1199. Men at Work / Cargo. 1983. 2.5/5

No one, surely not even the band themselves, would have imagined the plaudits that came their way after the release of that debut album “Business as Usual” back in 1981. That album, one where you can hear an episode reviewing it back in Season 1 of this podcast, had two cracks at both the Australian and US markets, essentially through the song “Down Under”. The bleeding of that song into international markets allowed the band the exposure that most other local bands could only dream of with their first album, and meant that the expectation of what to expect on the follow up would lead to two things – the pressure for the band to follow up its success by writing more songs that would again capture the imagination of the listening public, but also a ready-made leap in album sales when the new album was actually released.
The success of the debut album actually led to the release date for “Cargo” being put back somewhat significantly. As “Business as Usual” was still making solid sales, their record company felt that releasing this album too soon would be detrimental to that money-making machine. “Cargo” had been written and recorded throughout the first half of 1982, and was ready for release by mid that year, so it was pretty much another nine months on before it actually saw the light of day. The first single from the album was released in Australia in October of that year, a full six months before the album eventually made the record shelves. That release date, 40 years ago this week, had been preceded by the second single a few weeks earlier, and the success of both of those songs on the singles chart gave the album a huge push when it finally came to light.

This album continues with the interesting mix of song styles and musical direction that the first album started, though the direction here is perhaps in a more commercial bent. It majors in the age of new wave mixed with the pop sensibilities that were around in that era of music, eschewing any pretence of incorporating rock into the mix. Once again, there are songs especially such as “Settle Down My Boy”, “Blue for You” and “I Like To” that all have that reggae blended new wave style that, while I can listen to it when it comes from bands such as Men at Work and others like The Police, I don’t especially love it. The mix of Greg Ham’s saxophone does tend to soften the reggae part and bring to the surface more of the new wave part when it is used in the songs here.
While the album flows together nicely from start to finish, it is an acquired taste. Anyone coming in looking for a combination of the energy that comes from the band’s best known singles will possibly feel disappointed. Those singles are catchy, and were released as singles because of that. But the other songs on the album are a mixture. We have those three I’ve just mentioned that have their own style, and then you have a song such as “Upstairs in My House” which mixes the sax and new wave keyboards with Colin Hay’s beautifully pitched vocals soaring through the song, which makes it one of the highlights. In other tracks the instrumental pieces that proliferate sometime feels as though they have freeform experimentalising on them, where the music continues on just for the sake of filling some space. On numerous listens, sometimes those songs just seem to track longer than they should.
So beyond the bulk of the album, the singles do poke their heads above the waterline to make themselves heard. The opening two songs are “Dr Heckyll and Mr Jive” and “Overkill” which get the album off to an excellent. “High Wire” sits in the middle of the album and lifts it profile there as well, while “It’s a Mistake” still provides the riposte that energises whenever it appears.

Like I mentioned during the review part of this album, the band’s first album was still around the charts at the time this was eventually released, and it became more prominent again six months later when Australia II won the America’s Cup, when “Down Under” had become the unofficial anthem of the campaign. So in many ways, despite the late release and the particular way they released the singles from THIS album, “Cargo” was still being overshadowed by its predecessor all along the way – at least, that’s how it felt to me at the time.
While this was released at a time before I had begun to seek out and buy albums of my own accord, I did know the singles of it off the radio. Eventually “Business as Usual” became one of the first albums that I did ever purchase. “Cargo” was an album I heard sporadically at friends’ of my parents, and not many places otherwise. Eventually down the track, a few years after Men At Work had ceased to exist, I did get a taped copy of this album on cassette and listened to it for awhile. For several reasons – I was listening to much heavier material at the time, and the age of new wave was well and truly passed – I didn’t get as much out of it as I had with the debut album, and it slipped from my mind.
So I’ve listened to it again over the past couple of weeks, and I have the same feelings about it now as I did then. I’ve been quite happy to have it on and listen to it, knowing it isn’t my preferred genre in this day and age. The comparison with The Police is still there, less than there was on the first album, but there nonetheless. And my main joy of an early episode of the comedy series “Scrubs” is when Colin Hay came on and played an acoustic version of this album’s superior song.

1198. AC/DC / Powerage. 1978. 4/5

By the time 1978 had come around, AC/DC had built their reputation on the back of hard blazing live shows based on their amazing rhythm section holding together at the seams, while lead guitarist Angus Young and lead vocalist Bon Scott did their thing to create the powerhouse that the band had become.
One change had occurred in the group, with bass guitarist Mark Evans having been moved on, and Cliff Williams coming in to take his place. What hadn’t changed was the volatile way the band was received by fans over the globe. Having been adored by their home fans in Australia initially, their popularity had waned slightly as the band had relocated to the UK and built their reputation on the continent. This had led to better sales in the Uk and Europe. In the US however, they were still being held at bay by their record company who were continually unhappy with what the band had been producing. They had canned the release of “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”, and had been almost fooled into releasing the previous album “Let There Be Rock”, an episode you can find in Season 2 of this podcast. But that album had been one where the band had decided on a strategy of riffs on riffs in order to collate their new songs, and it was a strategy that they brought forward into the writing for their new album “Powerage”. Recorded back in Sydney in Albert Studios, the band worked at what they did best, the blues based hard rock that powered through the speakers and powered up the room.

When it comes to listening to albums by AC/DC in the Bon Scott era, I’ve found that in general there is a wider slew of song variations than became the case in the Brian Johnson era. More simply put, once we got to “Back in Black” and beyond, there is a certain style that the vast majority of songs sit in that gives them a certain sameness. Leading up to that album, and certainly pre-”Powerage”, there was a mixture of the high octane and the cooler blues based tracks on those albums, where the pace of the songs sometimes ebbed and flowed throughout. Overall though, “Powerage” may be the exception to that thought process, as what we have here are nine songs that sit much closer together in style and substance than those other releases. The rhythm section barely pauses for breath throughout. Angus slices through each song with his trademark solo lead, and Bon sings everything in his trademark energetic style. It’s a great fit all the way through, opening with the anthemic “Rock ‘N’ Roll Damnation”, a song that was basically written for the American market when their arm of the record company complained that there were no singles on the album. Following this is the wonderful “Down Payment Blues” with a great rock base carrying the song, and followed by “Gimme a Bullet” that picks up that beat from the leading song and carries it on perfectly.
The close of side one and the opening of side two centre on the AC/DC classics “Riff Raff” and “Sin City”. “Riff Raff” comes at you hard and fast with that driving drums and guitar fuelling Bon’s vocal masterclass, while “Sin City” is the obvious exception to the ‘rage-all-the-way-through' songs, but the energy seeps out throughout, and it retains its title of classic to this day. “What’s Next to the Moon” picks things up again following the slight change in mood, and is complemented by “Gone Shootin’” that follows it. “Up to My Neck in You” is top shelf classic Bon Scott era AC/DC, blown away with that charging rhythm section driving the song while Bon tells his story, and then the album concludes with the bombastic “Kicked in the Teeth”. And is interesting to this day that for many enjoyers of AC/DC the band that the songs that proliferate “Powerage” may not be considered classics from the AC/DC catalogue, but they all do their job in keeping the album moving and driving it (within the speed limit) to its destination.
And that is the beauty of “Powerage”. It doesn’t have the power-punch hit songs or singles of other albums, or the massive gap between high energy hard rock and slower bluesy ballad type songs. What it does have is a perfectly balanced selection of songs that doesn’t deviate in style and substance. Bon’s vocals are superb, Angus’s lead is wonderful, and the backing beat of Malcolm, Phil and Cliff is perfect. The foot tapping and air drums don’t quit for the entire span of the album, and makes it a joyful experience every time you put it on to listen to.

No doubt I’ve mentioned this already on this podcast when it comes to the AC/DC catalogue, but I didn’t start listening to the whole of the AC/DC album collection until I was beyond my high school years. I heard other people playing their albums on bus trips and in the school yard, most especially “TNT” and “Back in Black”, but discovering the goodness of the other albums came to me in trickles.
I distinctly remember first listening to “Powerage”, and not being overly ecstatic about it. At the time I guess I was looking for more like those two albums I just mentioned, and “Powerage” doesn’t fit that mould, so I didn’t seek it out often over a number of years. Eventually of course I went through a preiod of making an effort to go through a band’s complete discography, and I discovered that I had, of course, made a huge error in judgement. Because this album actually pulls itself into a category of its own, because it is so different from other releases. And while there will be those of you out there who proclaim ‘surely every AC/DC album sounds the same as the next one?’, that is patently not true. “Powerage” for me has a uniqueness that might be subtle but is still there. Following on from the quite brilliant “Let There Be Rock”, this album pushed forward with similar characteristics, ones that led to what became their initial masterpiece in their next studio album “Highway to Hell”. It draws together the strengths that the band had in its ranks, and focused more tightly on them to produce a bunch of songs that, while most are relatively unknown outside of the true AC/DC fans base, still sounds as fresh and marketable today as they did 45 years ago. And not every band or album can claim to be that.

1197. Blind Guardian / Night-Fall in Middle Earth. 1998. 4.5/5

Blind Guardian’s profile as a band had been steadily building over the years, and along that path was also a redefining of their sound and the way they were writing and recording their albums. Their early albums were definitely heralded by a speed metal sound that came from their love of the band Helloween, and in many ways were certainly inspired by them. Over the course of their previous three albums, the band had begun to incorporate a lot more changes in their output, beginning to forgo the out and out speed and writing more complicated pieces, also injecting other instruments and styles within their basic framework. In particular, they had begun to sew in influences such as a folk rock sound into pieces of both the “Somewhere Far Beyond” album (which has an episode dedicated to it back in Season 3 of this podcast) and “Imaginations from the Other Side” album, bringing acoustic instruments and clear voiced vocals to include in songs that were of a ballad variety, but without the lyrical content that would normally signify such a connotation. Indeed, Hansi Kursch, lead singer and lyric writer, continued to delve deeply into mysticism and novels for his inspiration, which allowed Blind Guardian to avoid any comparisons with ballad-seeking bands for the sake of commercialisation.
For the new album, the band pushed things to a new limit. What they decided on was a concept album, based on the J.R.R Tolkien novel “The Silmarillion”, which was posthumously put together by his son Christopher. Piecing together the story through both song and short spoken words interludes between the tracks, it is a labour of love that once again stretched the way the band composed their music. There is a defined and conscious effort to have the music on the album try to have you feeling as though the events are set in that Middle-Earth setting, with the use of folk instruments including flutes and violin, along with heavily chorused vocals, mixed with the band’s usual hard riffing and fast paced playing, creating the atmosphere that gives the impression that you have been transported to this age, but without losing the integrity that Blind Guardian had built up over a decade in the business.

Now the thing to take into consideration from the very start is that this album is telling a story, but the album can work with or without that when you are listening to it. Indeed I don’t take that into account whenever I listen to this album. There are many people out there who are annoyed about the spoken word pieces that come between most of the tracks that help to gel the story together. And that is fine. Most probably, if it had been in the age of cassettes when this was released (and yes scarily that appears to be returning in some form) I would probably have gone through when recording it for the car and cut out all of those interludes and just left the main tracks. Skipping them when listening to this on CD does make a difference but not in all places. It is just easier to accept it as it is – a performance piece.
So as an album itself, it has many rises and falls, peaks and troughs, depending on where the story is going at that point of the album. And the album has songs that are standouts, ones that lift the album each time they come around. And as already mentioned, the morphing of the band’s sound from its original roots to a more orchestral style involving layered vocals and more interesting instruments filling out the songs makes this an album that is the fulcrum of the maturing of Blind Guardian.
In regards to what would be regarded as the ‘songs’ of the album, it opens in style with “Into the Storm” in a classic Blind Guardian fury of riff and vocals. This is followed by “Nightfall”, one of the more recent age styled song, showing a different side to the band than they had previously done a lot of. "The Curse of Fëanor" again channels the roots of the band, showcasing in the main the amazing ability Hansi Kursh has of going for the high range and pitch in his singing to the calm and melodic as well, helped along with great riffing from André Olbrich and Marcus Siepen and the incomparable drumming of Thomas Stauch. “Blood Tears” is a more reflective and powerful song, which is followed by one of the band’s masterpieces, “Mirror, Mirror”, which 25 years later is still as awesome as it was on its release.
"Noldor (Dead Winter Reigns)" is of the then modern age of Blind Guardian, with lots of choral vocals mixing with an atmospheric background. It is followed by the return of the old with a scintillating performance in “Time Stands Still (at the Iron Hill)”, with Hansi’s vocal range tested throughout and some great guitar riffs flying in throughout. This still finds its way into live set lists and is a crowd favourite. “Thorn”s stirring vocal soaring from Hansi is its starring role, his vocals here are incredible. “When Sorrow Sang” is another beauty, rampaging through the back half of the storyline like the Blind Guardian of old, while “A Dark Passage” brings the album and the story to a close in a pleasing fashion, being both anthemic and reflective in the same breath.

I don’t mind admitting that my favourite era of Blind Guardian is the early albums, where they barely had time to draw breath given the pace they played the songs. But I do enjoy almost all of their albums throughout their career... probably just three where I have a real problem with the content. And this isn’t one of those.
I didn’t come across Blind Guardian until their next album, “A Night at the Opera”, one that, for me at least, went a bit too far in the direction they had been striving for. And so it was not until a couple of years later when I began to really discover the European power metal bands such as Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica, Primal Fear and the like, that I gave Blind Guardian a second chance. And this album was one of the two I discovered, along with “Tales from the Twilight World”. And once I was invested in Hansi’s amazing vocals, and the wonderful guitaring and drums through the track list, I was hooked.
Like I have already mentioned when it comes to “Nightfall in Middle-Earth", I have never invested myself in the story, and I too was often annoyed by the interludes between songs. While I know they served their purpose of the concept album, to me it felt as though they were blocking the flow of the album, managing to make it stall along the way. Over the years that has become less of a problem for me, but I understand when others suggest it to still be the case.
There are some great songs here, some of the band’s best. When they toured Australia for the first time and played in Sydney, they were forced to start late because of sound problems, which meant the show ran late, and because of the venue’s noise restrictions, they couldn’t perform the encore. That encore, as it has been for 20+ years, was “Mirror, Mirror”, a song that everyone in attendance of course had been gunning to hear live for 20 years. The scene was one of massive disappointment. Hansi apologised profusely, and promised that when they NEXT toured and played Sydney, they would play “Mirror, Mirror” twice. Four years later... it didn’t happen... but to hear it once live was still reward enough.

1196. Scorpions / Savage Amusement. 1988. 3.5/5

The years leading up to the production of this album were arguably the most successful of the Scorpions career. On the back of albums such as “Lovedrive”, “Animal Magnetism”, “Blackout” and “Love at First Sting”, the band had found the perfect mix of hard-rock-to-heavy-metal tracks that could get the fans fist pumping and air guitaring, with power rock ballads that could find their way onto commercial radio and attract those fans that enjoyed this side of their personality. On the back of Klaus Meine’s amazing vocals and the twin guitars of Rudolph Schenker and Matthias Jabs, Scorpions had managed to crack the US market with songs like “Blackout”, “Rock You Like a Hurricane” and “Still Loving You”. The band went on a world tour that stretched beyond two years, in the process recording the hit live album “World Wide Live”, and the music world through that period of the mid-1980's was at their feet. Backed by MTV and other music video shows having their hits on regular rotation, their success was at critical mass.
On the back of this, the band returned to write and record their follow up to “Love at First Sting” through 1987. In a move that suggested “when it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, Schenker and Meine did the bulk of the writing, with Schenker writing the music and Meine the lyrics. They also retained the services of Dieter Dierks as producer, and the trio who had been behind the band’s success came together to create an album that could stand alongside the success of their recent releases.

From the outset, this is a different album than what had come before it. While the basics on the surface appear the same, there is a definite mellowing or cleansing in effect. It’s interesting in retrospect that this album has been compared to the way Def Leppard’s “Hysteria” seemed to have been smoothed out and commercialised, that the production made it a much more streamlined and sauna-ed album. That might be an over simplification for the way this album turned out, but it has its truths involved.
The true heavy songs on this album are few and far between, the ones where the band really extends themselves, and allows Klaus to get right into the vocals on the song and Matthias is allowed to let rip on the lead guitar. “We Let it Rock, You Let it Roll” and “Love on the Run” could in fact be the only songs on this album that go in that direction. The majority of the songs are mid-range, mid-tempo tracks that are enjoyable enough because they are Scorpions songs, but they lack that energy and push that had been present before this. And with the success of albums such as “Hysteria” and Whitesnake’s “1987” album, perhaps this was what the band felt was their logical step in regards to their music.
The opening of “Don’t Stop at the Top”, “Rhythm of Love” and “Passion Rules the Game” - the last two of which were released as singles from the album – are all very formula-written, almost songs-by-numbers with vocals and guitars that are inoffensive and meant to appease all fans. They feel like they were the purpose-written songs here to promote the album to the MTV generation, and not turn them off. The songs through the middle of the album, such as “Media Overkill”, “Walking on the Edge” and “Every Minute Every Day” are good solid Scorpions tracks that the band has always been good at.
“Believe in Love”, the other single released from the album, and the song that closes out the album, with a music video that shows lots of shots of the band playing live on stage and the crowd holding lighters in the air, and snatches of people gathered in large city squares, always felt like it was trying to make a statement without getting into too much controversy. A couple of years later it all made sense, as this was an obvious precursor to “Wind of Change” that came on the next album. Play them back to back, you’ll see and hear what I mean. Just change the lyrics from being about love to being about peace, and you have the same basis in both.

It would not be unfair to suggest that, having loaded up on “Lovedrive” and “Blackout” and “Love at First Sting” over the previous three years in my opening years of heavy metal obsession, I expected a lot of this album when it was released. I absolutely believed it was going to be one of the albums of 1988, that it would continue down the route those albums had taken, and would blow me away with its awesomeness. It would be more accurate to say that this confused me somewhat with its averageness. And, again to be fair, it was released in the same two week period as Yngwie Malmsteen’s “Odyssey” and the majesty that was Iron Maiden’s “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”, so it had a lot of competition just with those two albums to compete against for my listening time and my love. But if it had retained that excellence of those earlier Scorpions albums I mentioned, it would have competed just fine.
And that’s the bare bones of the facts. This album isn’t as good as those albums. It certainly sounds like a Scorpions album, it has all of the required usual aspects of a Scorpions album. It’s just that the songs here are just not up to the level of those previous albums. They aren’t bad, in fact many are quite good, but for SCORPIONS songs, they are for the most part just average on their scale. They lack the intensity and fire power that would lift them and the album itself to a higher level.
I’ve still enjoyed catching up with this album over the last couple of weeks. It definitely wasn’t an unpleasant experience. But it did confirm to me that what I thought of it at the time, and at other periods over the past 35 years when I’ve put it on, hasn’t changed that much. There’s nothing wrong with “Savage Amusement”, it’s just that if you were choosing a Scorpions album to listen to for some great music for an hour, there are others in their discography that you would choose before this one.

1195. David Bowie / Let's Dance. 1983. 3/5

Having released so many albums in his career up to the point where the 1980’s decade began, it may come as somewhat of a surprise when it is revealed that Bowie himself went into this new album with a desire to have a commercial hit, with both album and singles. His first album of the decade, “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”, had in fact done rather better than his so-called “Berlin Trilogy”, which had received widespread acclaim from music critics without being as successful as their reviews made them out to be. On “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”, Bowie had managed to have quite a great deal of success. That album had reached number 1 in the UK and Australia, and #12 in the US, while the single “Ashes to Ashes” had made top 10 in the UK and Australia, though not in the US.
Following this album, Bowie had made changes in his management and record company, and had also collaborated with Queen to release the single “Under Pressure”, which again went to #1 in the UK. The growing commercial success appeared to have taken a hold of him, and he hired producer Nile Rodgers in an effort make a change to what had occurred on his recent albums. Rodgers had written and produced a number of R&B hits in recent times, both for his own band Chic and other artists, songs such as “Le Freak” and “We Are Family” and “Upside Down”. And it was this that Bowie was hoping to tap into, the have popular songs driving the force of the album. He also decided to work with a whole different band of musicians, believing it was time for him to work outside of his comfort zone and find a new medium to work with. A number of these ended up being Rodgers’ frequent collaborators from Chic. One who Bowie requested personally was the then-unknown guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, whom he has seen play at Montreux. Though he was seen by many as a strange choice, there is little doubt that Bowie knew what he had seen, and knew what he wanted, and Vaughan’s contribution on lead guitar to the album is an important part of its eventual success.

In looking at the album as a whole, it perhaps makes sense to look at it in its two halves – the singles, and the non-singles, that make up the bulk of the album to which they have served. Of course, the singles have utilised these other tracks as B-sides, so that almost every song from the album gains a place on a single as either an A-side or a B-side.
The second side of the album is where all of the non-A-side singles resided, which I know made it difficult or easy for some people I knew who had the album back in my high school years, because they would generally just play the first half of the album over and over again as a result. But that would be to the detriment of those songs on the back side of the album.
“Ricochet” starts that second side of the album, and for the most part doesn’t really stick with the style of the rest of the album. Rather than flowing, it feels as though it stops and starts. “Criminal World” is a cover of the song done by a band called Metro a few years earlier, and this is more like the new wave and romantic era that the album fell in with, also inducing some reggae themes along the way. This is followed by “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)”, an updated version of the song that Bowie wrote and recorded with Georgio Moroder for the movie Cat People a couple of years earlier. It has a better energy about it than the songs around it, and Vaughan’s guitar solo indices most of that. And the final track “Shake It” closes out the album with a funky style that is reminiscent of that late 1970’s sound that producer Nile Rodgers had been involved with more than David Bowie had.
On the other hand, the first half of the album has the most recognisable tracks, the ones that anyone growing up in the 1980’s would recognise. The album opens with “Modern Girl”, the upbeat singalong dance track that seems to be more likely as the direction Bowie was looking for when he began this album. It is followed by the other two big time singles, “China Girl”, which Bowie had actually co-written with Iggy Pop for his first solo album, and was redesigned and re-recorded for Bowie’s purposes here, and the title track “Let’s Dance” which became one of his biggest selling singles. The final song of the side is “Without You”, which often divides fans and critics alike as to its place in the bowie song history.

It is interesting to note that this album is in fact David Bowie’s highest selling album of all time, selling almost 11 million copies worldwide since its release. It also achieved its purpose in gaining popularity and commerciality, topping charts around the world. And yet, despite this, there is often conflict when it comes to discussion on its merits compared to the remainder of his discography. Albums such as “Hunky Dory”, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” and “Heroes” in particular are the albums that are considered ground-breaking, the ones where the artistic vision of the artist in question is praised above all. And yet, this album has noses pointe upwards and flaring in contempt, indeed, even from Bowie himself. He often said that the success of this album hindered his creativity for the remainder of the 80’s decade, because he felt he had to follow up the style of this album as this is what had proven to be popular, the commercial popularity that he had apparently sought out. And when that success was not replicated by the following two albums, he walked away, and sought out the critical acclaim that had once been his once again. All very strange.
My journey with David Bowie was for the most part not commenced until after the 80’s were in the rear vision mirror. I enjoyed the singles off this album, and bits and pieces of albums earlier and later. I almost convinced myself to go see him with friends when he toured at the end of 1987, and in recent years have regretted my eventual decision not to. By the time I realised how amazing David Bowie was it was well beyond the glory years, but this album was one that I sought out following viewing the perfect 1980’s retro film “The Wedding Singer”, which drew on the nostalgia that that era was beginning to draw upon of those of my age group. And so I discovered this album for the first time, with the singles I knew and the others I did not. And I can only agree that it isn’t as important or arty as those other three albums. But you know what it is? It’s fun, and that is what the best 80’s albums are with their new wave and new romantic leanings. And my favourite Bowie song from the era might be looked down upon in certain circles, but for me still typifies that era of music, and showcases just why David Bowie was so brilliant, because he could transcend the era and be just as relevant in it, even when he tried to diss it later on.

1194. Iron Maiden / Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. 1988. 5/5

Iron Maiden had conquered the world several times over by the time it came to the end of 1987. On the back of albums such as “The Number of the Beast”, “Piece of Mind”, “Powerslave”, “Live After Death” and “Somewhere in Time”, they had increased their fan base a number of times over, traversed the world, and had more than they could ever have dreamed possible. They had become the standard bearers of melodic heavy metal the world over. Steve Harris was undisputed as the most amazing bass player on earth. Nicko McBrain’s drumming had raised the bar and pushed the band to new heights. The twin guitars of Dave Murray and Adrain Smith had created an unparalleled sound, and the vocals of Bruce Dickinson carried the songs the band created to a new platform. Evern when the band had dabbled with guitar synths on their previous release “Somewhere in Time”, a practice that had fans nervous as to the direction the music was about to be taken, it proved to be a triumph, with that album added further plaudits on an already overcrowded mantlepiece. Indeed, as the tour supporting that album wound down to its conclusion, the world began asking, “what the hell are they going to do to follow all of this up?” There was even a school of thought that perhaps the band would rest on their laurels and perhaps take a break. What actually followed could well be said to have been the culmination of the building of the Iron Maiden sound over the past decade.
The seeds for the direction of the new album came from band leader Steve Harris, who had recently read a novel titled “Seventh Son”, a fictional tale of the purported special powers that a seventh son born to a seventh son would acquire. With his creative mind once again activated, he called Bruce Dickinson to share his thoughts with him, and discussed basing their next album, which was to be the band’s seventh album, around this idea. In interviews at the time and since, Bruce has acknowledged that he was considering his place in the band, as on “Somewhere in Time” all of his song ideas had been rejected, and he had no writing credits at all, and as a result he wondered just what his place in it all was. When Steve mentioned his idea, Bruce not only felt a part of the writers group again, he immediately began coming up with his own ideas, and it was the collaboration between Bruce and Steve, along with Adrian Smith, that drove the creation of what was to become “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”, an album that in some respects came close to perfection for a band that was amazingly still on the rise.

“Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” is often considered to be a concept album, but I’m not sure this is entirely true, and as it turns out in a good way. A true concept album, such as Queensryche’s “Operation: Mindcrime” which was released a month later, and will have its own episode dedicated to it very soon on this podcast, has a crafted storyline, one that also involves specific characters telling their own story, and including some dialogue that is not in song. Whereas, with this album, there is a definite story that is crafted by the songs, and that the lyrics tell the tale of, but it is not held together by that storyline. Apart from the opening and closing monologue sung by Bruce, each of the songs stands on its own and can do without requiring explanation. They can be interpreted as a part of the tale of the life of the seventh son, or they can also be taking as a separate entity and have their lyrical content judged on a different level. For me this is a part of the success of the album as a whole, giving it multiple layers rather than just a linear motive.
Having used guitar synths on the previous album, it was keyboards that made their pieces noticed on this album, though not to the extent of hiring a keyboard player for the band. The history of the band showed that before they got their first record contract there was one gig where Iron Maiden had a keyboard player and one guitarist, but it lasted just that one gig. Now, however, the band was beginning to flux, and to continue their transformation that addition of keyboards – not a dominating factor but a background addition to help fill out the songs in a better way – was necessary. It added to the progressive nature of the music the band was writing, something that was probably never fully followed up on until the “Brave New World” album some 12 years later. Here though, especially on songs such as “Moonchild” and “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”, it created the atmospheric mood that the band wanted and needed for this album to work.
So yes, there is a pattern to the journey that this album takes, from the opening stirring of the protagonists struggles with what is going on in their mind, to the awakening of the powers that he discovers, to the abilities and the pitfalls that come with all people with power, to the ultimate end of the tale. And each song plays its part in that story as well as being a story in itself.
Each of the eight songs on this album is a beauty, and that is not always the case. The opening of “Moonchild” is just fantastic, a different sound from opening tracks on previous Maiden albums and brilliant as a result. “Infinite Dreams” surpasses it in its complexity, starting off in a melodic smooth way before pumping into the second verse with greater power and feeling, through to the chorus. It remains a wonderful song. This is followed by the first single from the album “Can I Play with Madness”, the video of which featured Graham Chapman in his final screen appearance. Side One of the album then concludes with the amazing “The Evil That Men Do” with that galloping Harris bassline and typical Dickinson vocals soaring over the top in anthemic style. Great lyrics, wonderful guitars.
Side Two opens with the Steve Harris classic title track, which bends and winds its way through the majestic theatrical first half of the song, before the second half busts out into what makes Iron Maiden so great, with Adrian and Dave and Nicko stealing the show. It perfectly continues the run of great long-form tracks by the band, following “To Tame a Land”, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Alexander the Great” as the showpiece tracks of those albums they appeared on. “The Prophecy” follows and continues the tale through to “The Clairvoyant”, with Steve’s brilliant bass intro, and then into the finale of “Only the Good Die Young”, which ties all the strings together, and completing what is yet another triumph from this magnificent band.

Back in 1988 I was in my first year of university, living the poor life with very little income and many things that I wanted to be able to experience – mostly beer, but also new albums. And I had saved dollars and cents for weeks leading up to this album being released. There was also an hour long promo that the band filmed on the making of the album which appeared on the music program “Rage” the weekend before this was released, which I recorded at the time but eventually lost in the way VHS taped tended to disintegrate when watched a thousand times over. And I bought this album on the day of its released, immediately recorded it to cassette, and that tape didn’t leave my car for months, playing over and over again. At home the vinyl barely left my parents stereo system in our lounge room. This was the album we had been waiting for. And often, when you are so built up with anticipation for an album, it becomes a disappointment when you eventually get your hands on it. But not this one. From the very moment I listened to it, I loved it. The opening of “Moonchild”, the slow burn of “Infinite Dreams”, the power of “The Evil That Men Do”, the majesty of “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”, and the magnificence of “The Clairvoyant”. Every piece of this album was a triumph, and worth every single moment I had spent waiting for it to arrive.
Playing it now, as I have for probably over a month leading up to this anniversary, I don’t think it has lost anything. In many ways it was a true precursor to how the band began to progress in the next century, once Bruce and Adrian had returned to the band and recorded albums such as “Brave New World” and “Dance of Death”. It always felt as though it was this album that they were channelling at that time. And that would make sense, as Adrian left the band after this album because he felt that THIS was the direction the band should have been heading in, rather than the stripped-down basics they went for on “No Prayer for the Dying”. On his and Bruce’s return, they did.
But I loved this album then and I do still now. I remember vividly driving two of my fellow uni friends to and from lectures with this album blaring out the windows of the car, and probably driving too fast as a result of that built up adrenaline. It was pure magic, and it has retained all of that 35 years later. Sitting in the metal cavern, drinking a beer and letting this wash over you... it is still an amazing experience.
This was, in my opinion, the last of the truly great Iron Maiden albums. The first two albums with Di’anno, Burr and Stratton involved are terrific albums, but the six that followed them – "The Number of the Beast", "Piece of Mind", "Powerslave", "Live After Death", "Somewhere in Time" and then this album, are legendary. They are ‘moment in a bottle’ stuff. What has come since has been mixed, and some of it has touched brilliance, but could never hold a candle to these albums, and especially this, where the planets aligned for that final time.

1193. Fastway / Fastway. 1983. 2.5/5

Thinking of Motorhead without “Fast” Eddie Clarke and of UFO without Pete Way back in the early 1980’s was almost impossible, and yet this is exactly what occurred in 1982, with both looking to escape the perceived troubles they saw with those bands current line ups, and looking for a new start. That they came upon each other, and found enough similarities to form a new band together was also fortuitous. Thus, the name Fastway was launched, taking the “Fast” from Eddie Clarke’s nickname, and the “Way” from Pete’s surname. It seemed a perfect fit.
What wasn’t a perfect fit though was Pete Way’s contract with Chrysalis Records, one which he soon discovered he was unable to break in order to write and record with his new band. At the same time as this realisation hit, he was offered the bass players spot in Ozzy Osbourne’s touring band to replace Rudy Sarzo who had left to re-join Quiet Riot. This meant that despite being considered as a ‘founding member’ of Fastway, Pete Way never played nor recorded with the band.
Better news came from the recruitment of Jerry Shirley, the drummer from Humble Pie, and an unknown lead singer named Dave King, whose vocal chords perfectly fit what the band was looking for. Because although no one was looking for a Lemmy replica to be fronting this new band, they were certainly expecting those famous “Fast” Eddie Clarke riffs to be flooding through the songs. And they needed a front man with a voice to carry the performance, and in King they found their man.

With the focus of the fans on the band coming from its two high profile musicians in “Fast” Eddie Clarke and Jerry Shirley, there is little doubt that it is the vocals of Dave King that are the leading light of the band in the early songs of the album. The opening track “Easy Livin’” is a straight forward hard rock track that introduces his vocals from the outset, and from that point on, the album has set its template. The atypical boy-to-girl hard rock tracks such as “All I Need Your Love” and “Feel Me, Touch Me (Do Anything You Want) and “Give it All You Got” are the prototype to what the LA hair metal bands began to popularise, though Fastway perform them in denim jeans and leather jackets rather than the spandex and teased hair and make up that came with those bands. Songs like “Another Day” and ------- are where both Shirley and Clarke come into their own, where the drums sound like they are being hit with more intensity, and where Eddie lets loose on the strings and gives us the riffs and solo breaks that most of the fans have come for. Other songs such as “Heft!” and “We Become One” are more in that Diamond Head NWoBHM standard which almost a doom standard riff followed by a more complex solo piece from Eddie. And then you have songs such as “Say What You Will” that have a classic Motorhead sound without the gravelled vocal chords.
Listening to the album with these different sets of styles, it becomes an interesting task in retrospect, because it sounds as though the band was still trying to establish exactly what they wanted to sound like, or what direction they wanted their music to go in. So you will find different varieties and genres of the emerging hard rock heavy metal scene of the early 1980’s. And because of this, these songs probably shouldn’t gell together well on an album. But that is the surprising part about it – because it really does.

I didn’t come across Fastway until the end of my high school years, and the release of the horror metal-injected movie titled “Trick or Treat” which had cameos from Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne, about a satanic-loving metal star who is raised from the dead by the playing of his unreleased album backwards. Go watch it if you are interested, but it has dated badly. The soundtrack for that movie was provided by Fastway, which is where I first heard them. It wasn’t until many years later that I went back and looked into the band, discovered the reason for its formation, and listened to their back catalogue. And it is fair to say that, by that time many years after its release, I found this to be interesting without being brilliant. Certainly, having read reports on it from the time it was released, I was expecting brilliance beyond what I had heard before, but that isn’t what I got. What I heard was a fairly decent hard rock album that had some good bits, but was not a stand out.
Having come back to it over the past couple of weeks in the lead up to recording this episode, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually retained its pleasure for me. I think going in without any expectations helped this, whereas in the past I was looking for something that it didn't have. But the vocals are very good, lifting the songs above an averageness that they could have had with a lesser singer. And Eddie’s riffs are good as well – not Motorhead good, but still enjoyable. It was marketed as a heavy metal album, whereas in reality it is a hard rock album with a reasonable kick. Come into it thinking you are going to hear AC/DC rather than Motorhead and you will find it is a good solid album worthy of your time.