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...

1297. Gamma Ray / Land of the Free. 1995. 5/5

By 1994, Gamma Ray had established itself as a premium metal band in its own right. On the back of Kai Hansen’s departure from Helloween at the height of its fame and popularity, Gamma Ray had released three albums that built on the same writing and playing skills that Hansen had brought to his previous band, along with the screaming vocals of Ralf Scheepers that had given the band a huge lease of life. Apart from Hansen and Scheepers though, the band had had a revolving door when it came to the other band members, which gave the group the feeling that it was a solo project rather than an actual band. That was not to change after the release of the band’s third album, “Insanity and Genius”, and the tour to promote that album. This time, it was Ralf Scheepers who was providing a difficult situation for the band to cope with. For one thing, Scheepers did not live in the same city as the rest of the band, he was on the other side of the country where he lived and worked. It meant that he was only available for the band on weekends, and the travel situation was beginning to become a problem. On top of this, Judas Priest, who had been without a lead singer since Rob Halford had departed in 1991, had begun to search for a replacement. Schepers had been a life long fan of the band and was interested in auditioning for the role. All of this built steadily until it came to a crossroads.
In an interview in 1999, Kai Hansen spoke about the developing situation the band found itself in, and why it was that Ralf and the band eventually parted ways:
“There were two main reasons. One was after the first three Gamma Ray albums we said – now we want to do a really, really good album, something really killer. But Ralf was not living in Hamburg, he was living 700 km away from here. For that reason he only came up for a while for rehearsal or for the recordings. But to do an album which was really good we needed him there constantly. In years before we had been talking about him moving to Hamburg but at that time he still had a job going on...he still does and he's never going to leave it somehow. He could not really make up his mind to move to Hamburg and there was one problem with that because when we wrote the songs I was always trying to think of his voice but on the other hand it would have been a lot better if he write his own vocal lines, melodies and lyrics. When he came to Hamburg most of the times I was singing in the rehearsal room when he was not there and I was singing on my demos so it was like everything was more or less fixed and he could not really change it. We wanted that to change, therefore we wanted him to move to Hamburg, he could not make up his mind. Then we said either you do it or you die somehow you know...like putting the pistol to his chest. Well....on the other hand he had this Judas Priest thing going on. He wanted to be given a chance. I was the idiot who told him maybe for fun just try it out when it was clear they were searching for a singer because Judas Priest was always his favourite band. We were thinking about him doing the Gamma Ray album and then going to Judas Priest. All in all it led to the point where we said we'd rather split our ways at that point because it doesn't make sense to go on like that”.
With the album well underway, the band now had to find a new lead vocalist, not something that was easy under any circumstances. There was talk of the band recruiting Kai’s former bandmate in Michael Kiske to come on board, as he had just parted ways with Helloween himself. Kiske however had a major disillusionment with metal music at that time and was not seen as the best option. Several other names cropped up, but there was a consistent message coming from not only the band’s friends, but from the fan base itself. That message was, that Kai should take on the role himself. Kai had of course been vocalist and guitarist on the original Helloween EP and debut album “Walls of Jericho” before leaving that dual role to concentrate of presenting the best guitaring he could for the band. Ten years on, and he had the decision to make again. He had sung on all of the demos of the new songs because Ralf had been absent, which meant that they were all designed for his vocals anyway. Could he perform the same role once again? Would he be able to do both roles on stage? Despite some initial doubts, Kai took it on.
All that was left to do now was to record the album and get it out for the fans to decide. In a 2008 interview, Kai spoke about the importance of the Land of the Free album and what it represented:
“We made it exactly at a time point when this kind of metal was proclaimed to be dead as can be. Where it was almost like if a drummer came up with a double bass drum people would say 'ya dooga daga yourself out of here man.' Everything was ruled by Kurt Cobain and the alternative to the alternative and all that kind of stuff. So at that point we made an album like this and it went down very successful. That was cool, that was something special. I think it was the album that gave Gamma Ray the acceptance as being a band not only a Kai Hansen project”.

“Land of the Free” acts as a concept album, the age-old fight and story of good over evil, and in order to kick that off in the right way, it is necessary to create an opening track that is an epic. And there have been few better or more astounding opening epic songs to an album than “Rebellion in Dreamland”. The pure excitement of hearing Kai on vocals again rolls into the opening riff, Kai’s voice rising above it all to announce his arrival once again as the frontman, and we roll into opening verse. “Rebellion in Dreamland” builds in intensity throughout its opening, dragging you along to pick up your swords and join the march of the rebellion itself. The song itself doesn’t stick to the verse chorus verse format and is all the better for it. It is a swooning, melodic roller coaster with the pace coming in movements, the scene of the story being drawn from music that creates the magic. The guitar solos that cascade with fury down the other side of the mountain crash into the slow drifts below, into the final denouncement of “Have no fear, rebellion is here” into the climax of the track. It is a majestic way to open this album.
But there is no time to rest, because then we crash straight into “Man on a Mission” which sets off on its double time pace from the outset, a perfect follow up from the epic-ness of the opening track. Here the hero is introduced and sent off to his destiny by the band in a cracking song. Thomas Nack’s terrific double time drumming sets the pace, with Jan’s bass line rumbling like a freight train throughout. The energy of the song never lets up, but is channelled into different pockets through the song such that it is arguably the fastest and heaviest track on the album. The only time it lets up is for the 20 second spoke part in the middle of the song, before it careers off again at speed to regain its power. One of the architects of speed metal is at it again here on this song. Then “Fairytale” acts as the segue between this song and the next, a one-minute burst that channels all of energy and passion of “Man on a Misson” and pushes us directly into the next phase of the story and the album, the amazing and brilliant “All of the Damned”, with the beautiful opening bass riff to open the song, into the main guitar riff that that runs into the opening vocal stanza. Kai’s vocals reign supreme here, and the middle solo section of the track enhances the atmosphere that the whole song produces, all while describing the doubts our hero has as he moves on his way to the enemy, and seeing the faces of those that have gone before him and failed. The mood of the song showcases this in a dreamlike fashion. The conclusion of the song segues into the instrumental “Rising of the Damned”, which finishes off the opening stanza of the album perfectly, and a remarkable opening to an album.
“Gods of Deliverance” crashes back in with a great drum solo opening from Nack rolling straight into the song at great pace. It’s another anthemic drive for the band without respite, replete with harmony guitars and duelling guitar solos, thundering bass lines from Rubach, who wrote the music for the track, and another passionate delivery of vocals from Kai himself. Following on from the opening songs on the album, this song beats its chest in the same drive and passion that this album has found with its new lead vocalist. But change is afoot, because next comes “Farewell” which is the power ballad of the album, the only song composed by Dirk Schlachter. Dirk was still working on it as the band was recording the album. In many ways it stands out on this album because it is so different from the other tracks, perhaps to be expected given the different composer but also for the style of the track. Power ballads can halt the momentum of albums, and there is little doubt that it does that to certain degree here, but as fitting in the part of the tale it tells it still has its place. Indeed, it is boosted by a guest appearance from Blind Guardian’s vocalist Hansi Kursch who not only sings back-ups on the track but also the third verse of the track. Kai had appeared in a guest spot on three Blind Guardian albums prior to this, and Hansi returned the favour here. From here we burst out of the softer side straight back into the battlefront with “Salvation’s Calling” that exudes energy and drive from the outset. Rubach’s solo contribution of both music and lyrics to the album gallops out of the speakers at you with his fast-paced bass guitar driven by Nack’s double kick drumming pushing along the song at every opportunity, and Kai standing astride the soapbox delivering his vocals with increasing passion. You feel the gathering momentum of the protagonists of the story as they can feel the turning of the tide, and the song expresses it beautifully, charging all the way to the conclusion of the song.
The title track is a triumph, a raging, charging, cry of victory song titled “Land of the Free”. This is the pinnacle of the album and the story, the moment where victory is within sight. And what better way to celebrate and embellish that than with this song – heavy with fists raised in the air, with drums and guitar riff crushing from the outset, Nack’s double kick leading the charge as Kai stands at the front of the stage and cries “Grab your heart and I’ll show you the way, hold your head up high!”... and then comes the chorus, and the combination of two of the most famous and amazing voices in metal combine, with Kai joined on the highest of high harmony by Michael Kiske, the man who joined him in Helloween to take on the lead vocal role. And just for good measure, let’s throw in Hansi Kursch to help back them up. Three of the greats, all here. It blazes with even more greatness in the bridge, as the three combine again for “And when the cracks appear upon the wall, we know the moment's here to see it fall, and as the sunlight appears again in our sky, no wall (No more), no wall (No more), no wall will darken our life”. And then careering through to the end of the song, with Jan Rubach’s bass guitar going nuts over the top of the guitars, into the final chorus, and then Michael taking us out in a way only he can, to complete a just magnificent song.
“The Saviour” acts as the perfect segueing of the title track and the next, the bridge between the two, giving the album and the listeners to catch their breath for a moment, before we jump into the epic motion of “Abyss of the Void”. This tells the story of the return of the Saviour, having defeated evil and returned to be celebrated. The perfect mix of drama and celebration in the music and vocals, it showcases the terrific rhythm changes as the band switches from quiet and atmospheric to epic and energetic and back again through the song. After his wonderful cameo on the title track, Michael Kiske returns to the sole role of lead vocalist on “Time to Break Free”, and this track channels the joy of Helloween and happy guitars and Michael singing to the hilt in a joyous way throughout. With the epic moodiness of the preceding tracks, this one restores a depth of brightness to the album, with a positive vibe in both music and lyrics, and Michael projecting it in spades. To hear Kai and Michael together again here not only lifts the album but gives hope to a further revival down the track. That DID occur, but it was a long ways down the road.
And so, we come to the final track on the album, and given everything that has come before it, could there be any passion and drive left? The answer to that is yes, there can. “Afterlife” has the music written by Rubach, composed in the sessions prior to the album’s recording, but the lyrics are written by Kai, and they cut close to the heart. On March 8 of 1995, Kai’s friend and former Helloween bandmate, drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg, threw himself in front of a train near their hometown of Hamburg in Germany. He had been suffering and dealing with the effects of schizophrenia for some time, and had obviously decided enough was enough. “Afterlife” was the final song on the album to be recorded, and when Kai brought the lyrics in and the band played the song, emotions ran high. Nack has said that they got the song down on just the second take, and the raw emotion of the lyrics and vocals are plain to hear even all these years later. The song is dedicated to the memory of Ingo at the end of the lyrics sheet. There is perhaps not a better tribute to have given him.

The black hole year of 1995 is one that I have had to look back on often during this new podcast, as the anniversary of years that I am basing my reviews on corresponds with all the years ending with 0 and 5. Let’s just say that I have had better years than 1995.
After the release of their third album “Insanity and Genius”, I missed Gamma Ray for a period, as I did a lot of music that was released around the same period. In fact, it wasn’t until the end of 1996, on a trip in to Utopia Records in Sydney, that I became reacquainted with them again. In fact, on this particular lunchtime, I found a truckload of albums from two bands who had slipped off my radar for a while, that being both Helloween and Gamma Ray, and they were albums that I didn’t even know existed. Helloween’s albums with their revamped post-Chameleon lineup, “Master of the Rings”, “The Time of the Oath” and the double live album “High Live” were all there and purchased that afternoon. Also with those came Gamma Ray’s “Land of the Free” and THEIR live album, “Alive ‘95”. It was an exciting trip back home on the train (only ten minutes in those days as I was living in the inner-city suburb of Sydney called Erskineville), especially as I opened each CD and read the band notes inside, and discovered that Kai Hansen was now also back as lead singer. I still remember that exact moment I discovered that news and just how excited I was. As a result, it was no contest as to which album I was going to listen to first as I burst through the door of our tiny town house in Devine Street.
When I first heard the opening to “Rebellion in Dreamland” I was blown away. Literally. It was just ridiculous how good this track was, and hearing Kai on lead vocals again was just incredible. And the album was instantly amazing, beyond anything I could have imagined. There was a certain level of disappointment over “Insanity and Genius”, and it was obvious that the problems that existed within the band that led to Ralf Scheepers moving on before this album was released were the same that that album had suffered from. Take a listen to Kai singing the songs from that album on the greatest hits album “Blast from the Past” and you will hear the difference, the way those songs were SUPPOSED to have been sung. And here those problems were gone, and it is clearly obvious how superior this album is to that one.
I cannot adequately explain how much I love this album. Why that should be the case is also difficult to explain. Helloween grabbed me from the moment I began listening to them, and it was Kai’s vocals on the EP and debut album “Walls of Jericho” that struck a chord. The songs he wrote were generally my favourites. And those first albums by the band were and are incredible. Then he left, and formed Gamma Ray, and I loved them just as much. There is just something about his songwriting and guitar playing that has a deep hold on me. And then this album came along, and he was singing again, and the album was so fast and heavy... I mean, there was just never any doubt I would love it. The great part about it is that the rest of the band are just as on song. Jan Rubach and Thomas Nack are sensational throughout, and Jan’s writing contributions are important pillars of the album. And Dirk Schlachter, who has been there from the beginning, is terrific on guitar, and soon to be on bass guitar.
So I have had this album on again for the last two weeks, but it is another album that rarely spends too long away from my stereo. 24 times I have listened to this album again at home and at work and in the car. It never gets old. It is an album that I can go to, in pure joy or in desolate despair, and it will right the ship or extend the joy even further. It is an incredible feat of songwriting and recording. When it comes to list of best ever albums and the such, it is almost impossible to narrow them down. Put it this way, if I could only listen to ten albums for the rest of my life, this would be one of the first ones I would choose. This is a masterpiece, and an album that I will go to the grave still listening to.

1296. Whitesnake / Ready an' Willing. 1980. 3.5/5

As the music world of the late periods of the 1970’s decade began to move through periods of high intensity change, including but not restricted to R&B, AOR, disco, heavy metal and punk, there were still bands who were moving to the beat of their own drum, sticking to the strengths of their members and refining and producing their own sound on their own terms. One of those bands was Whitesnake. Following the demise of Deep Purple, David Coverdale’s next project had released two albums in “Trouble” and “Lovehunter”, both of which had been based around a far more bluesier aspect than the bigger named band had been best known for. Both albums came to the attention of music listeners in the UK but struggled to gain any traction elsewhere in the world. Guitarist Bernie Marsden was quoted in an interview some years later as saying that the band had argued in a positive way during the writing and recording of the “Lovehunter” album, a process he believes made the band a better unit, and was instrumental in helped the band get better as they went along.
One part of that puzzle came to pass with the recruitment of Ian Paice as drummer for the new album. Jon Lord had been on board from just prior to the first album being recorded, and now Paice’s arrival not only brought in a very accomplished drummer, but a third member from the final iteration of Deep Purple. Coverdale had been trying to recruit his former band mate for some time, and his sound was to be a defining piece of the puzzle for the new album.
Given the musical environment that this album was being written and released in, it is an interesting one to go back and listen to in retrospect. Disco, punk, metal... there is none of that here. Whitesnake through their major collaborators in Coverdale, Marsden and fellow guitarist Micky Moody, weren’t looking to make any drastic changes to their own sound. They went into this album to deliver songs that may not have changed in sonics but were, they hoped, better and more pronounced versions of those songs. While the band had their solid core audience at the time, it was a difficult market to produce a hard blues album, which is essentially what the band delivers here with “Ready an’ Willing”, and while looking back from this point on the timeline gives you a sense of what has come since, at the time it must have been an interesting album to pick up on its day of release, and put on the turntable.

This original version of “Fool for Your Lovin’” is dominated by the beautiful bassline from Neil Murray, something you don’t hear on the updated version almost a decade later. Along with the understated keys from Lord and Paice’s beautifully tracking drumming, it makes an instant impact. The solos from Moody and Marsden are also perfect for the package, and Coverdale’s vocals sit in the perfect range and power for the song. It is interesting that this is probably still the standout song from the album all these years later, and yet it is because everyone here has a part in making the song excellent. The following two tracks have a structure that is very Deep Purple but certainly with the adjustments that have been made to them by the Whitesnake sound itself. “Street Talker” has a great upbeat vibe about it, highlighted through the middle by Jon Lord’s excellent keyboards and Coverdale’s enticing vocals throughout. The title track is immediately put into a perfect place by the terrific groove from Paice and Murray on drums and bass, it hits you immediately and creates a warm and comforting feel to the track. Ian Paice’s recruitment for this album is a massive fillip and his touch is over every song, while Neil Murray’s bass lines are nicely woven into the music. The Deep Purple tones are all over this track.
From here it is a different journey, no less enjoyable but of a very varied style. “Carry Your Load” is almost a blues gospel song, slower in tempo and with more emphasised vocals from Coverdale. If the keys were more prominent in the mix it would definitely be classed as gospel. “Blindman” actually comes from Coverdale’s first solo album that was released on the splitting of Deep Purple, “White Snake” (two words not one) the name that he of course took for his new band’s name the following year. It has been updated slightly here, given a bit of power in both music and background vocals. It’s a real creeper, starting off slowly and then building through the middle vocally, with the solos from Moody and Marsden excellent as always. It closes out side one of the album in a positive fashion.
The second half of the album is more defined in its quality. “Ain’t Gonna Cry No More” is a fairly standard blues rock number, not a bad song but also not extending itself to be anything apart from what it is. “Love Man” is the most blues driven track on the album, pure old time blues in every respect. In slow tempo, style, vocally and lyrically, and musically, this is your blues standard. It drags on too long, though also feels longer because of the pace that it is played at and the often-repeated lyrics within the track. “Black and Blue” is a more contemporary version of the blues, along with honky tonk piano from Lord which pick up the mood immediately. Dare I say there is a touch of the early Eagles in this song? The band has subtlety given us a wide range of material on this album; all tied to the blues rock genre but none of them sounding the same. The final song “She’s a Woman” is where we are actually met full force in the face with Jon Lord’s amazing organ skills for almost the only time on the album, and it makes an incredible difference to the song and the finish of the album. It actually makes the album contemporary for the first time with the sound he brings to the track, mirroring what was being utilised in other areas of music at that time.
There has always been a bit of a separation with the Whitesnake fan base over the albums the band has released, and when you listen to “Ready an’ Willing” compared to any album after 1984, you could fully understand why that is the case. For those fans that grew up with albums like this, and then were confronted with “1987” and “Slip of the Tongue”, you can fully appreciate the gulf that they had to come to appreciate. The same is true of younger fans going back to this from the more recent albums, but I think the real conversion of the band during the 1980’s would have been a massive event for the band’s earliest fans, and not surprisingly one that many couldn’t get over.

My own journey with Whitesnake began with the aforementioned “1987” album, one that contained all of the glitz and glitter of the enveloping heavy genre that it was aimed at on its release, and which was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. When it came to all of the Whitesnake albums prior to this, that was more of a journey. It was just a matter of getting down the road to doing it. I went through the Deep Purple discography, and in doing so discovered each of “Burn, “Stormbringer” and “Come Taste the Band” that are in some ways a forgotten branch of music and yet are so wonderful in their own right, and of course are the forerunner to this band, so that when I came to the early Whitesnake albums I wasn’t as unprepared as I could have been when it came to their sound. Well... that’s partly true.
“Ready an’ Willing” for me is and was a big step for Whitesnake. Those first two albums are okay in my opinion, but without a lot that really draws me back into listening to them. But here, when I first listened to the album, there is a hook, a catch. The opening track “Fool for Your Lovin’” is an obvious one, but what really dragged me in from the outset was the musicianship, and the way it was recorded and mixed for our ears. The rhythm of Paice and Murray on this album is just sublime, you can hear everything that Murray is playing which improves and is an important part of each song. And Paice’s drumming just shines with whoever he is playing with. Lord’s keys may not be integral to every song here, such that when they are not, they have been subdued in the background of the track. But when they are, they take front and centre as they did in Deep Purple, and in both instances, it works perfectly. And along with the guitars and Coverdale’s vocals, all of this is what made me notice the album. Take a look at who the producer is? Ah. Martin Birch. Well, that really does explain everything. And for me, his work here brings out the best in the band.
I’m not a huge lover of blues music. I understand its importance in the roots of heavy metal music and appreciate it when it comes to being incorporated at different levels of the genre. But pure blues is not something I am massively in to. And for all intents and purposes this is a blues rock album. So while there are songs here that I really enjoy, there are others that I am happy to listen to when I put this album on, but would probably rarely if ever choose to listen to individually. I’ve now had this album on my work playlist for three weeks – a little longer than I usually do, but this was also a slightly more difficult review to compose. It was important to me to truly root out exactly how I feel about this album for this podcast episode, and not just write something wishy washy or praise for no other reason than because it is Whitesnake. That extra time has allowed me to be sure that I believe this is a very good album, and the place where Whitesnake as a band began to find its feet. For me, I believe each album got better over the next decade, but I also love what they did beyond the tenure of this line up. The true believers have other ideas on that argument.

1295. Kiss / Unmasked. 1980. 2.5/5

The dawn of a new decade was an interesting period for Kiss and where the band stood in the world of music. Having climbed to a period of immense and sustained popularity with their stage shows and make up personas, and on the back of their two live albums boxed around hit studio albums such as “Destroyer” and “Love Gun”, Kiss had marketed themselves to the point of overkill with their merchandising arm arguably drawing in more money and popularity than the band and its music itself.
The year off for the four members of the band to produce their own solo albums, followed by the next Kiss album “Dynasty” had also seen some changes. With the music world swirling between punk rock and disco, along with the rising of new wave and a new movement in hard rock and heavy metal, Kiss had chosen to infuse the disco craze into their album, which saw a divide in old fans and new fans as to what they were feeling about where the band was headed. The tour to promote the album, dubbed “The Return of Kiss” proved a disappointment in their home country with a marked decline in attendance, and yet their popularity in Europe and Australasia in particular grew with that album’s sound. The glam and disco styled outfits donned on this tour also proved to be polarising amongst the fan base.
Tensions within the band were also reaching a crescendo. Peter Criss had been unable to perform on the “Dynasty” album due to injuries received in a car accident, and on the tour that followed his drumming had noticeably eroded, to the point that he intentionally slowed down or stopped playing altogether during concerts. It was something that would need to be addressed. Ace Frehley was also offside with the band. His drinking was causing Paul and Gene frustration during interviews and in band situations, while Ace himself was beginning to question the direction the band’s music was taking.
The band spent three months at The Record Plant in New York at the start of 1980 coming up with the follow up album “Unmasked”, a title that just a couple of years later would become a prophecy fulfilled, but below the surface was perhaps as telling of this album than was known at the time. Because this was the beginning of a variety of changes that took place with Kiss over the next few years, as little by little the behind the scenes stories began to emerge and finally be unmasked themselves.

In many ways, "Unmasked” continued the trend where Kiss truly stopped being a band and became a revolving slate of solo members from a musical, with a number of outside influences involved in writing and performing, It wasn’t the first album that this had occurred on, but it did become a lot more prevalent on “Unmasked”, and the results on the album tend to be a little uneven.
As was the case on the previous album “Dynasty”, Peter Criss was not the drummer on the album. At least on “Dynasty” he had contributed to one song. Here on “Unmasked”, he is nowhere to be found. Anton Fig, who had played on the Ace Frehley solo album in 1978 and had then been recruited for the same role on the “Dynasty” album to cover Criss’s parts, was once again brought in to play drums on the album. And, it is fair to say that he sounds great, as he always does on whatever project he is on. Criss officially left the band with the release of this album and was replaced by Eric Carr as the permanent drummer of the band, a move that began to draw some of the strings back together.
When it comes to the writing and recording of the songs on the album, the same sort of tensions that had come since the solo albums period continued on. Ace wrote three songs for the album, one of those “Torpedo Girl” co-written with Vini Poncia. On these three songs, Ace again played all of the guitars and bass guitar as well as singing lead vocals on the tracks. Given Anton is playing drums here, these could easily just be an Ace Frehley solo album contribution. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that, but it’s hardly a band if members are not only writing songs on their own but also playing them on their own! In the same scenario, Paul contributes four songs to the album, all co-written with Poncia, two of which, “Tomorrow” and “Easy as It Seems”, he does an Ace by playing all of the guitars and bass guitar himself, while on “Shandi” he plays all guitars with the bass being played by Tom Harper. That means that Gene only plays bass on less than half of the songs on the album, something that is not an unusual occurrence through the history of the band, especially from this point going forward. He co-writes three songs on the album, all of which he sings. All of this gives the impression of three artists all writing their own solo albums, and combining them under the banner of Kiss, rather than the band Kiss writing and performing an album.
Then there is the one song on the album that is written by no one in the band, Gerard McMahon. Apparently, the producer had heard the demo of this song made by McMahon and enjoyed it so much that he brought it to Paul, who decided that he wanted to record it. Further to this is the influence of said producer Vini Poncia, who has co-writing contributions on no less than 8 of the 11 tracks. This would seem to suggest that he was influential in pushing the album’s direction towards a certain style, and as with the preceding album “Dynasty” it is reflected in the overall sound musically.
That opening track of the album, “Is That You?” sets a tone, one that does differ from what came on the previous album, and slightly differentiates what is to come. It’s a solid song that is not the kind of album starter that the band usually comes up with. Take a look at the Side 1 Track 1 songs from previous albums, and you’ll agree this doesn’t stack up against them – but perhaps more significantly, doesn’t give this album the starter it needs. Next comes “Shandi”, which if you live in Australia you know better than any other song on the album. It reached #5 on the singles chart in our fair land, which led to it being played live every single time the band came to Australia. Even on the last tour Paul still played it,.. and was surrounded by many adoring women... all as old as Paul himself. Anyway... it’s a perfectly fine ballad track that for me fits like a glove at the OJ Simpson trial. Ace’s “Talk to Me” follows, moving along the same lines lyrically as the opening tracks, but at least has an Ace solo within its boundaries to create some sort of excitement.
Gene’s “Naked City” has three co-writers, including Poncia and Peppy Castro, but also BOB Kulick, who also contributes extra guitar to the song. This is stylised very much in the pop genre of the era, much like songs written for movie soundtracks at the time. And yet, once again, Gene has found a way to make this an eminently enjoyable song, with Ace’s solo providing a lift as well, even though it is characteristically not what you expect from this band. Again, a solo track rather than a Kiss band track. Side one concludes with “What Makes the World Go ‘Round”, a song where parts remind me of ELO’s, “It’s a Living Thing”, and which for me encapsulates just where this album sits in regard to its genre and the style it has, because it is styled as pop rock, and that is definitely where “Unmasked” sits”.
“Tomorrow”, which opens side two, is pure pop rock, straight from 1980’s FM radio. It is noticeable too that Paul plays all of the guitars and bass on this track, because the one thing that would have lifted this song to a Kiss standard would have been an Ace guitar solo, but he doesn’t appear on this song and itis the lesser for it. It is pure treacle being poured over this whole track, and it definitely misses the harder guitar sound that would have given it a far better finish.
“Two Sides of the Coin” mirrors “Talk to Me” but with a harder rock friendly attitude, closer to what most Kiss fans would have been looking for on this album. Ace is always a favourite and while his vocals are sometimes only serviceable, he always induces more excitement in his songs through his guitar alone. Gene then comes at us with one of his typically themed songs “She’s So European”, one that is bouncy enough if you can ignore the almost AI written lyrics involved. “Easy as It Seems” is my favourite Paul track on the album, this one sounds much more like the best Stanley tracks that we know. He plays all guitars here again but has a nice little solo spot through the middle that enhances the song as well. It’s the tempo really, and his own backing vocals, that make this track one of the best here.
Unlike his other two tracks which he wrote by himself, there is a funk disco feel about Ace’s “Torpedo Girl” that feels as though it has been overtly influenced by the co-writer of the track. It seems so far out of place on this album, on what has come before it, even for an album that is posturing for the marketplace of the era. The album closes out with Gene’s “You’re All That I Want”, one which lyrically once again you can guess the way it is heading by the title. It’s another track that in the modern age of AI you can imagine that computers would have little difficulty in transcribing a Gene Simmons song on the basis of lyrical content.

Kiss. Would you like my backstory again? If you are coming in late to this podcast, here’s the short version. My eldest cousin was a huge fan of Kiss at about the period this album was released, and whenever we visited my grandmother with whom he was living at the time I would see and hear Kiss all the time. I knew “I Was Made for Loving You” through wining a dance competition at school to that song. And my first true discovery of the band on my own terms was through the album “Crazy Nights”. It is a tale that has been fleshed out more thoroughly in past episodes here and on my previous podcast. No doubt it will come again very soon as the next album reaches its anniversary.
As to this album, it wasn’t one I heard until I began to go back and find all of the albums in the Kiss discography. “Unmasked” for me came up about the time of the great reunion in the mid-1990's, when there came a chance that I might actually get to see them live in concert. What were my thoughts? Yeah, it was fine. I didn’t jump out of my skin about it, it didn’t have much that I was looking for at that time. I listened to it, and then when it came to my Kiss fix it was back to those albums that I truly loved. And on the few occasions over the years that I have listened to it my thoughts have never really changed. It was okay, when I put it on I could listen to it, but there was nothing that blew my mind about it.
So we come to the past two weeks, when my CD has again come off of the shelves and returned to my CD player. What did I expect to find when I pressed the play button this time? To be fair I was looking forward to listening to the album again. Through the course of my podcasting on my album collection, “Unmasked” is one of the last albums that I have come to over the almost four year period I have been doing this, which means that I have listened to almost all of the Kiss discography at some point over that time period, and this is one of the final pieces of that puzzle.
What did I find? I found an album that has noticeable flaws, that has the cracks opening that would eventually very soon see changes within the group and the band and its music. It is an album composed of its time, by individuals who perhaps were only held together by the vision of a producer who through his own intervention and/or contribution gave the album a contemporary sound that may not have agreed with the old fans but maybe was able to attract the younger fans. Whether any of that is true or not I cannot confirm or deny, it is more or less what I have gathered from listening to the album and reading books and articles from the time period.
For my own tastes, “Unmasked” is an average album. I don’t think it is a bad album, but it also isn’t a great album. It doesn’t have anything that jumps out and grabs you by the throat, and makes you want to play the album over and over. There are some good tunes, there are some nice riffs, there are some reasonable passages of songs that get you in the Kiss mood. It’s just that it doesn’t have the material or performances that push it to the being what I’d consider better than average.
There are 20 studio Kiss albums. For me, this one ranks at #15. It’s okay. I don’t mind listening to it. But I’ve now listened to it 12 times over the last couple of weeks. It is really time for me to try something else, something that makes me excited about listening to music again.

1294. Lock Up the Wolves. 1990. 3.5/5

Upon his decision to leave Black Sabbath in 1982 and start up his own band under the name Dio, Ronnie James Dio and his new entity had had wonderful success on the back of albums such as “Holy Diver”, “The Last in Line” and “Sacred Heart”. The band had created songs that had captured the imagination of heavy metal fans around the world, and continued the rise of Dio that he had ascended through his stints in Rainbow and Black Sabbath. The band had parted ways with guitarist Vivian Campbell on the tour to promote the “Sacred Heart” album, and Craig Goldy had come in to replace him, and then write and perform also on that album’s follow up “Dream Evil”. In some ways, the first real slide of Ronnie James Dio’s career began at this point. “Dream Evil” did not do as well in sales as the previous three albums had, and while there had been a building dissention from previous gutiarist Campbell in regard to money, it seems that the problems were not just limited to the band’s first guitarist. Following the tour, Goldy also found himself on the outer and out of the band.
This event created a worldwide search. Dio opened up the position to almost a public ballot. He encouraged anyone and everyone to send their demo tapes in as he searched for a suitable replacement, someone he felt could come in and be the breath of fresh air that the band needed. Dio claimed at the time that he received and listened to over 5000 demo tapes from aspiring band members from around the world. One of those was a 17 year old from England called Rowan Robertson. He had become aware of Goldy’s departure, and though he went through the channels of the band’s management in order to put his name in contention he was unsuccessful, as he was when he also went through Dio’s then record company Phonogram Records. Undeterred, Robertson then reached out to the band’s official fan club, hoping someone with closer ties to the frontman could help him get in contact with him. This ended up succeeding and his demo tape ended up in the hands of Dio, and led to an audition for the role, for which he was flown to Los Angeles to do so in front of Ronnie and Wendy Dio. A second audition followed, and not long after Robertson was made an offer to join the band, with the official announcement made on 20 July 1989. As you can imagine, this became the focal point for all the music media for the next 10 months leading up to the release of the album.
Robertson’s arrival in the band, perhaps surprisingly and through no fault of his own, ended up spelling the end of the remainder of the original members of Dio. Keyboardist Claude Schnell was the first to go, soon replaced by Jens Johanssen who moved on from Yngwie Malmsteen’s band to join Dio. After this, bass guitarist Jimmy Bain was also moved on, replaced by Teddy Cook, the almost equally as unknown as the newly hired guitarist. Finally, just two weeks before the band was to head into the studio to record the newly written album, Vinny Appice also left the band. Appice later confirmed that he was there until the album was written and left because he felt "This is not Dio" with "all these young guys in the band". As his replacement, Dio brought in his friend Simon Wright, who had moved on after a successful stint with AC/DC to take up the role.
In an article in the Los Angeles Times in September 1990, Ronnie was quoted as follows as to his decision to break up his original band, suggesting he was prompted by his sense that the band members had lost interest. “They just weren’t putting out anymore,” he said. “I’m very intense about what I do, and the guys in the band seemed to be merely going through the motions, bringing their lunch to work and looking at the clock, waiting to go home. And I just can’t go for that. I view this as a brand-new band, with four new guys and one old guy--me,” Dio said. “And after a three-year layover, we’re essentially starting all over again.”

“Wild One” comes out of the block immediately with Simon Wright’s drum intro to the band followed by the opening riff from new guitarist Rowan. The tempo is immediately up and about, and everything seems to lock in from the start. As the opening to the new era of the band, and indeed the completely converted line up of the band, it hits all the right moves from the outset. Rowan is giving plenty of opportunity to showcase his wares, to show why he has been brought in at such a tender age to be Dio’s new gunslinger. Straight up he is more Goldy than Campbell but there is nothing wrong with that. This is followed by the more subdued pace but increasingly brooding mood of “Born on the Sun”. There is a fantastic building of intensity through the song in both music and from the frontman himself. Dio’s vocals hit those gritty highs throughout the song, and Rowan sounds absolutely spectacular on this track, really ramping up the energy to make it as wonderful as it is.
From this point on, it is noticeable about the change within the structure of the album, the direction that this fifth Dio album has decided to take that differs with the albums that have preceded it. The tempo from this point on more or less sits in a slow mid-tempo, marking the way that Ronnie himself seems to have wanted the music to flow. “Hey Angel” is highlighted by Rowan's great solo in the middle of the song, which almost sounds like it is trying to get this song to speed up and come in at a better tempo that would improve its output markedly. It doesn’t succeed, but it still pushes Dio’s vocals to a more pleasing output as the song reaches its conclusion. “Between Two Hearts” has a passion about the vocals, most especially in the verses rather than the chorus, but the morbidly slow tempo that accompanies it holds back its true enjoyment as a result. This acts as one of the best examples of tracks on this album that sound reasonable in places but just need to ramp up the actual speed of the musical output to get it to an enjoyment level that would please the long-time fans of the band. “Night Music” is slightly brighter but follows the same pattern, a slower tempo riff that sounds terrific but isn’t allowed to break the barriers et for it. Indeed, the groove of the chorus here is terrific and Rowan’s solo again sounds great, but it just feels like this is saddled again with the grind and broken gears of a tractor trawling through mud. Ronnie’s vocals ramp up the end of the track again, sometimes making you wonder why he is leaving the real power for the end.
When it comes to the title track this continues in spades. “Lock Up the Wolves” possibly even slows down even further than anything to this point of the album. And yes, I’m aware that music doesn’t have to be fast or even mid pace to be great and entertaining. But this really does border on going backwards, so slow is the tempo. Just getting to the first drumbeat and riff feels like an eternity... and then another terminal pause before the next one. At times it is amazing that Simon has a tempo to keep on the drums because it drags so slowly between drumbeat and hi hats crashes. This song goes for 8.5 minutes but feels so much longer because of its terminal tempo. That’s a tough way to complete side one of the album. Then you flip it over and begin side two, and you get pretty much the same thing with “Evil on Queen Street”. Dio’s vocals take on the main role once again here, vocalising his lyrical story, while his band sit in their mono tempo track with the basic drum and bass rhythm pattern holding together underneath, and Rowan’s basic riff settling into the walk of the song. Both of these songs are well designed to set up the visual of the story being told with the desolate and moody characteristics of the music. But coming in to listen to a Dio album and hearing these songs back to back? That’s a tough ask. Ronnie’s vocals do climb at the back end of the song to bring some passion and vitality to the track.
The back third of the album does spend a little time trying to pull itself out of the mire in regards to tempo, and while it does do that it is the mood that is hard to replace. “Walk on Water” brings us back to a mid-tempo range, Dio singing in a less ominous and a more tale-telling fashion. This song is reminiscent of what the band produced for the “Dream Evil” album, which given the fact that all of those members had now gone is slightly ironic. “Twisted” pulls back a fraction again, and also has a less exciting rhythm style about it, one that doesn’t allow Rowan to break free of the spell easily and put his own mark on the track. “Why Are They Watching Me” is perhaps the fastest tempo of the album after the opening track, with Simon and Teddy even allowed to break their spell as well. The shame is that the song fades out as Rowan lets rip on a second solo, and yet it takes it with it as it fades into nothing. Such a shame, just give us 30 more seconds and I think it would have been a terrific finish. The album then closes out with the autobiographical “My Eyes”, the lyrics covering songs and albums and bands of Ronnie’s career all meshed into the track, perhaps fittingly closing the album on a high note. Indeed, perhaps in many ways once this album was released, it could have felt as though it was an appropriate way to bring to a close the bands days, which for a time was not so far away from the truth as may have been imagined.

Oh my... I was soooo looking forward to the release of this album. And due to the early announcement of the recruitment of a new guitarist in Rowan Robertson so early on, and the constant reporting of it in magazines such as Hot Metal and Kerrang and Metal Hammer, I had about a year to wait before its release. And that was interminable at the time. “Dream Evil” had been released right on the cusp of the end of our school years, and is still a burning memory of our final days of high school. So yes, I was excited and could wait to get this album.
It’s fair to say that I have rarely been as disappointed in my life as I was when I got this album.
I bought this on vinyl at Utopia Records as soon as I possibly could after its release... and was almost morbidly horrified at what I heard. This was so far away from what I had expected it to be, there are points of the universe as yet undiscovered that would be closer to what I thought this album would be like. Yes, it was an entirely new band, but the songs were actually mostly written by the same writers as they had had for years. Dio Bain Appice, and Robertson. So how could they be so different? Was it Rowan who was to blame for this? Now, let’s cut this off before we go any further. You get the feeling that Rowan was very tied up in what he was allowed to do to express himself musically on this album. That’s not unusual for a Dio-helmed album. He was a kid, a very YOUNG kid, and on his first ever project he was always going to have to tow the line pretty much all the way. There are some really terrific moments on this album where he shows what he can do, and they were then and still are today wonderful to listen to. And Ronnie writes all the melodies and the structure of the tracks. So no, Rowan was not to blame. It is harsh that he had to shoulder a fair percentage of the disappointment fans had with this album on its release. To be fair, it is such a shame that he didn’t get a second album on which to collaborate and perform with this band and perhaps give a clearer indication of his own songwriting abilities.
Dio drags back the tempo on this album, at which point it is molasses-slow for no real discernible reason. There is no proof of the following statement, but it is my own theory regarding this album, and how much of his band’s music goes from this point onwards. Ronnie often spoke about wanting to bring the heavy to his music. But by heavy it often seemed from 1989 onwards as though what he wanted was to slow down the songs, accentuate the guitar riffs and express himself with a heavier droning pace, which seems to be what he considered a heavier kind of music. It isn’t doom because that’s not what his guitarists played best. But it is deathly slow, and without those exciting break out riff and solos from his chosen guitarist it becomes a lot less interesting than it may be. It’s a real shame.
The drumming too is very much in the style that you would expect Vinny Appice to play in, which certainly binds with the account that his replacement came after all of the songs had been written, and Wright came in and played a close approximation to what Vinny would have played anyway. It sounds fine, but Simon is a different type of drummer, something he was able to show on Dio’s later albums.
So yes, when this album came out I was mortified. Compared to so many of the other amazing releases in the year 1990, this was a deep dark pit of disappointment.
Flash forward seven years. Dio has been back to Black Sabbath to release one of the heaviest albums ever recorded, one so different from this one that it is hard to imagine they reside so closely together. Then he’s out again, and he’s back with Dio and has released two more albums with the same sort of polarising of opinion that “Lock up the Wolves” produced. “Strange Highways” mirrors “Dehumanizer” in places, while “Angry Machines” is almost an industrial metal album, so completely unlike anything Dio has ever produced that it invoked from me a question – was this just like “Lock Up the Wolves”? So I reached into the collection, to an album I likely hadn’t listened to in seven years. And I put it on. And what I found was an album... that wasn’t as bad as I remembered it. Yep, it was still molasses-slow in the middle as I remembered it, but overall I thought it was okay. And for the first time I found myself wondering... if Dio had released THIS album in 1995 or 1996, would it have been better received? The changes in music had been stark in that time, and perhaps it better suited what heavy music had BECOME than what was prevalent at the time it was released.
Since then, I have listened to “Lock Up the Wolves” more often. It started off only occasionally, but over the years it has become a more regular occurrence. And although I still remember how much I thought this was a great big pile of crap when it was first released, now I really enjoy it. Once I got used to the pace of the album, I think there is a lot of great material to listen to here. And I am biased when it comes to Dio the band and Dio the artist. That much will always be true. And this will never be regarded as a great Dio album by anyone. But even over the last couple of weeks, having listened to it many many times again, I still love the mood and the way the album comes together. Sure, out of the ten studio albums the band released I would rank this at 9, I still love hearing Rowan’s only contribution to the band, and I still love listening to Ronnie. This is definitely a variant when comes to the band Dio’s discography, but being this far separated from the era makes this a far easier listen than it was 35 years ago.

1293. Various Artists / Music from and Inspired by M: I-2. 2000. 3/5

When the first Mission: Impossible film was released in 1996, it was a smash hit. The remake of the original TV series from the 1960’s and 1970’s was a rollicking film full of amazing action sequences and the required surprise ending. And as always, it also left the door ajar for a sequel to be made. So when it was announced that Mission Impossible 2 was going to be made it was big news. For Australians, the fact that it was to be filmed in Sydney also gave it an extra bit of enticement. The film itself? Well many people think it is terrific. I was always underwhelmed by it.
What the producers did decide on that had some merit was to load up a soundtrack album with some of the heavy hitter bands of the time, and give them the chance to create a song that could be featured in the movie itself. When compiled, some of those songs were featured in the movie, while the rest were put together on this album, which was stamped as “Music FROM and INSPIRED BY Mission Impossible 2”, so as to cover their backsides when it was finally revealed that not all of the tracks appeared in the film itself. All of the songs were recorded and produced by the bands themselves.
And it is an eclectic selection of bands and artists, which is very much a snapshot of heavy music at the time. Because it is dominated by nu-metal bands and alternative metal and rock bands. And if you are fans of that era in music then this album is most probably already in your collection. But if you are not fans of the standard of the turn of the century, then there are probably a lot of reasons not to go near this album. As a study of the era though it acts as an interesting collection to listen to and remember just where certain parts of the world were at when it came to the evolution of heavy music. It isn’t really necessary to tie this to the movie, but then again perhaps the enjoyment of the movie or the music comes from how you view the other.

The Australian version of this album has an overloaded 19 tracks on it, and the running time in total is an hour and 20 minutes. It’s almost as long as some films, though not as long as this one was. There are three bonus songs tacked onto the end of the regular 16 songs, one is “Iko Iko” by Zap Mama, an electronica reggae version of this well covered song, while the other two are by Australian artists, “Sucker” by 28 Days is a solid hard rock track from this very good Aussie group, ne that keeps the intensity high, while the “Theme from Mission Impossible” by Josh Abrahams is a nice way to exit the album.
Back to the top of the track list and this is where the heavy hitters of the album reside, to drag you in from the outset. Leading us off is Limp Bizkit with “Take a Look Around”, which utilises the main riff of the Mission Impossible theme tune as its basis and works onwards from there. I can’t say that I know a lot of Limp Bizkit and most of what I hear is not really my cup of tea, but I do like this song, the way it moves from moody to heavy to clear to raging. The song is a little long at over five minutes but it's a good listen. Metallica’s “I Disappear” follows, and interesting bridge between what they had written for “Reload” and would then write for “St Anger”. It is more or less their nu-metal anthem, one they made a film clip for that was probably better than the film itself, and which would go on to be the catalyst for their legal action over the peer-to-peer networking application Napster when a demo of this song appeared on that network well before the release of this album, or the song as a single. It is sometimes overlooked as it doesn’t actually appear on a Metallica album. Rob Zombie’s “Scum of the Earth” is typical Rob Zombie and blasts through the album as a result. The Butthole Surfers’ “They Came In” is an interestingly recorded track, full of differing instrumental effects that showcase a side of the band that isn’t always obvious. Then “Rocket Science” by The Pimps mirrors the Limp Bizkit style of rap and metal grooves. The cover version of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” is performed by the Foo Fighters with two differing performers. Firstly, the song is sung by drummer Taylor Hawkins, who gives the vocals a whole new sound. He is obviously a fan of the band, and his performance is passionate as a result. This also has Brian May guesting on guitar which gives the solo through the track lovely sound that only May can provide, as a counter to David Gilmour’s original. It’s an interesting interpretation of the track. Chris Cornell’s “Mission 2000” has moments that sound great, when his vocals hit those tones that we all know and love, but the track itself does fall a little flat. On the other hand, Godsmack’s “Going Down” was recorded during sessions for their debut album but not used, and was recycled here and then on their sophomore album.
Into the second half of the album, the lesser known acts get their chance to showcase their wares, and the range of genres of music here extends as a result. “What U Lookin’ At?” by Uncle Kraker, who had worked with Kid Rock up to this point in time, has a similar vibe to his music here. “Backwards” by Apartment 26 sits in an alt-metal phase, and given the relative newness of the band is an interesting choice for this soundtrack. The song is solid but is very rigid in composition. Diffuser’s “Karma” is very alternative rock of the late 1990’s but is an enjoyable trip down typical movie soundtrack songs from teenage coming-of-age movies of the day. It could easily have been in the movie “Empire Records” for instance. Buckcherry’s “Alone” is a standard hard rock offering from the band here.
Powderfinger’s “Not my Kinda Scene” is the standout from the back half of the album, the professional and excellence of their music immediately noticeable around the other tracks here. Tori Amos’s “Carnival” will please her fans but is not instantly brilliant, while the Hans Zimmer track “Nyah” seems like something that could easily have been omitted at the final hurdle.

I remember buying this after the movie had been released at the cinemas. I’d been to see the movie, and as I mentioned earlier, I had been underwhelmed with it. It isn’t a patch on the first movie, the story and the stunts. But some of the music from the movie I thought had been pretty good, and having sat through the credits in order to see who contributed to the songs I decided I may as well go out and buy the CD of the soundtrack. And, overall, it was good. I wouldn’t say that I’m a fan of all of the bands on the album, but I enjoyed about half of the album from the first couple of listens.
I have quite a number of soundtracks in my collection, and they all get bought after I’ve seen a movie and like the music, and then they get an occasional listen and then go back on the shelves. This album is no different. I listened to it when I first bought it, and then it has been residing in amongst my other CDs forever. I don’t remember when the last time was that I listened to this album. When I go to listen to music at home, I go for an album by a band, not really a compilation or soundtrack album. Sometimes I’m in the mood for that but mostly I swing the other way. So while I have these soundtrack albums that I have bought over the years, they don’t get much of a run. Which is one of the reasons I do this podcast. To pull these albums off my shelves and give them a chance to listened to once again. Just like Andy and his toys in Toy Story.
I guess I feel about the same way listening to this album today as I did all those years ago. It’s okay. It has some good songs here, and some that are very dated to the era. There are bands and artists here that I have never really listened to much that sound better than I would expect. There are bands here that I generally enjoy that have offered a reasonable track to the album. And as with all soundtrack albums there are bands and artists here that I just don’t know at all, and don’t really feel any desire to change that.
I could have skipped doing an episode on this album and it would probably not have bothered anyone in the world. All it would have done was annoy me because I knew it had an anniversary, and it was in my collection, and I passed over it. So now it is done. Everything is in order. And we can all move onto the next episode.