116. Black Sabbath / The Best Of Black Sabbath. 2000. 5/5.

OK. There is one thing that gets my nose out of joint about this.
Firstly, this is not a best of Sabbath compilation. It is a best of Sabbath with Ozzy, with a couple of Dio songs and a Gillan song tacked on at the end. There is no record of Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen, Tony Martin, and the number of other musicians who played apart from Iommi, Geezer and Bill Ward. It really should be titled The Best Of Black Sabbath 1970-1978. Then it would be more accurate.

Getting past that, this is a wonderful compilation. The record of the band that made heavy metal what it is. Every song is like a page of history. You can almost pin point which bands in todays music have grown up listening to which song, and how it inspired them.

Each grinding riff, every beefy bass line, every pounding drum roll, every screaming vocal, just let's you know that it is Black Sabbath in their element. Some of the greatest songs ever written lie within the case of this album. Until you sit down and listen to them all again, in remastered glory, you don't know how influential they have been.

Though they have been sadly neglected in this, one should not forget that this band continued until 1998 – almost 20 years with different members. They were influential too, and deserve their own recognition at some stage.

Rating : As a tribute to the original Black Sabbath, this is a testament to their greatness. 5/5.

115. Yngwie J. Malmsteen / The Best Of 1990-1999. 2000. 3.5/5

You will never convince me that Yngwie's best decade was NOT the 80's. His best albums are from that time, and as I have probably documented elsewhere, after Eclipse I lost interest for a decade.

This just looks like another money spinner from the outside. I mightn't be an expert on what Ynwgie did in this decade, but I know he had better songs than these on his albums, and they don't make an appearance here. The album is fine, don't get me wrong. He is still great at what he does. But let's face it – when a 'greatest hits' package is lifted by the appearance of two songs, one being Rising Force, which he wrote and released in the 80's (yes, the live performance is from the 90's...) and the other is a live performance of a cover song (Rainbow's brilliant Gates Of Babylon), you'd have to start thinking that they were clutching at straws.

Rating : It's OK, and most of the material is good. But I can't get past those two songs I mentioned. The best two songs on the album, and realistically they shouldn't be there!! 3.5/5.

114. Helloween / The Best, The Rest, The Rare. 1991. 4/5.

With the band's record contract coming to and end - and probably not a moment too soon, as it had already cost them a bandmate in Kai Hansen who had left due to the handling of money situation  - the record company threw together this compilation best-of album in order to squeeze the final ounce of money from the money making machine that Helloween was at the time of its release. Coming after the wonderful run of the debut EP and three monster follow up albums, a greatest hits compilation was both an easy and tough task to do well.

The album contains material from the three albums to date, songs such as "Ride the Sky" from Walls of Jericho, "Future World" and "Halloween" from Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I and "I Want Out", "Dr Stein" and "Keeper of the Seven Keys" from Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II. The remaining songs are either bonus tracks from Japanese editions or B sides from singles. They include the bonus songs such as "Judas" with Kai Hansen singing, "Livin' Ain't No Crime", "Save Us", "Savage" and "Don't Run For Cover", as well as a re-recorded version of "Victim of Fate" with Michael Kiske singing, which to me takes all of the sting out of a great song. At the time of this album's release, most of these songs were almost impossible to find in Australia, and thus this release was well worth purchasing because of the spasity of these songs. Of course since then, with multiple re-releases of albums and singles, all of these songs can be found everywhere.

Thus this is not a greatest hits album, but a collection of memorabilia from the first great age of Helloween. Its release marked the end of this first age, and signalled troubled times in the immediate future.

Rating:  Give me wings to fly!!  4/5.

113. Iron Maiden / Beast Over Hammersmith. 2002. 5/5.

This was the second double CD from the Eddie's Archive package that was then later released on its own. It is recorded on the Beast On The Road tour, with Bruce Dickinson raising hell on vocals.

This concert had pretty much every great song Maiden had recorded over their first three albums, and is just brilliant. It has all the elements required to make a great live album (refer to previous post for list). The fact that it took so many years to surface is strange, considering the number of bootlegs of the show that exist (yep, I've got one).

Personal favourites are the less-heard-in modern-days songs such as Another Life, Drifter, Transylvania and Killers, along with The Prisoner, Children Of The Damned and Phantom Of The Opera.

Rating : Just a great album of what must have been a great gig. A snapshot of a band that was heading for big, big things. 5/5.

112. Dokken / Beast From The East. 1988. 4/5.

Released at their absolute peak after their (in my opinion) best album, this is a shining light still after all these years.

There are a few essentials to a great live album.
1) Make it live, mistakes and all. That's what you get at the concert
2) Best songs. Gotta have the classics
3) Make sure the audience is involved and audible
4) Make sure the mix is great.

Beast From the East has all of these elements. The lads are at their peak, and the performance here is great. It emphasises that they can take great tunes from the studio, and make them bigger and better live.

Personal favourites include Dream Warriors, Kiss Of Death, Just Got Lucky and Unchain The Night.

Rating : A really good live album that shows off the bands abilities and their songs live capabilities. 4/5.

111. Iron Maiden / Be Quick Or Be Dead [Single]. 1992. 3/5.

First single from the Fear Of The Dark album. The song is good. The two other songs are OK.

Rating : Well, it only gets what it gets because of who they are. 3/5.

110. Michael Schenker Group / Be Aware Of Scorpions. 2001. 4/5.

When I first put this album on I was pretty impressed. Apart from a couple of hiccups, Schenker just keeps on putting out great material. Of course, it's not just the guitaring. He and his band keep on writing great songs, and his vocalists are also able to sing, which helps a lot.

Though I still believe the album name was meant to draw back those fans who had deserted him in the '90's, anyone who took the bait could not help but be glad they had. It is almost as though the same thing has happened to Schenker as has happened to Malmsteen and others – that they have dabbled in the mainstream looking for success, and now just make the music they want. If that is true – it works.

My favourite songs on the album include No Turning Back, Because I Can, How Will You Get Back and Blinded By Technology.

Rating : An indication that Schenker is getting back to what he does best, writing great songs. You can't revisit your heyday, but this is up there on a second tier. 4/5.

109. Iron Maiden / BBC Archives. 2002. 4.5/5

Originally released as a part of Eddie's Archive, this was the first of three double CDs. It contains four separate live shows – two with Paul Di'anno on vocals, and two with Bruce Dickinson on vocals.

The quality is excellent, and it makes a nice historical package. The original version of Killers, with different lyrics which apparently were made up five minutes before going on stage, is quite amusing. It's a good thing they sat down afterwards and thought more about it! :)

Most of this stuff has been available as bootlegs for years – I have copies of them myself – but it is good to have the real deal. The Reading Festival show is an excellent showcasing of the band in Di'anno's day, and how he used to drive the crowd. It's also great to have a solid live recording of the material from the first album.

Rating : Great live performances from another age. This gives a clear indication of how a band grows through the years on stage. 4.5/5

108. Deep Purple / The Battle Rages On. 1992. 3.5/5

For a band with so much success over a long period of time, there is little doubt that the working relationships within the band Deep Purple had always been temperamental. Prior to the band’s cessation in the mid-1070's most of the Mark II line up had moved on, looking for other opportunities and also to be able to express themselves in their own way without being forced to conform to the majority rules of being a part of a group. On their reformation in 1983, there still seemed to be an unease, mainly between Ian Gillan and Ritchie Blackmore, and it had eventually led to Gillan leaving the group after “The Hose of Blue Light” album, replaced by Ritchie and Roger Glover’s former Rainbow colleague Joe Lynn Turner on the “Slaves and Masters” album in 1990.
The unease was still there, and with the writing process for the next album already in full swing, Turner was let go from the band. The reason was not a dispute – in fact, Blackmore wanted Turner to stay – but with the band having signed a new muti million dollar record deal, the record company wanted Ian Gillan back at the helm, especially in the lead up to the 25th anniversary of the band’s inception. This created a lot of angst, as Ian Paice, Jon Lord and Roger Glover were in favour of the outcome, but Blackmore was adamant. How adamant, you may ask? Well, in order to go along with this occurring, Ritchie asked for, and received, $250,000 in his bank account before it went ahead. Even at that time it was a ludicrous amount of money for one band member to receive to change his mind. And given this was the case, you surely could only have assumed at the time that it was barely a band-aid on the growing sore of the band, and that it was not a cure but only a temporary solution to a problem that would continue to fester as time moved on.

The album kicks off with a typically strong opening track, the title track in fact, and as Ian Gillan’s layered vocals come straight to the fore you could easily imagine that everything has been restored despite the drama between albums, and the band have hit their straps again. The mix of Lord’s Hammond organ and Blackmore’s riffs settle nicely again within Glover’s soothing bass and Paice’s under appreciated drumming.
From this point on however, the rest of the album is a series of songs that are varied in style and quality, and varied in a way that is very un-Deep Purple like. And there could been several reasons for that, but none seem satisfactory. For instance, “Lick it Up” is a slowed-tempo song that seems to lack any great motivation through the base of the song, and is not rescued in any way by Blackmore or Lord by ways of a memorable solo. “Talk About Love” sticks to the same sort of style, probably with more energy than “Lick it Up”, but still without anything particularly interesting happening in the song. Then you have “Ramshackle Man” which is a straight out blues rock song, right down to the nuances of Gillan’s vocals. Now to me it seems like an extraordinarily strange move to throw this song into the middle of the album, for no other reason than it is so completely different from everything else around it. You be forgiven for thinking you’d accidently changed albums if you didn’t look at the tracklisting on the CD. Listen, if you are a massive blues fan you will probably still be surprised when this comes on. Five and a half minutes of completely off the wall misdirected music. I’ve listened to this album a bit over the last coupe of weeks, and I still can’t get my head around why this song is here. As a B-side to a single? OK, I could get that. But here? No, no, no.
On the other hand, “Anya” finds a much better place, and SOUNDS like a Deep Purple song with Lord’s Hammond organ making its presence felt and Blackmore playing off against it nicely. The song moves along freely and lifts the spirit rather than kill it with boredom. “Time to Kill” is enjoyable enough with a bouncy feel and singalong lyrics, but it also feels very stock-standard with a fill in the numbers kind of writing and playing. “A Twist in the Tale” fortunately comes on straight after the abomination of “Ramshackle Man”, and is played at a good clip, and again features the best parts of Blackmore and Lord making the song their own, along with Gillan’s higher soaring vocals to complement it. “Nasty Piece of Work” is a slower tempo’d track but is still mixed with a varied array of Gillan’s vocals and dominated by Lord’s organ and Paice’s beautifully timed drumming skills. “Solitaire” and “One Man’s Meat” are both songs that are fine without being memorable again, that close out the album.
In the long run, Ritchie Blackmore was openly critical with the less than melodic output the band had come to put together, and there is a mood change here again following the very Rainbow-esque “Slaves and Masters” album and this. And it is hard to put a finger on just where this comes from. Sure, the genre changing era of grunge and alt music had arrived and was creating different platforms for artists in regards to their music, and on some songs here it does sound like they are trying to diversify in that kind of direction. But even that seems too simplified a response as to the whole direction of this album. It just SOUNDS like there is a battle going on for the sound of the band, and of the band itself, and it hasn’t made for an exciting release.

I rushed right out and bought this in the first week of its release, which wasn’t a particularly popular move because at the time I was newly married and our disposable income was very close to zero. Still, it was Deep Purple. Their three albums since the 1984 reformation had been brilliant (at least, I thought so), and this was going to be just another notch on the belt. Well, that wasn’t quite the case. The music world had changed, and the individuals in the band don’t appear as though they were committed enough to fight against it.
I listened to it a bit at the time (making sure I got my money’s worth in a way), and look, it was an easy listen on days when that was what I was looking for. And there is no question that many of my favourite bands from the 1980’s had released less than sterling albums in those years around 1992 and 93. Now whether it was because they were running out of ideas, or because the times they were a’changing, or a combination of both, I don’t really know. What I do know is that this album, along with several others from those kid of bands at the time, had a few question marks over it if you wanted to dig deep enough and scratch beyond the surface of “oh yeah, another nice Deep Purple album!” I’ve listened to it plenty in the last few weeks, and when I’m at home in the Metal Cavern, playing it through my stereo with a scotch in hand, I have still enjoyed this just as I did 30 years ago in that one bedroom flat in Kiama.
Is it a memorable album? No, it isn’t. It does have some good songs, but unlike the previous three albums it all feels a bit forced. No doubt part of that comes from having to mould the songs written with the previous vocalist to Gillan’s unique style, but in the long run you just get the feeling that the camaraderie and band work ethic was not the same as it had been before. This was all obvious when halfway through the world tour to promote it, Blackmore quit the band for the second and final time. Joe Satriani was drafted in to complete those tour dates, and then Deep Purple moved to a new era with the recruitment of a new lead guitarist, one whose style and energy revitalised the group and allowed them to continue moving forward into the next century. The Mark II era ended with an album that none of them would have been satisfied with, but still contains enough good songs to make it worthwhile in the Deep Purple discography.