that appealed to me and not feeling as though I had to own the whole Zeppelin discography just because ‘everyone has to have those albums’. Even to this day, I only own Led Zeppelin CDs that were gifted to me or were cheap at the time I felt like buying something. As a result, I am no expert when it comes to Led Zeppelin and their music. My most played Led Zeppelin album is the Remasters double CD that was released in 1990, which acts as their greatest hits. The second most played album of theirs would be this one, and pretty much just for those songs I have chosen to play here.

The last track to discuss is of course their most famous. “Stairway to Heaven” has been one of those tracks that, for many people, is a constant, and that applies to me as well. One of my friends from high school actually did “Stairway to Heaven” as his performance piece for his music exam at the end of high school, and several other of my friends were involved in supporting him in that performance piece. Many of us sat outside the hall as they performed it, and it is still my favourite memory of any Led Zeppelin song. When I lived in Sydney and frequented the Erskineville Hotel on a regular basis, I would always slot the same twelve songs on the jukebox, in the same order. It became known as “Bill’s Burly Dozen”, and when regulars heard the opening strains to Deep Purple’s “Highway Star”, they would look around to find me. That dozen always finished with “Stairway to Heaven”, the perfect way to end that playlist.

What do YOU really think of Led Zeppelin, and in particular this album? Like I’ve said, Led Zeppelin is a band where I tend to like songs rather than albums. I wouldn’t say that I think any of their albums are rated more than a 7 out of 10, and the main reason for that is just that they all have songs I like, but others I could happily not listen to. There isn’t on album that I can put on and listen all the way through without thinking... “man, this song is still a bit average”. And this album is still like that for me. I have listened to this album quite a bit over the last couple of weeks, probably more in that time than I have in the previous 50 years since its release. And my taste in music is different from most of the stuff Led Zeppelin released, because they are of a different era. It’s a bit like that old mantra – I can appreciate it, but I just don’t love it. Apart from those three songs.

1136. Black Sabbath / Mob Rules. 1981. 5/5

Black Sabbath the band had appeared to be a washed up entity as the new decade had approached, with Ozzy Osbourne having been moved on and the rest of the band ambivalent about moving forward. The addition of Ronnie James Dio as new lead vocalist and lyrics writer, lifting that burden from Geezer Butler’s shoulders, brought about the amazing and legendary Heaven and Hell album, and the sales of that album and the tour that followed breathed a second life into the band that had in many ways started it all in regards to the heavy metal genre. The band had lost drummer Bill Ward during that tour. Ward, who had become a full blown alcoholic by this time, claimed it was intolerable for him to get on stage with Ozzy. He had been replaced mid-tour by Vinny Appice, who then became a full member of the band for the writing and recording of Mob Rules.
All of the band members have acknowledged that the writing of the album was different than it had been for Heaven and Hell. The initial writing of that album had been purely Tony and Ronnie, after Geezer had quit the band for a period, and was done in their lounge rooms with small amps in an intimate atmosphere. For Mob Rules, the band bought their own studio and soundboard in an attempt to save money and give them the time to come up with new material. With the noise turned up loud, not everyone involved found it a perfect way for writing, and so the writing didn’t come as naturally as it had for the previous album. It also created a different type of song for the album. Martin Birch was again producing, and there does seem to be a different bombarding within some of the songs on this album compared to the previous album. Sonically it is a much bigger and louder noise throughout, and with the lyrical matter being dragged further away from the darker side that the band sang about during its first incarnation, the band feels like a completely separate entity than the one that contained Osbourne and Ward – and this has been a disputed argument over the years, with those in the corner of the original band suggesting these albums should never be associated with the band name Black Sabbath because they are of such a different sound and focus than the first eight albums of the band’s discography. When this foursome eventually reunited under the name of Heaven and Hell many years later, many felt it was a much better fit than to have both Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules, along with Dehumanizer 11 years later under the Black Sabbath label.
The band and Martin Birch have been accused of doing a carbon copy of Heaven and Hell when it comes to the style and arrangement of the tracks on Mob Rules. I’ve never really agreed with that statement, as to me the tracks here are in places more of a commercial bent than those on the previous album. Indeed, some of the tracks have been criticised for this, especially by Ozzy Sabbath fans. The second side of the album comes under the most scrutiny, particularly for the songs “Country Girl”, “Slipping Away” and “Over and Over”. “Country Girl” is seen as a similar track lyrically as “Lady Evil” from “Heaven and Hell”, and certainly comparisons can be drawn between the lyrical content of those two songs. “Slipping Away” is compared to “Walk Away”, and the closing tracks “Over and Over” and “Lonely is the Word” again are compared to be like for like. Now if you play both of these albums, and you then play these tracks next to each other, you can come to a conclusion that the formula in regards to the style of song being placed in the same order of the tracks of the album can be argued, and successfully. I can’t say that I have ever honestly thought about it much, as I just love both albums for what they are, but having thought about it for this album review I have to say that it is a fair point, that the success of the format of the previous album may well have ensured that a similar format was used for Mob Rules. Is that a bad thing? I wouldn’t have thought so. I’d have been more concerned about whether a similar number of songs where the mood and tempo is changed from the real big hitters of the album affects the overall enjoyment of said album. In this regard, that is a matter of personal taste.
I still like all three songs, but would I ever put them on a playlist for the car? Probably not. Do they compare to the outstanding tracks on the album? No. “Country Girl” is a song with the right groove and singable lyrics, but it was seemed a strange choice to me to be put into a live setlist, as Sabbath did for the Mob Rules tour. “Slipping Away” talks about regeneration, turning the page, starting over, and turns up the tempo further to keep the momentum of the album going. And “Over and Over” is such a typical Dio-written song lyrically that perhaps it doesn’t feel as though it fits a Black Sabbath album – but my word I love this song. Emotionally and emotively Dio’s vocals here are truly magnificent, soaring to the heavens and stealing the show, before Tony’s amazing guitar solo that goes on forever to play the song out is an underrated and often forgotten moment of brilliance in his amazing career. Yes, it is much like the album closers of Dio first two solo albums that were yet to come, but it is a brilliant piece of music and song writing.

So there are moments here that are challenged as being ‘great’ or ‘subpar’ - but let’s look at the remainder of the album. The opening salvo of “Turn Up the Night” kicks the album off in perfect fashion, a great riff from Tony and Dio jumping in from the outset with his anthemic vocals charging along. “Voodoo” is a moody and slower tempo follow up, and a track that is also vastly underrated as a song in the Black Sabbath catalogue. It is one that is often overlooked when discussing Sabbath songs, but to me has always been a terrific one. This then moves into the first of two epic tracks on the album, the amazing “The Sign of the Southern Cross”, an amazing song which features Geezer Butler’s remarkable experimenting on the bass guitar, drilling up sounds that are the base track of this song. The changing mood of the track from quiet and reflective to loud and hard mirrors the bobbing of the ocean, and always makes me think of that whenever I hear the song. The entire song is a triumph and remains one of their best. This then segues into “E5150”, the instrumental pause before the busting opening guitar riff of the title track “The Mob Rules” rips in and sets off another burst of energy and Iommi riffing goodness. This is the song that Heaven and Hell opened with as they toured the world in the late 2000’s, and what a way to open a concert.
That leaves the only song I haven’t yet mentioned, a song which to me is perhaps one of my favourite ten songs of all time. It is “Falling Off the Edge of the World”, which sits comfortably between the high energy of “Slipping Away” and the genius completion of “Over and Over”. The song builds from the opening words with atmospheric keys to the hard core drums, bass and guitar, and then once again into the solo riff that opens the gates, and the band is unleashed into the fury of the main song. Vinny holds the beat together on the drums as Geezer dominates with the underlying bass riff and Ronnie powers through the range of his vocals and smashes the song to send shivers down the spine, before Tony breaks into his solo piece that raises the song to its peak. I personally think this song is a masterpiece, with all four members of the band contributing heavily to the greatness of the track.

I didn’t find Black Sabbath and all of those bands until some years later after this release. 1986 was my real awakening to heavy metal music, and perhaps amusingly enough when it came to Black Sabbath the band, it was the Ronnie James Dio fronted albums that caught my ear first. As a result, it was both Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules that became my go to albums when it came to Black Sabbath. Now while Heaven and Hell was certainly the star, Mob Rules was the album that always felt bigger, harder, heavier and with more energy. Maybe I just played it with more bass on my stereo, or perhaps it was the differing styles in the drumming between Bill Ward and Vinny Appice that brought about the slight nuances in the songs between both albums. Whatever it was, even the three songs that may be considered the forgotten tracks of the album always sounded bigger and brighter than the ones off the previous album.
This album, along with so many of my discoveries over those couple of years at the end of high school, was massive for me. Each song is imprinted in my mind and still stirs memories of those days each and every time I put on the stereo. Everything about it is pure magic. Vinny’s drumming seals the songs tight. It might be uncomplicated, or at least sound that way, but it is the basis of everything that comes over the top of it. Geezer’s bass work is truly amazing as it always had been and always is, and the riffs he plays acting as a second guitar are still incomprehensible. How can this band have such a deep and full sound with just a guitar and a bass? Tony lights up the album again with his guitar riffs and solos, and it is a joy to hear the best of him on every song after the relative disappointments on the last two Ozzy-fronted albums. And I will never have enough superlatives to describe Ronnie James Dio’s vocals let alone his song writing ability.

I will always wonder what could have come if this foursome had stayed together instead of breaking up following the tour for this album. Reasons for the break up have varied, with stories about Dio sneaking in to the studio for the mastering of their live album that followed this, Live Evil, in order to raise the vocals in the mix, having been hosed down a little in recent years. In the long run, it appears that whereas Tony and Geezer had been in control of the band in the past, they were not ready for someone like Ronnie to come in and want a similar amount of say in what happened in and out of the studio, and it eventually caused the split. Ronnie and Vinny went on the form Dio and record Holy Diver, another of those albums that I devoured during 1986, while Tony and Geezer eventually brought in Ian Gillan and recorded Born Again. I still enjoy the Born Again album, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Holy Diver. Just what kind of follow up to Mob Rules could these four have produced if not for their egos? Perhaps the Dehumanizer album ten years later actually is the answer to that question.

1135. Gamma Ray / 30 Years Live Anniversary. 2021. 5/5

Anyone who knows me will know of my love to the point of obsession of the band Gamma Ray, so it may not come as a surprise to you that the lack of new material from the band over recent years has been frustrating. There have been obvious reasons for that, the number one reason being the reunited Helloween line-up that included Gamma Ray front man and guitarist Kai Hansen. Gamma Ray’s last studio album, Empire of the Undead was released in March 2014, eight years ago. Since that album and the tour that followed, Kai has been tied up in the previously mentioned reunited line up of Helloween, which not only did a massive greatest hits tour called Pumpkins United, but then entered the studio and released a new album. As a result of this, Gamma Ray has very much gone on the back burner. Drummer Michael Ehre teamed up with guitarist extraordinaire Henjo Richter and formed a new band called The Unity, who have released three studio albums in that time and will shortly release their own live album. Bass guitarist Dirk Schlachter has been working on other projects, and recent introduction to the band Frank Beck has been biding his time, waiting to be unleashed. There was certainly a time when I had become convinced that, with the success of the Helloween juggernaut and with both Michael and Henjo firmly entrenched in their new band, that the demise of Gamma Ray had in fact had already come and there would be no further albums from the band.Fortunately, all was not lost. The Covid pandemic had interrupted and cancelled many things over the preceding months, which was disrupting the recording and releasing of that new Helloween album. In the meantime, the 30th anniversary of the creation of Gamma Ray approached, and in mid 2020 it was announced that the band would come together and do a 30th anniversary concert – sadly not in front of any fans except a lucky few who could get seats in corporate boxes in the venue chosen – and it would be streamed live around the world. It didn’t take much for me to jump on board. And the show they performed was just brilliant. That initial stream unfortunately only came through in mono, so you couldn’t hear Henjo’s guitar at all, but the spectacle was terrific. Thankfully the band rectified the problem and then replayed the stream a couple of weeks later. Playing a live gig in front of no one but cameras must have been daunting but it went over terrifically well, and the crowning glory was in bringing back original lead vocalist Ralf Scheepers to come in and sing on four songs. As a present to the fans, this was almost as much as you could ask for. Better was to come, as 12 months later the band announced they were releasing the anniversary gig on vinyl, cd and DVD for us all to enjoy over and over and over again.

Live albums are a tricky thing at the best of times, trying to get all the set up right and hoping the sound is going to be perfect. In this case, with no crowd to work around and almost being in a live studio setting, it must have worked really well for the production crew to have everything exactly as they wanted it.
The setlist is terrific, and although it does not cover all of the 11 studio albums of the band’s discography it does a great job of spreading over the majority of them. The band opens up with its more recent material, with “Dethrone Tyranny” and “New World Order” from the No World Order album opening up proceedings, followed by the fantastic version of “Avalon” from Empire of the Undead and then “Empathy” from the To the Metal! album. All of these songs not only highlight the great song writing and lyrically diverse topics, but also the emotive range that the music and vocals can reach within each song. It has been a trademark especially of Kai’s writing throughout his career but it is exemplified by his co-writers on these songs in particular.
From here we can move into the moneyshots from the band’s career, and in particular two of their best ever in “Rebellion in Dreamland” and “Land of the Free”, both from the legendary Land of the Free album. As always they both sound brilliant here, but the addition of Frank’s vocals make them both particularly joyous in this live environment. In the past, with either just Kai’s vocal line or along with Dirk they have been good, but not as satisfactory as the studio versions. Now though, with both vocalists able to take a harmony line each, they retain their studio magnificence and add that live sound that gives them even more depth and balance. Awesome.
The second half of the set list introduces Ralf Scheepers to take the lead on the songs he was involved with in the band, and each of them are excellent... well... I have always had a problem with “The Silence” from the Heading for Tomorrow album. The second half of the song is great once the guitars kick in, but the rest is only average in my opinion, which is funny because it is a song that seems to be in almost every Gamma ray setlist! However, “Lust for Life” cranks along like the joyous song it is, and “One with the World” from Sigh No More is also amazing. Then Ralf has a rest while the band does “Armageddon” the closer of the Power Plant album, before Ralf returns for the sensational title track from the first Gamma Ray album, the 15 minute brilliance of “Heading for Tomorrow”, where Ralf, Kai and Frank tear the vocals apart. The gig is completed by the usual encore of “Send Me a Sign” to close out what was, and is, a terrific set list.

The performers all put in fantastic performances. Michael Ehre is excellent once again on the drums, again proving what a terrific replacement he was for former long term stool sitter Dan Zimmermann. Given that he now also has roles in his own band The Unity and is also currently playing for Primal Fear, he has a busy worksheet but you can hear why he is in such high demand. Long term tenants in the band, Henjo Richter on guitar and Dirk Schlacter on bass are brilliant once again. I don’t think these guys have ever played a gig without those huge smiles wide across their face, and that can be heard in their guitaring throughout. Kai again stands centre stage and does his thing, though now his vocals are shared throughout which actually works much better than I thought it may when I first heard that Frank Beck had been brought into the band to ‘help out’ on vocals. Indeed, they complement each other really well, and it does fill out the vocals on each song with two terrific vocalists being able to harmonise as well as each sing their sections on their own. Even better here, the addition of Ralf Scheepers, the lead singer on each of the first three Gamma Ray albums, to come back and do so here again on the four songs played off those albums - “Lust for Life”, “One With the World”, “The Silence” and “Heading for Tomorrow” - is just superb, and with all three being involved along with Dirk makes for fantastic versions of these songs in particular. Ralf comes in and gives note-for-note performances of those songs which makes this 30th anniversary gig even more significant and excellent to watch and listen to.

Like I mentioned I bought my ticket with glee to watch this when it occurred last year. I bought the repeat watch ticket, which gave the holder 48 hours to watch it as many times as they liked. I watched it five times, and then a further four times when we got the second chance two weeks later with the proper audio. Even at the time I wanted to be able to record it to have it forever. Thankfully the band and their management thought that would be a good idea as well.
In a world gone mad where live shows of all artists – bands, plays, comedy – has been put on hold for the better part of two years, this for me was a great experience. And it isn’t as if Gamma Ray is short of live albums in their discography – this one being their seventh if you don’t mind, but all of them are excellent in their own way.
This album has many characteristics which make it a vital addition to the Gamma Ray family. It finally introduces Frank Beck as roving vocalist to those of us in the world who had not heard him take his place in the band before, and shows that he is indeed and asset as a result. It has Ralf Scheepers returning to the band where he made his name, and reliving those great old songs with his voice on vocals is also terrific. And in being there for this live experience, it made it the perfect way to celebrate the occasion, of marking 30 years of Gamma Ray on the music scene, an amazing amount of time when you consider that Kai’s original run in the first band he created, Helloween, the band everyone knows him from, was only for five years. Five years to create a legend, who has now had six times that amount of time in the band he created after leaving Helloween. Those that love those early Helloween albums but know almost nothing about Gamma Ray should take that on board – get out there and listen to Gamma Ray and find out what you have been missing out on.

1134. Iron Maiden / Senjutsu. 2021. 4/5

The rumours of a new Iron Maiden album had been around for over a year before the announcement of its pending release came to pass. That reliable source of information, the internet, did indeed quote one particular user who claimed that he had seen members of the band around the studio in France where they had recorded before back in 2019 and that he had been sure new material had been recorded. There had been silence from the band and management, indeed few questions seemed to asked at all, and considering the band was still in the middle of its Legacy of the Beast World Tour, it seemed a long shot at best that a new album had been finished. Then the covid pandemic hit, and all tours were cancelled – including Maiden’s which was also supposed to stop in Australia – and the music world stood still for almost 12 months.
Eventually, Maiden released a new song and music video on an unsuspecting world, “The Writing on the Wall”, and not long after indeed came clean. They had secretly recorded a new album at the time that was suspected by some, and the intention had been to release it after the Legacy of the Beast tour had finished, giving them a break between touring and writing and touring again. Covid had ruined those plans – and goodness knows exactly what they will now do with the tours they had previously announced now that there is a new album out as well – and so Senjutsu was released upon the world.

Iron Maiden is still one of those bands that engenders an anticipation prior to a new album being released. It is not always the case with bands who have been around forever and have released so many albums, but Maiden still does it. It is possible that in the current day it could be because you never really know when their next album will be their last, and the thirst for more material adds to that anticipation.
The album opens with the title track “Senjutsu”, and in many ways sets the tone for the whole album to come. Rather than having an up-tempo and faster paced opening song like so many of Iron Maiden’s albums produce, this is indeed the least of both of those descriptions of almost any Iron Maiden album. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t capture your attention, but it is a different entry into a Maiden album than of most of the discography. The eight minutes of Nicko’s remarkable tom beating throughout the length of the song is the star attraction of this song, allowing Bruce to emote in harmony over the top. It is unlike any Iron Maiden song before this, abandoning a real metal feel of the album and replacing it with the moody and atmospheric sound that still subtly draws you in and arouses your anticipation for what is to come. The first time I put the album on I was surprised and yet comforted by the way the song plays out. Bruce’s vocals also remain in a range that allows him to sing without forcing the issue.
“Stratego” gets about as fast a tempo as we find on the new album and while it is an enjoyable song there are moments when listening to it that you hope for something to jump out and really grab you.
The first single “The Writing on the Wall” is a much different style than Maiden have offered us before as well. The guitar riff to open the song has a country sound to it, which on the first few listens is a bit difficult to fathom, though some interviews with Bruce and Adrian suggest it has more of a Celtic twang about it rather than country. Take your pick, it certainly is drawing from areas not often travelled by Iron Maiden. Once the song is in full swing, and the three guitarists have brought their solo pieces into play the song becomes much more fully formed and less strange to the ear.
“Lost in a Lost World” is almost the stereotypical Steve Harris song now, one where the solo pieces are the saving grace... but I’ll get back to Harry’s writing again shortly.
“Days of Future Past” brings us back to the kind of songs Adrian and Bruce have always been good at, picking up the pace and vibe, a great rhythmic riff from Adrian and Bruce and his vocals motoring along and driving the song in a positive fashion, which is then fleshed out by powerful and anthemic guitar solos by all three men involved. At four minutes in length it is the shortest song here, but also the punchiest, in the tradition that this writing pair have done in the past. Without wanting to sound negative, there should have been more of this kind of song on the album. This is followed by the excellent “The Time Machine”, written by Jannick and Steve, and harks back to the style of songs they have written together over recent albums. While it isn’t as high voltage and brilliant as “The Talisman” from "The Final Frontier” album, it has similarities throughout. It just seems unusual to change and stop within the song like it does rather than just letting it run through naturally, as it would have been much better if it had.

“Darkest Hour”, which opens the second disc, is just far too close to the deplorable “Wasting Love” from the Fear of the Dark album. It has the same tone in the singing, the same sort of weeping guitars, and although the subject matter is different, it is another attempt by our fine song writers to institute a power ballad type song into the Iron Maiden agenda, and that just isn’t doing it for me in any way shape or form. At over seven minutes I think it is exacerbated and drags it out far too long as well.
Something that does remain the same from Maiden songs written by Steve Harris over the past twenty years or so is the way they start and end with the quiet and often acoustic guitars and lyrics. Now, this has been happening for a long time now, and has almost become a trademark of Steve’s songs. But, and I say this with the utmost respect and deference... is it at all necessary? Can these songs survive without those parts being introduced? Yes, all of Steve’s songs tell a story, and a part of those stories is told in those introductions and conclusions, but my problem is that Steve’s songs just become a bit too predictable, not only with the opening and closing, but the lengthy underlying guitar riffs in the middle of the songs where nothing much seems to happen in them. It is absolutely as though all of this is there just to get the songs lengths into double figures, which is very much the way of progressive rock bands especially in the 1970’s, but is that what Steve is trying to achieve? Is he, in the latter years of the band he formed and took to the pinnacle of music, now simply trying to regress to those years of the bands he grew up with and try to out-progress or out-prog them? That may seem like an over-simplification of what is happening here and also on recent Maiden albums, but I could line up a dozen songs from that time and make that argument.

And, is it just me, or is Bruce singing along with the guitar melody guide far more on this album than he ever has? What has often set Bruce and his singing apart has been his ability to find a way to sing the lyrics of a song by not just following the riff, but by having it move in a different pattern to it, which gives each song a much different sound and flavour. Ronnie James Dio was able to do this as well, whereas Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath often just sang the lyrics along the same guide as played by the guitars. Here on Senjutsu, I think Bruce does this a lot, certainly a lot more than he has in the past. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a change in thought processes.
All of this seems more noticeable in the final three songs of the album, all written solely by Steve and harbouring all of these things I have just spoken about.
Is “Death of the Celts” just an attempt to create another “The Clansman” which Maiden did on the Virtual XI album? If it is, they made a bit of an error of judgement. This lacks the energy and heartfelt vocals of that song, though having said that, the three part guitar solos in the back third of the song are just superb, the absolute highlight of the song in my opinion. This is followed by “The Parchment”, the longest song on the album, and one that reminds me so much of Deep Purple it isn’t funny. Bruce’s singing is very much like latter day Ian Gillan, while Jannick Gers’ guitaring is a dead ringer for Ritchie Blackmore in places, though Jannick has always had a bit of that about him. For me, “The Parchment” is a bit of a plodder, jutting along with the same drumbeat and rhythm line and not really changing its expression throughout. And finally the album is concluded with “Hell on Earth” where Bruce hits the heights once again through the middle of the song and the guitars again do their party trick of three different men offering three different solos that all bind together pleasingly well. What interests me about these three songs is that, with every person I have spoken to over recent weeks who are fans of Iron Maiden, and in all of the reviews I have read published about this album, everyone seems to have a different opinion on which of the three songs is the best and highlights everything great about Maiden, and which song is overblown and a bit weak. I don’t know of anyone who absolutely loves all three songs nor anyone who doesn’t enjoy any of those final three tracks. As you can probably guess from what I have said here, for me it is “The Parchment” that feels a bit average in the long run.

One of the things I have noticed with all of Maiden’s album from A Matter of Life and Death onwards is that I have enjoyed them immensely more on the second round of listening. By that, I mean I give the album its usual time span in my playlist, anything up to 3-4 months, and then the album goes back to the shelf and I move on to the next set of albums – and then sometime over the next 6 months I pull it out again, and find a greater and deeper understanding and enjoyment of it having given it a rest for awhile. I have done that without fail for the three albums that preceded this album, with an initial overall disappointment apart from a few songs replaced by a better complete enjoyment of each album as a whole when I rediscovered them the second time. My guess is that “Senjutsu” won’t be any different from those albums for me. All four of those albums are very similar in the way the songs are written and the way they are set out on the album. Many won’t agree with me, but that similarity is what makes getting into these albums a more time consuming concept than the electrifying albums of the 1980’s was.

On The Final Frontier the immediate standout songs were “The Final Frontier”, “El Dorado” and “The Talisman”. The rest I thought were fine until that second run through later on, at which point I began to love them all and the album as a whole. On The Book of Souls the immediate standout songs were “If Eternity Should Fail”, “Death or Glory” and “Empire of the Clouds”, before the second run through brought to me the glory of songs like “The Red and the Black” and “The Book of Souls” and “Tears of A Clown”, and the joy that album now brings. I have the same feeling about this album, and my guess is the same story will occur. For me, the immediate standouts here are “Senjutsu”, “Days of Future Past” and “The Writing on the Wall”. There are others competing for spots the more I listen to the album, but my guess is that they won’t come to fruition until I get to that second run sometime next year.

The band sounds terrific as always, which is the most gratifying part of the exercise. As I’ve mentioned, each of the guitarists plays their part superbly, especially in each solo break where their styles are individual but combine to create the perfect sequence. Steve’s bass is as always sublime, and Bruce has controlled his vocals superbly to match the nuance of every song in his own inimitable style. For me though the MVP of this album is Nicko McBrain, who at 69 years of age is still producing amazing performances both live and in the studio. I’ve already mentioned how his performance on the opening track makes that song what it is, and again throughout the album he is a dominating force.

In concluding my thoughts on this album, I will again utilise something I have said over the past few Iron Maiden albums, which I believe is still completely true.
If you are going to try and compare this album with the work that this band did through the 1980's then you are never going to accept the wonderful things on offer on Senjutsu. It is a false facade in doing so. Try comparing Black Sabbath's “13” to “Paranoid”. Try comparing Scorpions “Return to Forever” with “Love at First Sting”. Try comparing Judas Priest’s “Firepower” to “Painkiller”. Try comparing anything Metallica release in the next couple of years to anything from that same 1980's era. Any album not from a band's 'great era' will rarely stand up against them, and that is the way it should be, and always will be. These are different men from 35 years ago. They are older, and they have seen and experienced the world since then. For lack of a better word, the music on this album shows a maturity that comes with age and a comfortableness in their lives and with themselves as songwriters. For the most part, the ferociousness may not be as prevalent in their music anymore, but their style and formula is still there to hear. Perhaps you won't jump around and headbang as much to this album as you do some others, but I'm 35 years older too, and I can appreciate what the band has written and recorded here.
This is Iron Maiden. Rejoice in the past. Accept the present. It is more than worth it.

1133. KK's Priest / Sermons of the Sinner. 2021. 3.5/5

There seemed little doubt from the outset that KK’s Priest was going to sound a hell of a lot like Judas Priest in one way shape or form. I mean, you have a founding member of that band as the leader of this band, a man who had been a part of that band for 40 years before the somewhat acrimonious split that then occurred. Then you also have the man who was brought in to replace the original lead singer when he went off to do a solo thing, and replaced him with aplomb. And, for a moment, there was even one of the drummers of the band from the late 1970’s re-joining as well, so the whole thing had a very nostalgic feel about it.
It still seems unlikely that this would ever have come to pass if K.K. Downing hadn’t felt slighted that he hadn’t been asked to rejoin Judas Priest when Glen Tipton retired from playing with the band due to his continued degeneration of Parkinson’s Disease, and instead the band had brought in Andy Sneap to replace him on tour. There was sniping that went on between both camps, until K.K’s Priest was formed, it feels almost as a ‘fuck you, I can still do this’ to Judas Priest. Ripper had sided with KK on this issue, and so it was no surprise that he came in as the lead singer as the band took shape.
It’s difficult not to compare Sermons of the Sinner to Judas Priest given the history of the main members of the band, and a lot of people have tried to compare it to some of the great Priest albums such as Painkiller and Screaming for Vengeance and British Steel. That seems like an easy cop to me. I was always much interested in how it compared to Priest’s last album, the quite brilliant modern day metal homage of “Firepower”, where Judas Priest mixed in a recognition of their past sound with a modern edge, with Halford keeping his vocals in a range that suits his age and singing ability of the modern day. Firepower is a modern masterpiece, and if Sermons of the Sinner could match that, then the band not only had a future it had also proved a point to a certain degree.

So does it hold its own against this comparison to the other Priest band? All of the first three songs on the album hold their own musically in this regard. The spoken word opening of “Incarnation” kicks into the opening track “Hellfire Thunderbolt”, also the lead single, and it ticks all of those boxes. The rolling double kick drumming, the hard core riff along with the melodic guitar solos in the mix, all filled by the high range vocals of Tim “Ripper” Owens. This is followed by the title track “Sermons of the Sinner” which continues to provide a great riff and some high toned vocals from Ripper, and then into “Sacerdote y Diablo”.
From this point on though, the tracks begin to lessen in absolute quality. In particular, there is a standardising of the lyrical content. Simply put, some of the lyrics are a bit… dicey. Some would call them cheesy, others may call them… childish? It’s fine to want to aim songs at the kids out there, but the majority of fans who are going to buy this album are going to be the same age as the protagonists in the band, and they aren’t really going to jump around singing lyrics such as these. And it isn’t as if we are looking for anything that is outstandingly profound or massively thought-provoking. We just don’t want to feel a bit foolish when we sing along to the songs. Here is a snatch from each of the following four songs after the opening stanza:

“Raise your fists in the air lets rock the nations everywhere”. “Raise Your Fists”
“We’re brothers of the road, and we rock, we’re burning up the freeway we never stop”. “Brothers of the Road”
“We are loyal, we are true, we are as one, us and you, we’re metal, through and through”. “Metal Through and Through.
“We’re breaking loose cos we’re wild and free – Oi! Oi! Oi!”. “Wild and Free”

The album then concludes with “Hail for the Priest”, another doubled edged sword song vocally invoking that other band, and then once again with “Return of the Sentinel”. What a shame to end the album the way they did with “Return of the Sentinel”. It feels like a cop out. It should have been powerful and energetic and leaving the listener wanting more. Instead, it felt like a cheap Rob Halford copy, and not something Judas Priest would have done anyway.
As one of my best mates commented when we were discussing the album, and the lyrics especially a few days ago, that it feels a little bit like the band had three really good songs sorted and written, and they just decided to pump out another half a dozen songs from the ‘how to write a standard hard rock song in one easy lesson’ formula guidebook and get a full album out. The fact that KK probably had a pretty involved hand in creating that handbook should absolve him from any pretence at copying or feeding off that book, but nonetheless the songs on the back half of the album do feel a bit formulaic and lacking in the kind of polish you would expect from a band containing such experience and excellence. In cricket parlance, it sounds like they’ve stacked the top order, but the tail starts at four.

No one out there, none of you, came in to listen to this album without being a fan of Judas Preist, because there it almost literally no other way you would have felt that desire to hear it. So the band always knew what market they would be aiming at, and what they had to produce in order to appease that market – do an album that sounded like Judas Priest, but was just different enough so that no one would say “Why didn’t they do something that was different from everything else they used to do when they were in that band?”. To be fair, KK and his crew were on a hiding to nothing when it came to people reviewing this album. Either it was going to be loved because KK had written the same kind of songs he always did and performed them that way, or it was going to be damned - because KK had written the same kind of songs he always did and performed them that way.
It is an interesting predicament, mainly because KK had composed this basically by himself, and although he has already announced that they are looking at doing a follow up album, one that will be more collaborative across the members of the band, is that such a good idea? Because Ripper has rarely really been involved in the writing of the songs of the projects he has been involved in, and the stuff that he has had a hand in the writing with... is ok without being awesome. But the man can sing, and that’s why he is a hired hand through so many different projects. The supporting cast here also do their job well.

If you like Judas Priest you will enjoy this album. And, depending on the mood you are in when you listen to it, you may consider it either a flawed attempt at a first strike with both great tracks and bloated generic heavy metal tracks, or a masterpiece of modern heavy metal. It’s no Firepower, Judas Priest’s most recent album, but by the same token if you compared it to Priest’s Nostradamus epic, you may well think that this album shaves it in enjoyment value. And in the long run, that’s what it comes down to. Enjoyment. And if you look past the cheesiness of some of the lyrics being sprouted here and just take it as a fun listen, you’ll find that it passes the time quite enjoyably.

1132. Iron Maiden / Somewhere in Time. 1986. 5/5

Following the recruitment of Bruce Dickinson as the singer of the band, Iron Maiden had put together three albums that launched them from English pub band to worldwide sensation. The addition of Nicko McBrain on drums had only lifted this, and on the back of The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind and Powerslave, Maiden had then taken an 18 months trip around the world on the World Slavery Tour, conquering all corners of the globe and resulting in the amazing live album Live After Death.The band then agreed to take a long sabbatical in order to recharge and reload, and no doubt get to know their families and friends once again after such a long time away from home. Eventually, the time came for the band to put together their follow up to the Powerslave album and the tour it had spawned. No doubt they were under no illusions as to the difficulty of the task that faced them, trying to follow up the quality of albums that had preceded this.

Perhaps the biggest problem they faced was that Bruce Dickinson was facing a mini-crisis, or a slump. In both his own autobiography and in interviews about the album since, Bruce admitted that he had been completely burned out by the schedule the band had had over the recent years, and his ability to come up with material had been seriously compromised. The song ideas that he brought in for the new album had been based around acoustic instruments, as he felt at the time that the band had to make some changes to their sound if they were to remain relevant. The fact he came in with these radical ideas caught the band by surprise, and indeed Steve Harris was quoted in several interviews as saying they were ‘bollocks’. Steve admitted Bruce had suffered the most of their long touring schedule, but also rejected out of hand using any of the ideas Bruce had come in with. Bruce had even considered quitting at that point such was his reluctance to continue on.
Coming to the table as the saviour on the album was Adrian Smith. Adrian had often collaborated with Bruce and Steve on songs in the past, indeed some of Maiden’s best songs. With Bruce sidelined from the writing part, Adrian took on a much greater role, contributing three of the eight tracks on his own, and with Dave Murray helping out on one track as well, the album had its eight songs.
Though Bruce’s desire for change in the style of music the band produced was not carried forward, there was a significant change made by the band, as Dave and Adrian had been experimenting with guitar synthesisers during their down period, and for the first time on an Iron maiden album, they appeared heavily throughout the album that became Somewhere in Time.

It’s funny looking back on the kind of things some metal bands said they would ‘never do’ – Metallica would ‘never do a video for a single’, Iron Maiden would ‘never use keyboards’. Despite the fact they would do just that from their following album, the guitar synths here on Somewhere in Time added to the whole atmosphere of the album, and although the album was never meant to be a concept album, it is amazing how the songs seem to tie up to a slightly loose adaption of that. The opening track “Caught Somewhere in Time” does exactly that, and the mood set by the synths may well be different from barnstorming previous album openers like “Aces High” and “Where Eagles Dare” but it is no less effective in getting the album off on the right foot. Indeed, the opening of all of the tracks of the album is quite spectacular. The use of the synths mixes in perfectly with the guitars of both Adrian and Dave and gives these songs a unique sound in comparison to all the songs the bands had produced before this album, an even more melodic guitar sound than these two had achieved previously.
“Wasted Years” became the first single from the album, written by Adrian and becoming perhaps his best known and most recognisable Iron Maiden track. His intro riff to the song became the most played on guitar at our school during 1986 and 1987. Perhaps the best use of the guitar and guitar synth combination comes on his next song “Sea of Madness”, which switches easily between the two and also between the two moods of the song itself, in many ways giving the impression of the sea and the rolling swell such is the way the song also rises and falls in the same way. “Heaven Can Wait” is another of the best songs here, bursting with energy both musically and vocally with Bruce at the top of his form throughout, and with the crowd-inducing ‘whoa-oh-oh’ section in the middle that was perfect for when the song was played live and wanted to capture the crowd in the moment.

The second side opened with “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”, another of Steve’s songs based on films. The opening of the song finds Iron Maiden at their melodic best, just a beautiful serene way to open the track before blasting into the energetic dash for the line. This is followed by the second single from the album, Adrian’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”, brilliant in its simplicity yet technically terrific drumming and guitaring. “Deja-Vu” is the shortest song on the album and one that is often the most derided of the track on this album. In much the same way the “Quest for Fire” from the “Piece of Mind” album is often overlooked in any discussion on Iron Maiden songs, “Deja-Vu” sits apart from the discussion of the album in most conversations or interviews about the subject. It is not a bad song at all, but comparatively against some of the more brilliant tracks it seems a little out of its class.
Perhaps the piece de resistance is the closing track, “Alexander the Great”. Following on in the tradition of “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, “To Tame a Land” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Alexander the Great” loses nothing in comparison to those three masterpieces. Like those songs it is the longest on the album and is not only the perfectly majestic way to conclude the album, it creates such an atmosphere that it is difficult not to just flip the album over and start all over again.

All albums are new to you at some stage of your life, but this was the first Iron Maiden studio album that I got to experience from the actual time of its release rather than catching up on them all a year or more afterwards. It was towards the end of Year 11 for me in 1986, and this album eclipsed those final few months of the school year. Everything was about this album, every single nuance of every single song, knowing every single word within the first couple of days, burned into my brain. It was a life defining moment, in that everything I did during those months are all brought back to me whenever I listen to this album, and that listening to this album triggers those memories. I used to take my portable cassette player with me to school, and we would listen to the album during recess and lunch every day. I took it with me when we walked to our school sport, and we would all sing along for the whole walk there and the whole walk back. On one particular day the conversation came around to which song would you leave off if taping the album to a C90 cassette in order to keep it on one side, and in trying to explain that if you left off “Sea of Madness” that would achieve that, it instead became about me hating “Sea of Madness” and believing that initially it was the worst song on the album, before expanding that to becoming the worst song Iron Maiden had written, to being the worst song ever written period. An injustice that continues to be repeated to the present day.

So it is safe to say that this album had an amazing impact on me. The changes in using synths seemed to not go down well with some people, fearing the mid-80’s influence that was being used in popular music at the time would infiltrate the band’s music further down the track. Like all bands, Maiden’s sound did change over the years since in accordance with what music trends were appearing, but they have never lost that quintessential Maiden attributes, and that is also true here. While some experts were less enamoured by the changes after the previous three amazing albums, for me and those of us in our generation, the awesomeness of Somewhere in Time is never in question. The anthemic lyrics of “Wasted Years”, “Heaven Can Wait” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” equal the emotional payoff of “Caught Somewhere in Time” and “Sea of Madness” and “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”. And when you have one of your best mates who gets stuck in an Ancient History exam, and to get out of it he simply expands on writing down the lyrics of “Alexander the Great”, and gets 3/10 for the essay, you know Iron Maiden are still being the most awesome band in the world.

Somewhere in Time is still a landmark in heavy metal music, because it showed that you could experiment with your sound without losing the essence of your music, and you could still produce a blockbuster album even without one of your main songwriters being able to contribute to it.

1131. Nirvana / Nevermind. 1991. 5/5

Nirvana was a band that since its inception had gone through several drummers in its short existence, and had also had an extra guitarist at one point, but in essence was a two-piece with hired guns as drummers. Guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Kurt Cobain along with bass guitarist Krist Novaselic eventually brought in new drummer Dave Grohl just before the band went into the studio to write and record Nevermind, a fortuitous move for both parties as it turned out. Prior to 1991 I didn’t have a clue who Nirvana was. Most people didn’t. They had released their debut album Bleach back in 1989, but I, like I guess 90% of people who ended up buying that album, did so sometime from 1992 onwards. My introduction to the band was, as happened on a few occasions in those days, by some friends in the band I was playing in at the time saying “Have you heard this band? Check out this album. It’s insane!”, at which point they threw it on and we listened. And I can still remember my first impressions being – ‘ok… it’s raw, it’s an interesting guitar sound… the singer has a real bipolar attitude… the drummer is hitting those things REALLY HARD…. yeah, it’s ok I guess…’ So just so you know that it wasn’t something that grabbed everyone the first time they heard it. Indeed, it was really when the first single from the album took off on radio, and begun to be played every couple of hours on constant rotation, and when the video for that song was never off the air on MTV and Rage and all of the other music video shows around the world, that the album itself began to be popularised. Because it was the success of that song that really drew people to the album, and once they had been drawn into the album… they began to discover that it wasn’t just a one-hit wonder.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” was that first single. You know that. In fact it is probably embedded in your memory so hard that even if you lost all of your sense sometime down the track, you would still remember the opening few bars to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. It became the anthem of a generation – not so much mine I don’t think, but to anyone who was a teenager in 1991 and 1992 this would be the song that would remind them all so much of those years. It saturated radio and video shows. It drove the popularity of this album. This was followed by the second single “Come As You Are”, a song of a different tempo and style, which mightn’t have become the dance club anthem that the first single did, but it still proved so popular because of the drone of Cobain’s vocals over his low strung guitar. “Lithium” and “In Bloom” were the other two singles that were drawn from the album and both did good sales as well, but by this time it was more just a task of keeping the band in the headlights of the oncoming swarm as they kept coming into record stores everywhere in droves to buy the album.
Once you get past those four singles that created the hysteria of Nevermind, you come to a collection of songs that range from the rage to the sublime. Songs that are on the extreme such as “Territorial Pissings” and “Stay Away” are there for the punk rock and fast paced song lovers, whereas there are the acoustically driven quieter songs such as “Polly” and “Something in the Way” also in the mix.
What has always interested me about this album is how much some people trawl for the meanings of the words Cobain wrote in each of the songs. Well, for a start, trying to interpret what he is singing is the first problem faced with that, because Cobain was never the clearest when it came to annunciating when he was singing. Once that has been achieved (the best way it can), just reading the lyrics doesn’t always shine much light on anything. It is obvious that many of the songs had lyrics that were personal to Cobain himself, and often complained about journalists trying to interpret more from what he was singing than what he had put there, as if there was an underlying reason beneath his words.
Despite being held as a beacon of the grunge genre, Nevermind to me had more to do with punk rock than it did with any other genre at the time. It is heralded as one of the leaders of the grunge movement that had its base in the bands from Seattle. Alice in Chains had the harmony vocals and greater structure, Soundgarden was closer to heavy metal, while Nirvana channelled that punk groove for the majority of their balance.

I often ask myself the question – how much longer could this style of music have continued if Nirvana had kept going, if Cobain hadn’t offed himself and they had kept making albums. Because I’m not really sure how much versatility this band had, and of course that statement is an anomaly given the range of material in the songs here. We have seen with Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters how adaptable they have been over the last 25+ years, not just sticking to the sound that came from their first album, and indeed maturing in a billion selling way since. Did Nirvana and Kurt Cobain have that versatility? Indeed, is Nevermind still as universally loved as an album today simply because the band only released three studio albums, and didn’t have the chance to stuff it all up by creating a couple of average albums as the 90’s decade progressed into nu-metal territory. In essence, does this album have an immunity because it is surrounded by so little else from the band to compare it to? Almost everyone probably has a copy of Nevermind, but how many own copies of Bleach and In utero? I guess what I’m saying is that Nevermind has not been polluted by having material released beyond it that wasn’t up to the same standard, or was so different from the songs here that the fans who had come into the band on the back of this album left again in a hurry one or two releases later. The memories that Nevermind recall are caught in that moment of time. Does the fact that the band dissolved two and a half years after this album was released exacerbate that?

In the long run, your love or tepid acceptance of this album will depend on just where and when it entered your life. My kids are pretty much non-plussed about it. They’ll listen to it, enjoy it to some degree, but not find any of it is life changing. I still love the album, and having had it on rotation again for the past couple of weeks in preparation for this episode I have sung along in all the right places. But I know that I have also felt a need to move on to other music for a lot of that time too, in that while listening to the album two or three times was good, but that was enough. Which, is how an album from 30 years ago should be taken. But is that an indication of what I have been talking about? That beyond Nevermind, more of this would have been too much? The answer to me lies in the answer to this question – what is the better album, Nirvana’s Nevermind or Foo Fighters The Colour and the Shape? Your answer to that will decide for YOU where this album stands in the annals of music history.

1130. Gamma Ray / Sigh No More. 1991. 5/5

It would be impossible to convey just how blown away I was when I discovered Helloween back in 1987, and how brilliant I believe those first four albums are. It is also hard to express how much I came to love Kai Hansen as an artist because of it, and then how difficult it was to take when he left the band in 1989. Fear not though! As he went on to form his own new group called Gamma Ray, and the band released their debut album the following year, the quite brilliant Heading for Tomorrow, an album that mixed together everything that had made Helloween as brilliant they had been with a new set of members. Lead vocalist Ralf Scheepers had provided the voice, and an inspired friendship that proved to be. Uwe Wessel on bass and Mathis Burchardt on drums had completed the recording band, while for the tour that followed Dirk Schlachter came on board as second guitarist.After a successful first tour, the band came together to write and record the follow up, soon to be known as Sigh No More. Burchardt had moved on at this point, and in his place came a young drummer by the name of Uli Kusch, a quite brilliant instrumentalist who eventually went on to a storied career in Kai’s former band Helloween. Also for Sigh No More, Dirk joined the band as a permanent member, slotting in as second guitarist.

As excellent as the first album had been, it had been almost a solo effort, as Kai had written all but one of the songs by himself. Here on Sigh No More however, the writing was shared by all members of the band apart from Uli, which given the songs he went on to write for Helloween and Masterplan, it is quite amazing that he didn’t get a chance to offer some material here. Not that the final product needed any more brilliant material than it eventually held. Kai wrote the music for 8 of the 10 tracks, four of those in collaboration with Uwe Wessel, With Uwe going solo on the track “Start Running” and Dirk doing likewise on “Father and Son”. The lyrics were shared by all four on different tracks with Ralf contributing on four tracks with Kai. The result is this did become a real band effort rather than just one individual contributing all of the material, and in many ways you can hear that closeness and collaborative factor in the songs that make up this terrific album.

On Gamma Ray’s first album Heading for Tomorrow what was most noticeable was the positiveness of the songs and lyrics, and the way that Kai’s ‘happy guitar’ that punctuated Helloween songs was prevalent again. Songs such as “Lust for Life”, “Heaven Can Wait”, “Free Time” and “Heading for Tomorrow” all showed a positive outlook on life and sounded upbeat both due to the lyrics and music.
There has been a noticeable progression in both musical style and lyrical outlook here on Sigh No More, not to the point of morbidity but the subject matter is much more serious and worldly that the debut album. It is something that Kai purposely pushed the writing towards. He felt that the first album had had too many elements similar to Helloween, and with the coming tsunami of grunge he felt that the next Gamma Ray album had to be more ‘grown up’.
Top of the list for subject matter is war, something that had taken up the news cycle again in 1991 with the onset of the Gulf War. None of the songs here correlate directly to that or any other conflict, but the war images are there, and while the songs are great the message is somewhat bleak. The songs “As Time Goes By”, “We Won’t Stop the War” and “Start Running” in particular discuss those issues. It is interesting that all of those three songs have four different people writing the lyrics, so it was obviously a subject that was close to the heart of all of the band rather than just one member.
Dirk’s “Father and Son” is a heartfelt tome to his relationship with his own father over his own dreams to make it in the music business, with the lines “You wanted the best for me, somehow things went wrong, and I tore us apart.” best describing that it didn’t end well, and “Rich and Famous” is the closest any songs on this album come to replicating those on the first album, with a tongue-in-cheek discussion about the way some choose fame and fortune over love and happiness.

Then there are the songs which are deep and reflective – lyrically rather than musically – and looking at the world in a different way. The opening track “Changes” is about the challenges of mental health from the writer’s perspective, with the lines “Hard to enjoy the good times, decay is what I feel, God, it's making me porous, vanish in haze, I wonder - wonder if I'm real.” giving a good indication of the way the song describes the mental state. “One With the World” tries to turn around those feelings and project a positive outlook on working through problems and coming up with a positive frame of mind at the end. “Countdown” is Kai’s song about the pressure of trying to get the album finished, and what may not be surprising is that it wouldn’t be his last song about running late for record companies! The final two songs of the album are more uplifting, with “Dream Healer” all about getting the best out of your dreams, and “The Spirit” another positive spin song lyrically on hoping for the best for the world going forward.

Everything here is top shelf. Ralf’s vocals are perfect throughout, with the right amount of emotion and power in the singing depending on the mood. I don’t think his vocals ever sounded better than they do on this album. Uli Kusch’s drumming is brilliant, and though he left to join Helloween after this album and was terrific in the time he was there, it was a shame he left the band. Uwe Wessel on bass again does a great job, but it was also his time to move on after this, apparently from a disagreement that he an Uli both had with the other members of the band. Dirk is great on guitar, despite it being only his second instrumental love, while Kai again tops the charts both in song writing and on lead guitar, leading the way in every way possible.

I’m not going to lie to you – whenever I review a Gamma Ray album over the next few months or years for this podcast, you are going to hear me rave about it. Because out of their whole catalogue, there is only one album I think might be a little bit dodgy. And it isn’t this one.
I was hooked from the very first. I love every song on this album, from the opening of “Changes” and “Rich and Famous”, through “One With the World” and to the conclusion of “Dream Healer” and “The Spirit”. When I got this album I was reading Stephen King’s “Four Past Midnight” collection, and in particular the first novella “The Langoliers”. And now, I can’t listen to this album without thinking about that book. Somehow, the songs perfectly fit the story as it plays out, and for me the two are now entwined forever.

Whatever YOU might feel about German heavy metal, as far as I am concerned this album is absolutely killer. This is the style of music I love the best, the duelling harmony guitars, the double kick drums at speed, the blazing bass guitar, and the vocals that can hit the heights. And Kai Hansen and his band of warriors are at the top of that tree. Apart from Ronnie James Dio, no one has had a greater influence on my love of music than Kai Hansen, and the Godfather delivers here in spades. You may not feel the same way about this album or band – and that’s fine. But for me, I could listen to nothing but Gamma Ray for the rest of my days and die a happy man. And this album is right up there with their greatest.

1129. Ozzy Osbourne / No More Tears. 1991. 5/5

Through the 1980’s Ozzy Osbourne had taken all before him, forging out a career apart from Black Sabbath that eventually outstripped his former band in both popularity and album sales during that decade, thanks to some fortuitous meetings with musicians such as Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee and Bob Daisley. Though there were obvious behind the scenes things that went on that were not as wonderful, including a consistent attempt to not give those who helped compose the songs that made him famous the credit they deserved before casting them aside, along with his own alcohol and drug problems, Ozzy marched through the decade of the 1980’s as a hero to the kids and with a string of brilliant albums.

For his previous album No Rest for the Wicked Ozzy had procured a brash young brilliant guitarist named Zakk Wylde, whose signature wailing created the kind of sound that he wanted to continue moving forward and improving the material that was being produced.

When it came to writing and recording this album, No More Tears, there was still plenty happening inside and outside the band. Not for the first time, but in essence probably the last time, Bob Daisley was the musician who was required when it came to putting it all together. The history between Ozzy and Bob is better left to other sources, and the story is both euphoric and inherently sad, but Daisley was brought in again to help with the recording of the album and to find the heart within the songs that were written. Alongside Randy Castillo on drums, these four recorded an album that for its time was just amazing. The 1980’s had been drained away, and in its place was a polished and mature album for the new decade, one that not only sounded like the most well-rounded album Ozzy had ever put his name to, but one which looked like it could push the foursome to even greater heights than they had ever known.

No More Tears takes some interesting paths, ones that wind off onto different parts of the forest of musical styles that the band has drawn from. Opening with “Mr Tinkertrain”, it’s a subject that lyrically at least makes you wonder if this song could be written in this day and age. You get the feeling that the ‘cancel culture’ of today’s protesters may see it as ‘inappropriate’. Despite this it is a great opening to the album, one where all four musicians come at you from the outset.
Lemmy Kilmister has writing credits on four of the songs of the album, and they are a diverse set of tracks. The second song “I Don’t Want to Change the World” is the first with Lemmy’s input, with a rocking track and thoughtful vocals over the top. Lemmy’s influence in the lyrics to both “Hellraiser” and “Desire” especially seem obvious. As it turn out his band Motorhead eventually did their own versions of both these songs, with “Hellraiser” not only appearing on Motorhead’s March ör Die album in 1992 but in the movie and on the soundtrack to Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth - Movie Soundtrack, while Lemmy’s version of “Desire” appeared on the Ozzy Osbourne tribute album A Tribute to Ozzy: Bat Head Soup.
The final song with Lemmy involved is “Mama I’m Coming Home” which was not only the main power ballad on the album and the second single, it also became one of the biggest selling singles of Ozzy’s career.

The songs here vary from the instrumentally technical and heavy in nature to the power ballad styles of “Mama I’m Coming Home” and “Road to Nowhere” and “Time After Time”. These songs still seem to be able to slip into the usual Ozzy narrative without appearing overtly as though they are looking for commercial success. The fact that “Mama I’m Coming Home” was so successful in this perhaps shone a focus on those three songs more heavily than would otherwise have been the case. I get the feeling that it proved to influence the way future albums were written in a way, but this may well just have been because Bob Daisley was not utilised in any fashion beyond this album, and that Zakk Wylde was not always involved in the writing process after this album as much as he had been. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always enjoyed all three of those songs, and indeed quite love “Mama I’m Coming Home” - I think it just fits so smoothly into the concept of the album and its positioning in the track list works best in its favour. It’s interesting though that this style of song finds its way back into the mix, and both “Road to Nowhere” and “Time after Time” as well. I think the length of the album works in its favour. At almost an hour it is the longest of Ozzy’s albums to this point, and that allows these songs to sit within the mix without dominating the album.
Pack this alongside the fast tempo songs that are still what drives the album, and you can hear what makes this version of the band one of its best. "Won't Be Coming Home (S.I.N.)" is a great track where I still have no idea what the SIN stands for. “Desire”, “Hellraiser”, “Zombie Stomp”, “A.V.H”... they are all just fantastic. Indeed, that is definitely done with the songs that have the harder drums and utilise the brilliance of Zakk Wylde’s guitar. “Hellraiser” in particular is a gem, with great lyrics and Zakk’s guitar that dominates.
“No More Tears” is the epic, the track that binds the whole album together, and perfectly showcases the still brilliant sound and skill of Bob Daisley on bass guitar, the thrumming drum timing of Randy Castillo and that brutal and precision perfect guitar playing of Zakk Wylde, topped off by Ozzy’s still wonderful vocals over the top of it all. Of all the tracks that have appeared on Ozzy’s albums with his name on the cover – and there have been plenty – this track perhaps still showcases the best of everything that the band and the writing can offer.

When this was released in 1991, it was huge. As I have mentioned of the other albums I have reviewed that were released in that year, grunge had begun to squeeze its tentacles around the music industry, with its leading album just a few days away from being released itself. That this album still sold so well within this environment is perhaps somewhat remarkable, but it does truly show the high esteem that Ozzy Osbourne himself was held in, and his ability to cross genres was probably perfectly shown because of “No More Tears”.
I adored this album when it was released. Even amongst the plethora of albums that seemed to come out around this time, “No More Tears” still managed to take up a fair amount of my music listening time. For quite some time I even rated this as my favourite Ozzy Osbourne album, such was the overall standard of the songs and musicianship and song writing. Further contemplation beyond that period led me to re-evaluate and come back to the conclusion that those albums of the ‘Blizzard of Ozz’ band, the Rhoads-Daisley-Kerslake days, are quite special, but this album continues to rank barely behind them.

This was arguably Ozzy’s last great moment in music. The following album Ozzmosis was on a hiding to nothing in following this but still has some great material, but the lack of inspiration beyond that release has been quite noticeable. The tour that supported this album was called “No More Tours” as it was going to be the final time Ozzy went out and played live. There is good and bad in the fact that it proved not to be the case. The live album recorded on the tour, Live & Loud, is a cracker. It also meant that in 1998 Ozzy toured Australia on a greatest hits setlist that was one of the best concerts I have ever seen. And of course at the final two nights of this ‘supposed’ last tours he played two songs as an encore with the original Black Sabbath band, which... eventually.... led them to further tours and a final album some 20 years later.

No More Tears sometimes doesn’t get the credit and kudos it deserves. I think it is a brilliant album, one that everyone should own.