1307. UFO / Covenant. 2000. 2.5/5

UFO as a band (some would say in name only) had a rough time in the lost years between 1987 and 1995 following the loss of members of the best known era of the band. With the changing music landscape around them the band found it difficult to retain its position as one of the heavy influencers in the industry. The late 1980’s surge of thrash metal and glam metal had taken away their position as a trailblazing hard rock act, while the arrival of grunge in the early 1990’s had further eroded their fan base. In 1995 though, the band at least had some forces on their side with the recording and release of their 14th album “Walk on Water”. The reformation of the band’s best known lineup of Mogg/Way/Schenker/Parker/Raymond at least gave that album a shot of nostalgia, and the hope that this reformation could produce something that would capture the imagination of the old fan base once again, and perhaps draw in some new fans. And to a certain point it did. While the album did not chart, it saw a rise in album sales and concert sales. Even in the tough days of the alternative rock and metal scene there was hope for the band on the back of this album. And then, as seemed to be a given when he was in any band ever, Michael Schenker pulled a Michael Schenker and left just weeks into the tour to support the album, and one of the drawcards was gone again. Drummer Andy Parker was on the outer again too, and finally Paul Raymond also moved on, and the band was almost back to square one again.
But things seem to move fairly quickly around the band, and they did again here. In 1998, Schenker returned to help the band complete the tour when Raymond had left, and on the back of this the trio of Mogg, Schenker and Way, along with new drummer in Aynsley Dunbar, returned to the studio to put together the band’s first new album in five years, the longest period between albums in the band’s career, which was to be called (apparently not ironically in the slightest) “Covenant”.

When 2000 arrived, music fans were getting a little nostalgic. They were beginning to look back on the days of their youth, and think about all of the great bands and music they had grown up with, and that wouldn’t it be great to hear some of that kind of music being written and recorded again. It brought about several bands of the era looking to return to their roots of a kind, and not write albums that tried to channel what was popular at the time but write an album that brought back memories of the days of their prime. This was the age that UFO found themselves in, and indeed appears to be the direction that this album heads in from the outset. Everything about it holds true to the way the band adorned their albums through the 1970’s. The majority of the album is composed by Phil Mogg and Michael Schenker and in the main they are looking to create songs that have that structure that transformed the band into one of the leaders of the hard rock era of the mid-to-late 1970’s. Here though it emphasises the main components of the style of tracks they are producing. In this way, the hard rock songs have a bit more punch to them vocally and on guitar than perhaps they would have back in the day, and the quieter ballad based tracks seemed just a bit more drawn back within themselves as well. That may seem like a simplified way of explaining how this album sounds, and you are correct. Mainly because the sound of the album is hard to define. The keyboards have more of an organ tone about them rather than what Paul Raymond would have played had he been in the band on this album. That organ sound does tend to dominate itself out of the background and more into middle ground on “Covenant” and in the process draws comparisons to the sound that Deep Purple had in their heyday when Jon Lord’s organ was a dominant component of the music.
“Love is Forever” starts the album off on the right foot. It is a heavier version of a song that UFO are renown for, perhaps the best example here on the album of a song that has its roots in earlier times but incorporates the way music had evolved, and the true hard rock coming through in the guitar riff and especially solo from Schenker. It blasts the album out of the blocks and is a formidable beginning to the album. This is followed by “Unraveled” that continues with the same themes, a typical Mogg/Way composition that puts the rock in hard rock. Schenker’s solid riff is catchy, giving off Kiss-like vibes along the way, and Mogg’s toughened up vocals with support from Way and the back up vocalists here makes for a fun and foot tapping song. “Miss the Lights” goes with a more contemporary sound, the rhythm riff sliding along as Mogg croons his vocals over the top in a style reminiscent of Bad Company or Free. And as it turns out, this along with the next couple of songs on the album do line up with that same sound from those same bands. “Midnight Train” most definitely does that, as does “Fools Gold”. There is a very similar style of rhythm pattern through “Midnight Train” and “Fools Gold” as well, which does give the songs the feel of a sister duo.
Mind you, this might be a controversial view, but “In the Middle of Madness” sounds like it could have come from a John Cougar Mellencamp album, if Mellencamp had utilised on organ sound on his albums. Even Schenker’s riff and solo sound like they could have been off Mellencamp’s 1985 album “Scarecrow”. The whole song could almost have been lifted off that. Now that is an interesting comparison I know, but if you ever happen to listen to THIS album and you hear this song, and you know THAT album, then you may well agree with me. Though to be honest, finsing anyone out there besides myself who knows (and owns) both of those albums seems like a longshot. “The Smell of Money” and “Rise Again” are both musically more similar to the opening tracks on the album, though stripped back in tempo and somewhat slightly disturbingly Phil Mogg seems to be channelling the vocal chords of Scott Strapp, the lead vocalist from the band Creed. This was the time when they were at thier most prominent, so perhaps utilising that vocal style was thought to have been a good move. I’m not as certain of that as perhaps Mogg was if that WAS the case.
“Serenade” has a very modern Deep Purple sound about it, perhaps through the forward mixing of the keyboard organ which does tend to move in a Jon Lord kind of circle throughout, as does Schenker’s guitar with the Ritchie Blackmore tones about it. The move between softer tones and the harder grind, with Schenker’s guitar going from clear to harder, and a solo that could very easily have been out of the Blackmore playbook. It is a song that finds a number of influences. “Cowboy Joe” on the other hand channels everything that makes the band great. Mogg’s vocals are terrific here, back to their very best, and Dunbar’s drumming is far closer to the powerful style that Andy Parker used to play. It may be an imperfect copy of the great UFO template but it does the job here. Closing out the album is “The World and His Dog” which incorporates classic and wonderful Schenker guitar solos into the mix of the song. The rhythm of bass and drums again has the powerful feel that creates the best UFO songs

As most of the regular listeners to this podcast will know by now, my favourite and mostly only period of UFO is the 1970’s albums, where the big five made five great albums and a live album beyond compare. Everything that they did during that period to me is untouchable by every other era of the band, which doesn’t mean there weren’t some good pieces of albums that came after that, it's just that they never really managed to make another album that came close to those original ones. And, in the main, that is the downfall of the release of this particular album. Because “Covenant” has a lot of very likeable tracks on it, even if for the most part I spend my whole time when I listen to this album trying to work out what each song reminds me of – which band and era to me that it sounds like UFO are trying to mimic here. But when they released this album, it came with a second CD, which contained live performances of the tour to promote the previous album, but they are all songs that are from their best known albums. I fact, the majority of the 7 live tracks come from two of those albums. And what this live album does, when comparing it to the studio album it is attached to, is remind you of HOW BRILLIANT those songs were from 25 years in the past are, and that they stand head and shoulders above every song released on this album. It feels like an own goal to have put this with this album. No doubt it was as an incentive to the long term fans to go out and buy the album, and that probably worked well. But it sure hurt the comparison to the new material.
As a result of what I have said earlier, I don’t listen to this album very often. To be honest, I have probably listened to this album more in the past seven days than I have in the previous 15 years. I only came to it initially because Michael Schenker had returned to the band to record the album, much as he had for the pervious album “Walk on Water”, soon to receive its own episode on this podcast. And what this week has reminded me is that this is an average album, one that I might be willing to raise to a rating of a better than average album if I was of the mind to want to listen to it on a more regular basis. And therein lies the problem when you have far too much music in your collection to give everything a fair hearing. Like all bands, when I decide that I want to listen to something from a particular band, I have my usual half a dozen go-to choices. And this isn’t one of them for UFO. While I think they made an effort to return to a more familiar sound on this album and compete against what was happening in the music world 25 years ago, there are a few clunks along the way. I wouldn’t even say the clunks are bad because those songs are still fine to listen to, or have been for me this week at least. But I’m not jumping out of my skin to listen to John Cougar Mellencamp and Creed and Deep Purple knock offs. I’d rather hear songs that emphasised the great points of this band rather than mutations of others. That to me is the only real downfall of this album. It’s the same old story in the long – it isn’t a bad album at all... it just isn’t a great one either. It doesn’t compete with “Lights Out” or “Force It”. And neither should it. You should be able to enjoy albums of a band from different eras without making a judgement on them in that way. But, I just want to listen to “Lights Out” and “Force It”. So, I do.

1302. Mötley Crüe / Theatre of Pain. 1985. 2.5/5

Motley Crue’s sophomore album, the heavy yet accessible “Shout at the Devil”, had catapulted the band to national and international recognition, on the back of songs such as “Too Young to Fall in Love”, “Helter Skelter”, “Looks That Kill” and the title track “Shout at the Devil”. It was this song, and its perceived imagery of Satanism that was exacerbated by the album cover, that had many religious and political groups claiming that they had nefarious thoughts and plans. It was the time of the PMRC in the United States and their growing influence upon the media. In the long run this did not harm the sales of the album and even provided further promotion for it. During the recording of that album bass guitarist Nikki Sixx had crashed a friend’s Porsche which he had stolen while drunk, and the resulting shoulder injury found him develop a Percocet addiction that transitioned quickly to a $3,500 a day heroin addiction. They then found even greater popularity and airplay – and infamy - on tour when they supported Ozzy Osborne, before going on the Monsters of Rock tour in 1984 with Van Halen and AC/DC. On each of these occasions the band were a huge hit, but their backstage antics caused friction wherever they went. The band’s debauchery had shocked even Ozzy himself on that tour, and on the Monsters of Rock tour the band was eventually restricted to only leaving their trailer to play their slot, and having to leave the venue immediately afterwards, following incidents where Vince Neil had bitten Eddie Van Halen, Tommy Lee had bitten Malcolm Young and had also gotten into a fistfight with David Lee Roth. Popular with fans they may have been, but not with touring bands. There was even a discussion at one stage by the band of firing guitarist Mick Mars, which was only saved by then Ozzy bass guitarist, Bob Daisley, reminding them that they should not change something that wasn’t broken.
On December 8, 1984, in a car driven by Vince Neil while severely under the influence of alcohol, Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle was killed when Neil crashed the car that he was a passenger in. With the threat of serious jail time a possibility, Neil found a way to escape this threat by writing a very large cheque and doing 30 days jail time, of which he only completed 20. Never a dull moment in the Motley Crue camp.
With all of this going on, the band finally entered the studio in January 1985 to finally write and record their follow up to their sophomore album. At the time, given the lengthy period between releases, there must have been some concern that they had failed to strike while the iron was hot. The end result offered a mixed response to those thoughts.

Taking in everything that I’ve mentioned in the opening monologue to this episode, one can only wonder what the mood and headspace of the band was as they wrote and recorded this album, and in many ways that seems obvious when you listen to the finished product. The lyrics are not groundbreaking or particularly outstanding, and as they came from a mostly overly influenced lyrics writer that isn’t much of a stretch, though Nikki did seem to stick to a central theme. “City Boy Blues” is basically just a revved-up blues riff throughout as Vince moans about being unable to break the shackles of the city boy blues. It’s mostly a repetitive uninspired opening track that hardly sets the world on fire like the opening tracks on just about every other Motley Crue album does. “Louder Than Hell” mirrors the sound and style of track from “Shout at the Devil” with the guitar riff and Neil’s vocal stylings and squeals, but without the attitude that album possesses. It was actually a leftover track from that album, which explains why it sounds similar to that album, and also why it didn’t make the cut for that album. “Keep Your Eye on the Money” has some good lyrics early on, switching between the gambling and drug metaphors, but eventually becomes a song where the title of the song is repeated over and over in the back half to completely sink whatever credence it may have begun with. It isn’t a new technique for the band, and one that gets the same treatment on the second side of the album, beginning with “Tonight (We Need a Lover)”, “Use It or Lose It”, “Raise Your Hands to Rock” and even “Fight for Your Rights”. And yes, it is a very rock and roll formula to have repeated choruses or verses to encourage pop lyrical memory from the fans, and maybe it is just me, but this album does have it in overkill mode.
So lyrically the album does fall a little short on the band’s opening two albums. Musically... well there is a similar problem really. Tommy Lee’s drumming is solid on this album, but he isn’t really pushing himself to new heights, trying to be innovative or at the very least energetic in a way that has your head bobbing along in time with him. Mick Mars guitar work is as clean as always; he lets loose with a couple of bursts of soloing and with a riff that makes its mark but none of it is as spectacular as the previous two albums. Vince Neil’s vocals are serviceable but don’t inspire much enthusiasm. And Nikki Sixx’s bass work – well I guess that’s another story as well. In recent times it has been claimed from several sources that Nikki has not recorded the bass guitar in several instances during the band’s history. Now this isn’t unusual in the history of music, where other musicians have recorded instruments on an album uncredited, so it isn’t really a shock or surprise, but it has been made to be so. In the instance of this album, former Motley Crue guitarist Greg Leon recently said in an interview that Sixx did not play any bass on “Theatre of Pain”.
The two songs that stand out on this album, and the ones that have proven to be the most popular through the years are the two single releases, “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” and “Home Sweet Home”. “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” is a cover of the Brownsville Station song, and is immediately a standout on this album because it suddenly revives the fun and energetic part of the band that for the most part of this album lies dormant. And it sounds like they are having fun playing it. Vince sounds up and at his best, Mick’s guitaring is suddenly inspired, and Tommy’s drumming is far more upbeat. It stands out like sore thumb on this album. “Home Sweet Home” of course is the power ballad, the piano driven song that concludes side one of the album, and became the band’s signature song. It is a step further along from what they had tried before, and its style grabbed the attention of the target audience. As a leading light and forerunner to the singles oriented glam metal future of bands such as Poison, Cinderella and others, “Theatre of Pain” can lay claim to the one they all used as a template. Not only with the cover song they turned into a teenage anthem, but the power ballad that seduced the hopeless romantics of the world, or those just hoping that it would end up in sex. “Home Sweet Home” became that template that drove many bands that followed Motley Crue into the charts on the back of the sickly-sweet ballad, and with that cemented the bands reputation, and arguably also their conversion from the heavier side of metal to the glam styled version that exploded in the mid-1980's.

My introduction to Motley Crue came reasonably early on in my conversion to the heavier side of music. I had asked my heavy metal music dealer to record me an album that had become the next in my line of requirements. He asked me what I wanted him to put on the other side of the cassette, to which I said to him to choose something he thought I might like. The cassette came back with “Shout at the Devil” as the chosen second side album, and I never looked back.
As it turned out, “Theatre of Pain” is not an album I actually got until the start of the 1990’s decade, well after I had acquired the other albums of the band’s discography. I knew of course the two singles – very well as it turns out, as one was the overplayed ballad on TV and at parties, and the other was covered a band that my heavy metal music dealer played in around the local pubs. So, having been very familiar with Motley Crue’s four other albums, I eventually came around to buying my own copy of this album. And it is fair to say that I was underwhelmed by it. But I’m guessing you all had already guessed that by now. I don’t think it would have mattered what order I got these albums though, this for me would always have been the least likely to succeed. It doesn’t have the raw aggression of “Too Fast for Love” or the heavy tones of “Shout at the Devil”, the energetic exaltations of “Girls, Girls, Girls” or the anthemic “Dr Feelgood”. I’ve always found this to be the ugly duckling of the band’s iconic era. Much of the album is uninspiring in the ways you look for Motley Crue albums and songs. If I was to choose a best of track list between those five albums I wouldn’t choose one song from this album. And initially that may well have been because I heard it last of all those five albums, all of which I found at least half of their tracks appealing. Here though, it doesn't grab me.
The CD came back off the shelves this week for its habitual listen in the Metal Cavern. I’ve had it on at work also. And at no stage did I ever really grasp anything new from it. In fact, the only time my head popped up at work because of an energetic burst of a song was when “Theatre of Pain” had concluded, and the next album started in rotation. I think for me that sums up exactly how I feel about this album.
In the Crue catalogue, “Theatre of Pain” for me ranks at #9 of their 9 studio album releases. I’m sure there are fans out there who have thrown their listening devices out the window upon this revelation. Sorry to disappoint you. Just think about the fact though that this album has always disappointed me more than you are disappointed with me. Or, something like that.

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.

1282. Led Zeppelin / Physical Graffiti. 1975. 2.5/5

In 1973, Led Zeppelin released their fifth studio album, “Houses of the Holy”, an album that deviated from what had come before in their catalogue to include further improvisation and experimentation with the use of synthesisers and mellotron orchestration. The result of this was... worldwide acclaim... as if they hadn’t already become used to this kind of reception. The album topped charts worldwide, and the subsequent tour of North America in 1973 broke attendance records, including the one show record of over 56,000 people in Tampa Bay which outstripped the previous best held by The Beatles. Three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City were filmed for a motion picture, which was released as “The Song Remains the Same” in 1976. On the back of all of this, the band decided to take a break from touring in 1974 and instead launched their own record label called Swan Song.
It wasn’t until the end of 1974 that the band reunited and began to look at writing songs for the follow up album. They returned to the site of the writing and recording of their fourth studio album, Headley Grange in Hampshire. It was during these sessions that Jimmy Page and John Bonham recorded an instrumental track that would eventually become the basis of the song “Kashmir”, one of the band best known songs. However, these sessions ground to a halt far quicker than expected, and the band left the premises. At the time the press reported that the abrupt end had come because of an illness to John Paul Jones. Eventually the truth came out, which was that Jones had become disillusioned with the group as a whole and touring in particular and was reevaluating whether he wanted to remain in the band. He told their manager that he was considering quitting, who then asked him to reconsider his decision and instead take another two months off in order to rest and come back with a clear head. There was no guarantee that this was going to happen, but come the start of the new year, Jones returned.
The four members of Led Zeppelin were back at Headley Grange in January and February 1974, where they recorded eight tracks. Lead singer Robert Plant in later interviews referred to these eight tracks as "the belters,". The reason that the band had returned to Headley Grange was because of the informal atmosphere that the property held for them, which allowed the group to improvise and develop material while they were recording. It was very much a group writing experience, with songs played and rehearsed together before sitting down and discussing the elements that could be improved or left out altogether. Drummer John Bonham became a driving force at the sessions, regularly suggesting ideas or the best ways in which a complicated arrangement could be played successfully. It led to a feeling during this time of the album being the concept of the whole group rather than a patchwork of individuals and their individual songs.
The eight songs composed and recorded here extended beyond the length of a conventional album, almost spanning three sides of an LP, which led to the band deciding that they would create a double album, rather than trying to edit out songs they had already written. To do this, they delved back to material that they had recorded during other albums that had not been used or released at that time. These were re-recorded for the new album, which stretched the release time out further. On top of this, despite hoping to release the album at the end of 1974, further delays meant that it finally saw the light of day in February of 1975, some 16 months after the iitial sessions had begun.What the music listening world wanted to know however, was whether the wait was going to be worth it?...

The album kicks off with the heavy thunder of 'Custard Pie', a statement opener that is packed with Jimmy Page riffing on guitar and those hard thumping Joh Bonham drums. Lyrically there’s plenty here that reminds you of a latter day Whitesnake attribution from David Coverdale with innuendo and double entendre gathering momentum. Page’s guitar solo is a beauty, while the requisite harmonica from Plant doesn’t disappoint. A great opening to the album. Further goodness comes in the form of “The Rover” which is the first of the older tracks, originally written as an acoustic track as early as 1970 and messed around with several times since then before landing here on “Physical Graffiti”. It has a great rhythm and guitar riff throughout, nicely driven by the bass underneath from John Paul Jones and Bonham’s driving drumming. Some overdubbing of guitars was done here, but it isn’t noticeable that it came from different album sessions than this one.
“In My Time of Dying” is a long blues extension, another of those traditional old blues songs that Led Zeppelin would borrow from and then from that make their own song out of it. Now while it was mostly done live in the studio, and is considered one of the defining tracks on the album, there are those people out there who would have a drawing problem with the length of the track. At just over 11 minutes in length it does test the patience of the casual listener. There are some good pieces within the framework of the song but it does draw out towards infinity in places.
“Houses of the Holy” kicks starts side two of the double album and was initially written and recorded for the previous album which carried the same name. Apparently, the reason it wasn’t used for that album was because of its similarity to other songs already crafted. It is a benefit to this album that it was available, as it is one of the better songs here. That same similar style is also prevalent on “Trampled Underfoot”, a song which John Paul Jones openly admits was inspired by Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition'. The clavinet gives the song a bouncy funky feel, with Bonham instrumental in rearranging the originally composed track to give a more upbeat style rather than the soul sound it first inhabited.
One of the most recognisable riffs in music history is follows with the epic and truly wonderful 'Kashmir'. Full of that eastern music direction that brings in the mellotron alongside the strings and brass sections and the basic attention grabbing rhythm of the band itself, this is a song that barely fails to deliver, a song that touches nerves and sends tingles down the spine listening to even, even today so many years on. It is arguably the band’s finest moment, combining everything they had brought to the table up to this point of their careers, and doubling down to create a song with such atmosphere and depth of feeling that it is hard to dismiss.
The second LP of this release probably does not live up to the excellence of the first LP. “In the Light” is very much the accomplishment of John Paul Jones. He takes the lead on the song, wrote most of it and plays some tremendous keyboards and synthesizer throughout. His influence was so great on the song that although Robert Plant wanted to play it live, Jones refused, saying he couldn't recreate the synth effects outside a studio environment. Interestingly, Jimmy Page has also stated that it is his favourite song from the album. It is another 8 minutes plus song on the album, and one that does split the fan base because of its tendency to overstay its welcome. The short instrumental 'Bron-Y-Aur' follows and is a standard acoustic workout for Page. “Down by the Seaside” was originally an acoustic track and was recorded for the fourth album but left off. It may have been considered too similar to 'Going To California' and would likely have received more recognition had it been included on that album. “Ten Years Gone” features a great vocal from Plant and multiple guitar tracks from Page. While the song barely gets out of second gear at any point of the track, it still has a creation of all four main instruments. Then comes “Night Flight” which was another track initially recorded at the sessions for the fourth album and also has the feel of that album. Once again, there is a noted similarity to songs that were performed on that album, which perhaps explains why it was left over until this album. The harder and more likely tempo returns with “The Wanton Song”, a song that has more similar tones that Led Zeppelin of the past have harped on, and with more in common with bands such as Deep Purple and Rainbow of that period.
Then... what the hell is “Boogie with Stu” doing on this album? For the life of me, if you wanted to add tracks and are using unused recording sessions from previous albums, surely there would be something better than this? Not only this, but it was also a jam session with former Rolling Stones keyboardist Ian Stewart, and based around the tune of a Richie Valens song “Ooh my Head” (which the band then failed to credit on the album, which once again saw the band in court).
"Black Country Woman” was recorded outside in Mick Jagger's garden, hence the talk of aeroplanes at the beginning and was initially recorded for inclusion on the “Houses of the Holy” album, but eventually found its way onto this album. And the album closes with 'Sick Again' which runs along a similar vein to the album opener, with slide guitar and changes in tempo that combines with the sometimes rampant drums and guitar that collide on their way out of the speakers. It comes across as an intermittent closure to the album, and one that is a topic of discussion amongst the bigger fan base.

My enjoyment of Led Zeppelin’s catalogue is still a work in progress. They were not a band I picked up on early, either pre-metal or post-metal eras of my music listening life. My parents didn’t listen to them, nor any of my parents friends that I can think of. By the latter days of high school, I certainly knew the band and their most well-known dozen songs, but the albums were very much a mystery to me. I bought the “Remasters” collection when it was released in 1990 and loved it – still do – but even then, I didn’t track back to find and buy or listen to their albums. “Remasters” was all I needed.
Eventually of course I could put it off no longer. If I was to continue to a music education that I hoped would give me the most well-rounded music life I could lead, I knew I had to master the Led Zeppelin discography. So, I slowly began to collect the albums on CD and listen to them and decide for myself whether they were for me or not. And overall, I have enjoyed their music and albums. Sure, for me, most of the albums have half great songs and half... less than that... but they still continue to grow on me the older I get.
My main memories of when I first listened to “Physical Graffiti” is that it was too long, and that some of the songs dragged on for far longer than was necessary. In the main, I’m sure this was why when I had listened to it at that time and then put it back on my shelves, that it didn’t seem to get chosen to come back out again very often. If at all. Indeed, it is quite possible that I have not played my copy of the album since that time, though I have heard it at other locations since. And having pulled it back off my shelves again a month ago in preparation for this album review episode, I would say it would be accurate that I have listened to it more in that past few weeks than I have for the rest of my life prior to that.
My opinion on the album now is pretty much the same as I thought when I first got the album. Why did it have to be a double album? To my ears at least, this could comfortably have been pared down to just enough songs to satisfy a single album release. Seriously, if you are going to trawl through songs you have already rejected for previous albums, you just don’t have enough new material worthwhile. There are songs here that aren’t up to the standard you would expect, and others that are fabulous. I know the band felt they had eight great tracks from their sessions in early 1974, and didn’t want to leave off any of them. And perhaps in including the older tracks we got some good songs we may never have done so without this eventual album. I’m no musician or songwriter, but as a music enthusiast there are songs here that could have done with some pruning and other that could have been lopped off altogether.
"Physical Graffiti" has been referred to as Led Zeppelin's best album in some quarters. For me, it doesn’t rate better than the five albums that came before this one. Maybe some of that is a close call. There are some obviously brilliant songs on this album, but another couple or so that don’t rate anywhere near the quality you’d expect. I’m sure long time Led Zeppelin fans are already throwing things at their listening devices. You just can’t please everyone all the time.

1231. Alice Cooper Band / Muscle of Love. 1973. 2.5/5

By the time that this album came around to being released, the Alice Cooper Band was on top of the world, literally. Their previous album, “Billion Dollar Babies”, had gone to number 1 in the US and UK as well as number 4 in Australia, and had been the culmination of a long building string of success. You can hear all about that on the episode that appears in Season 4 of this podcast. It was widely and critically acclaimed, so you would think that the band would have had the world at its feet. Instead, the cracks were beginning to appear in the framework. And to be fair, it was understandable why. “Muscle of Love” was about to become the band’s 7th studio album release in just four years. Add to this the constant touring that the band did to promote those albums, and they would already have been exhausted. Add to this the ‘trappings’ of success, and you had a whole other set of problems attached.
“Muscle of Love” was to become the first Alice Cooper album without Bob Ezrin as producer since the "Easy Action”. At the time, this was explained away as Ezrin having been ill and being unable to do the duties as required by the band at the time, though in later interviews it was reported that a disagreement over the arrangement of the song that became “Woman Machine” on the album was the reason for the split. Apparently, guitarist Michael Bruce stood his ground and refused to change the arrangement as Ezrin wanted, which led to more than words being exchanged and the separation of the two parties that had had so much success together. And it had only been eight months since “Billion Dollar Babies” had been released, a very short space of time in which to tour and then come up with a slew of new songs and then record them and then release the album. Whatever else was going on behind the scenes, and it was obvious that there was, this alone would have made “Muscle of Love” a difficult birth.

It is interesting the couple of directions that this album takes, and the reasons that have come for that to occur. In interviews at the time of the album’s release, Alice is quoted as saying the band was looking to go back and make an album with a more basic rock sound. It was felt that the previous album had had a lot of time in the studio making it sound right, whereas this time around they wanted to be able to just play a song in its entirety, to be more natural in the way the songs were played rather than over produced.
Both Alice and bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway have suggested, and which is confirmed when listening to the album, that there is a loose theme of sexual habits that flows through many of the songs on the album. The title track is the main purveyor of this, as the “Muscle of Love” being sung about is both conceptually attributed to the heart and the male genitalia. “Woman Machine”, of which the basics of the song date back to the beginning of the band, is about a female robot who can do... well... the things that you want. “Never Been Sold Before” speaks of the musings of a prostitute, while the opening track “Big Apple Dreamin’ (Hippo)” is about the Hippopotamus Club in New York, which the band apparently attended frequently in the day. And then there is “Working Up a Sweat” which follows along the same lines as the song that follows it, “Muscle of Love” It is an interesting flow of these songs, ones that no doubt added to the shock value of the band at the time.
Other songs on the album of course have no such desire, and indeed have other content apart from the sexual. “Teenage Lament ‘74” relates the problems faced by every teenage boy who tries to change things about themselves just to be cool or hip or even just to fit in. Still a great song to this day. “Crazy Little Child” goes the other route and talks about teenage crime. And then there is “The Man with the Golden Gun”, a song that was written to be theme song of the James Bond movie of the same name. Apparently it arrived a day late, and the producers had already chosen another song for that theme before they heard the Alice Cooper song. It contains a lot of sound effects that fit in with that James Bond theme, along with supporting vocals from artists such as Ronnie Spector, the Pointer Sisters and Liza Minelli to fill it out. A missed opportunity to follow up the Wings theme song for “Live and Let Die”.
Once again, Glen Buxton is credited as lead guitarist on this album, but did not play on anything that made the cut for the album. Due to his addictions, it was decided he either shouldn’t or couldn’t contribute to the album, and his parts were played by session musicians including Dick Wagner, who would have more to do down the track.

It was only a couple of episodes ago that I spoke of how I went about catching the entire catalogue of Alice Cooper albums, starting with the 1980’s and then back through the popular albums to see what I may have missed along the way. “Muscle of Love” came in that second or third period of finding the band’s albums, once I had digested the big releases of both the band and then the solo act that followed. So it is fair to say that this album already had a great deal to beat by the time I got around to getting it and listening to it. And as a result, it wasn’t one that really captured my imagination at that time. It sits right between two amazing albums, the Alice Cooper Band’s “Billion Dollar Babies”, and Alice Cooper’s first solo outing with “Welcome to my Nightmare”. That’s some tough competition. And while it does still compare favourably with the rest of the original band’s work, and those who grew up with the albums from the 1970’s would still rank it highly, as a kid whose high school years were the 1980’s it is those albums that appeal to me most.
I’ve listened to this on my rotation for the past couple of weeks, and again when I just sit down with this on my stereo in the Metal Cavern and turn it up, it still sounds great and is enjoyable to listen to. The title track is such a brilliantly upbeat song, I often wonder why they couldn’t make the whole album like this song. But that wasn’t to be. It is the one main song that leaps off the vinyl or off the Spotify playlist when you listen to the album, the one excellent shining light. But if you want me to listen the ten best Alice Cooper Band slash solo albums, this doesn’t get a look in.
With a few months of this album’s release, the band split up, and this became the final album of the actual Alice Cooper Band. Vincent Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper, went off and did the “Welcome to my Nightmare” solo album (with the return of Bob Ezrin as producer), and never looked back. Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton and Dennis Dunaway formed the short-lived band Billion Dollar Babies and released one album. “Muscle of Love” closes that one door and opened another, and the story of Alice Cooper continued in the hands of the frontman only.

1211. Anthrax / Volume 8 - The Threat is Real. 1998. 2.5/5

For all of the success Anthrax had had during the back half of the 1980’s as they rode at the forefront of the thrash metal scene, and then into the beginning of the 1990’s, the troubles away from the stage into the mid to late 1990’s was just as difficult for the band to negotiate as the changes in the music scene itself. They had released the album “Stomp 442” in 1995 on the back of this, but it had been the changes at the top of Elektra Records that created the most problems, with the new head of the company openly telling the band in a meeting that she would never have signed them to the contract they did if she had been in charge at the time. The result of this hostility was that “Stomp 442” received practically zero promotion by the record company, which contributed to it being far less commercially successful that their previous album, and eventually led to the band leaving the label.
Anthrax instead signed with an independent label, and went about writing and recording their new album. As with the previous album, Charlie Benante wrote the majority of the music, and played most of the lead guitar, as well as his main job with the band, playing the drums. Paul Crook, who was the touring guitarist for the band at that time, contributed solos to three songs, while Dimebag Darrell from Pantera again contributed solos to two songs.
As an ‘old school’ metal band, Anthrax was well aware of the changes within the music world. It was a tough gig out there for those bands. Some had altered their sound to mix in with the change of era, others had toughed it out, and many had ceased to exist. For Anthrax, with a new record deal and a shrinking live audience, the challenge was to ensure that their product continued to reflect what their fans wanted, and to keep them excited in their work and to push to regain the lost ground that had occurred with the lack of support of their previous album.

The opening two tracks are the best examples of the then-current day Anthrax tunes. Heavy rolling drums, heavy guitars and John Bush’s hardcore vocals overlaying throughout. “Crush” delivers as a solid opening track, while “Catharsis” is probably the better song, bringing better energy and delivery. In the Bush era of Anthrax, when he is going hard at the vocals the songs are at their peak, and both of these songs have those best moments about them.
“Inside Out” has a mood and tempo typical of the age, heavy guitars and hard hitting drums in a slow mid tempo grind and groove with vocals growling rather than soaring with a Dimebag solo tying it all together. While Scott Ian likes to suggest Anthrax stayed true to type during this album, this song, the first single released from the album, offers something that is not that. The song is a good one, but it most definitely brings the era into the album. I guess I should just say it – it sounds like a Pantera song. I wonder why. “P & V” or “Piss and Vinegar” which is what the title actually is, typifies the Bush era with those same hard guitars but at a better tempo and with Bush rallying the troops in a better vocal style that does the song justice.
It has to be said here that, for me at least, a part of this album feels as though it is a cross between an S.O.D album and an “Attack of the Killer B’s” album. “604” and “Cupajoe” are both short and to the point in a similar frame that Charlie and Scott created for Stormtroopers of Death in the 1980’s and seem to have been revived here for this album. On the other hand, “Toast to the Extras” is an “Attack of the Killer B’s kind of song, because of the song lyrics and the style of music written and played for the song. In fact, when you listen to it, even now, the instant reaction is ‘what the fuck is this?!’ For me, none of these three songs fit the concept of what I think of as an Anthrax album, at least an Anthrax mainstream type album. Those songs had their place in the past, but to me it feels as though they are wildly out of place here.
“Born Again Idiot”, “Killing Box” and “Alpha Male” are all much more like it, energetic in a much more positive fashion, and providing a better selection of riffs and solos as well as Bush’s vocals at their best. Offsetting that though is the song “Harms Way”, which starts off as a borderline country western song on steel guitar, and while the song does ‘harden up’ as it progresses, it still sounds like Nashville based song than New York. On the back of that, “Hog Tied” and “Big Fat” are back to the average song style, somehow trapped from being either classic Anthrax or mildly unnecessary.
“Stealing From a Thief” is the album’s closing song, which contains “Pieces” as a hidden track to actually finish the album. Frankie Bello wrote “Pieces” about his brother who was murdered outside his girlfriend’s house two years prior to this, and which Frankie also sings. It is fine, but is it not out of place here? The acoustic guitar and remorseful reflective tone of the song again seems like it is placed here because it was important to the band that it be acknowledged, but the style is all wrong for the departure to the album.
Earlier I mentioned part of this album being like an offshoot of SOD and Attack. Now is the part where I mention that the style associated with the majority of the rest of the album is very much influenced by the sound that Pantera had brought to the scene during the 1990’s. And we know the band admired what Pantera was doing at the time, and the fact that Dimebag Darrell was involved in pieces of this album, and that both Phil Anselmo and Vinnie Paul were present on the album as well, really brings that home to roost. It is in no way a Pantera album, but the sound and the format of the songs here have a definite trend towards that style. “Stealing From a Thief” absolutely trends this way. So the influence of Pantera appears obvious, but the album also lacks cohesion, it appears that in places there is too much going on, and in others not enough. Some fans complain that it sounds too much like nu-metal, and I can hear and understand those thoughts. I’m more of the opinion that they ride the wave of nu-metal (or at least attempt to) without actually getting their feet wet, but others would disagree.

Anthrax is another band that I have supported since my discovery of them in the 1980's, and another of whom I own all of their released albums. This was another of those ‘purchase on love of the past’ albums that I went with in 1998, mostly on the continued belief that they couldn’t put out a poor album, and that I would more than get my money’s worth from it. And it must be said, I was certainly in my phase of European power metal when this was released, mostly in order to avoid the oncoming charge of nu-metal and industrial metal which didn’t sit great with me.
So I bought this album, and I taped it to cassette, and put it in my car to listen to on the way to work and back... and it got the mandatory listens before being swapped out for the next album in line. And it is fair to say that it suffered from what a lot of albums did at the end of the 1990’s, which was me going back to albums a decade earlier and enjoying reminiscing about them rather than giving the new material a fair listen. You can blame “Load and “Reload” for that! They really killed off a lot of new album listening at the end of the 90’s decade!
It wasn’t that I disliked the album that made me stop listening to it at the time, but it was a fact that I would listen to it, and then listen to “Among the Living” or “Persistence of Time” again and roll in the joy and ecstasy of those albums instead. And when it comes to pulling out an Anthrax album from the collection to listen to, there is no doubt that “Volume 8: The Threat is Real” is not high on the list. In fact, as the record company that released this album went bust not long after its release, it was out of print for about 20 years, which at least made this album somewhat valuable before its re-release in the past couple of years.
For the past four weeks I have listened to this album at least once a day, and this is what I have learned from that – most of my initial instincts on the album remain today as they did 25 years ago. There are some good songs on here, but none I would categorise as great. There are some songs on here that just don’t belong in the mix and I think probably harm the flow of the album. And that Pantera influence is undeniable, and the fact that Charlie is now drumming for the ‘band in name only’ as they tour the world probably nails down why this album sounds like it does. Some Anthrax fans like to dislike the Bush era albums because they aren’t the 80’s era albums. There is still enough goodness here for the everyday fan to enjoy. And it still kills “Load” and “Reload”, so it at least has that going for it as well. Final word – good, not great, but not terrible. How’s THAT for sitting on the fence?!

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.

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.

1098. Mötley Crüe / Mötley Crüe. 1994. 2.5/5

After the monster that Motley Crue’s 5th album “Dr. Feelgood” became upon its release in 1989, and the subsequently enormous world tour that followed to promote that album, the band appeared to have the music world at its feet. Following this they released a greatest hits package “Decade of Decadence 81–91” and toured again, raking in more dollars as they went. Once this had concluded, there seems little doubt that the four members of the band needed a break in order to recover from the long period on the road and away from home. Instead, either at the insistence of their record company or by individuals around the group, they began writing for a new album in early 1992 on the basis of working two weeks on, and then having two weeks off. Perhaps on paper this seemed like a good idea, but it soon proved to be the opposite.
Vince Neil's drinking according to some reports was affecting his ability to perform. At the time, the band blamed Neil's race car driving in the Indy Lights circuit as the reason, later releasing a statement that stated that they felt his racing had become his priority and that he didn’t share the band’s same desire and passion for the music any longer.
Even to this day there is no clear statement that would confirm or deny whether Neil was fired or quit the band. Bass player and band leader Nikki Sixx has long maintained that Neil quit, while Neil insists that he was fired. "Any band has its little spats," Neil observed in 2000, "and this one basically just stemmed from a bunch of 'fuck you’s' in a rehearsal studio. It went from 'I quit' to 'You're fired' ... It was handled idiotically. The management just let one of the biggest bands in the world break up”. Prior to his leaving of the group, Sixx says the band was open with Neil that they were considering a new lead vocalist, with Sixx telling him "We are down here working, and we want to be here. This isn't going to happen if you don't want to be here, and we have to force you out of bed every afternoon because you've been out all night drinking." Drummer Tommy Lee accused him of failing to contribute to the creative process and Neil stormed out, and his firing was announced to the public four days later.
At the same time, John Corabi was in his own band The Scream, and having heard Nikki Sixx had had good things to say about their album, wanted to get in contact with him, in order possibly have him collaborate on material for that band’s next album. When Sixx got back to him, he informed him that Neil had left Motley Crue, and asked Corabi if he would audition for the gig. A short time later and Corabi was inducted into the Motley Crue group, and a new chapter was about to be written, with an open ending that no one was sure which way it would go.

There was an obviously great deal of anticipation on the follow-up album to “Dr Feelgood” and how it would go in comparison. There was a lot to live up to, not just from that album but from the change in lead vocalist. It is fair to say that by the time “Mötley Crüe” the album finally hit the record shelves that it was not like anything that anyone expected it to be.
Apart from Vince Neil’s demise, five years had passed between albums, and the music world had completely changed from the one that Motley Crue had dominated. Glam metal was not extinct, but it had gone the way of the dinosaurs nonetheless, found only in the smallest of clubs with a shrinking audience. In its place had come grunge and the bands and sound that followed it, and it was nothing like the kind of music that Motley Crue had created over the previous decade and more. These occurrences were all things that they had to overcome when it came to how to approach this album.
What John Corabi brought to the band though was significant. He is a terrific lead singer in his own right, though different in style and substance from Vince Neil. He was also a guitarist, which brought with him the ability for two guitars on the album and allowing Mick Mars to be the lead guitarist in his own right while Corabi played rhythm, which did open up new possibilities with the songs. And finally, Corabi was a songwriter and a lyricist, which gave Nikki Sixx a real collaborator in this respect that he generally did not have, which gave the band the chance to write songs that they had never attempted before. All of this should have led to a more rounded writing and recording effort than the band had ever had before.
The sound on Mötley Crüe is tied very much to the times. Grunge had come and had eradicated the hair metal movement, or at least the sound that it had proliferated to the point between 1981 and 1991. Those hair metal bands that had not disappeared had for the most part tried to adapt to the new landscape. This is Motley Crue’s answer to that, a stripped back sound with a grungier outlook and a different vocal direction, though that is an obvious one given that it was a different vocalist on board.
Play this back-to-back with any of the previous Motley Crue albums and you would swear they are by different bands. It’s not just the vocals. The whole sound is completely different to what has come before. And that takes some getting used to. The best way to approach this album is to listen to it without knowing who the band is, so that you can give it the time it needs without the judgement of the band's past. Easier said than done when you buy the album for the name of the band emblazoned on the front of it. As a result, there is not so much joy and intensity and fun in the music here that had been such a part of their earlier albums.
After the opening tracks of “Power to the Music” and “Uncle Jack”, “Hooligan’s Holiday” starts off okay but drags on far too long without changing tune all the way through. “Misunderstood” too just goes on far too long. I mean, it’s not the kind of song that necessarily endears itself to you, and the fact that it drags that soft acoustic start out so long, and then does exactly the same thing at the end of the track, doesn’t help its cause. The attitude in the middle goes some way to offsetting that, but it still is a bit too close to country rock in places for my liking. And part of the problem with the feel of the album is its tempo, so different from past Motley Crue albums, that it does exacerbate the feeling of the songs going on too long. The comparative shortness of “Loveshine” at least compensates for its lack of excitement. “Poison Apples” is the first song on the album that sounds like it is trying to break the mould they have set for themselves and come closer to a true Motley Crue song, and with it a familiar sounding Mick Mars solo along the way. and “Hammered” at least allows Mick Mars to break out a decent solo to get the tracks moving. “Smoke the Sky” is probably my favourite track along with these two because of the better tempo.

For me, this is the equivalent of what Metallica did in the same era with the “Load” and “Reload” albums, a really definitive decision to slow the music down and incorporate the changing times of the popular alternative movement that had occurred. With the none-too-subtle change in the musical direction of both bands at this time, who should be in charge of twiddling the knobs of those two Metallica albums? Bob Rock. And who was also in charge on “Mötley Crüe”? Bob Rock. Coincidence? It doesn’t feel like it. The slower, crunch guitar rather than the fast paced, squealing guitar and solos is a feature of both of these bands' previous releases. While Metallica’s foursome had been retained though, at least Motley’s recruitment of Corabi gave some semblance of originality to the changes that came forth. Five years between albums, and the amount of change that had happened in the music scene during that time, certainly added some reasonability to it.
If you judge this album as an alternative or grunge album you will certainly find some positives within the songs. Perhaps it is heavier than an average alternative album but it is rooted in that genre. Which means that it is difficult to please either or any fans. The inclusion of acoustic guitars, sitar and mandolin, along with synth and even the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in places on the album tops off all of the differences you could have when creating this album.
Did it work? Was there just too much baggage from fans who couldn’t handle the band without Vince Neil on vocals? It wouldn’t be the first nor last time that happened in the history of music. Think Iron Maiden and Blaze Bayley, think Van Halen and Gary Cherone. Both of those happened in this era also. This does not sound like a Motley Crue album, that is the simple truth. Three of the four members might be involved, but it doesn’t sound like the Crue. And that’s OK, unless you’ve come for a Motley Crue album. If you were to put this album on, without knowing who it is, you would never pick the band. But you know what? You might actually enjoy the album for what it is rather than trying to compare it to what has come before it. Motley Crue is not a mid tempo, slow drummed band, and that’s what this album is.
When I first listened to this album, I too dismissed it offhandedly. It didn’t sound like I wanted, so move on to the next band and album. There’s no doubt to me that that was a mistake, and mainly for the reason I mentioned before. Listen to the album but not who the band is. And this is a much better album than it is given credit for. I had made my peace with it a few years ago, so went into this episode with expectation rather than trepidation, and over the past month I have again discovered how much I enjoy this album in the modern day. It isn’t flawless by any means, but taking the album on face value and ignoring who it is credited to, I really enjoy this album.
Corabi has been touring in recent years playing this album in full, in order to give it a fresh audience or chance to see the light. He in fact came to Australia a couple of years ago to do just this. It went over really well. And as most people will know, this was the only album he made with the band. Following the tour to promote it, Corabi was out and Neil was back in. The band lost the extra guitarist and a damn fine singer and composer and got Vince instead. Keeping both surely could have been an option, one discussed further on the episode in Season 2 of this podcast that talks about the follow up album “Generation Swine”.
As a Motley Crue album such as the ones released in the past, it doesn’t rate well. As a stand-alone album of the era, there is a lot to like here. Personal taste will play its part as it always does, but don’t dismiss this just because it isn’t a Motley Crue album. Give it a chance because it isn’t.

1093. Judas Priest / Jugulator. 1997. 2.5/5

Much has been made of the seven years that stretched between the release of the monster album Painkiller and of its follow-up Jugulator, which incorporated the leaving of Rob Halford from Judas Priest, and the eventual recruitment of the former singer of a Judas Priest cover band, Tim “Ripper” Owens. The lengthy period of time it took to get to this point has always been an interesting point of discussion. Many wondered if Judas Priest would ever record again in any form with Halford’s absence and no doubt this acted as an encouragement for the band to forge ahead. The danger given the length of time between albums was obviously inherent – would their music still be relevant in a world that had changed so much in that time?

I went into this album with a clear head and open mind. More than anything I wanted to like this album so I wasn’t going in with negative thoughts about it. The writing which forever had been composed by the trio of Tipton, Downing and Halford was now a writer short, and there was always going to be differences in the music because of it. Glenn wrote all of the lyrics while both he and Ken wrote the music, but if you take a third of your writing partnership away there is going to be a swing from the centre to one side or the other. And let’s face it, seven years is a long time between albums even if the band was settled, and the drastic swing between metal in 1990 and metal in 1997 created such a vast chasm that it was always going to be hard to overcome. Releasing “Painkiller II” would have been a disaster. Even so, the none-too-subtle change of musical direction between these two albums was a big gulf to accept.
One thing that wasn’t a problem was the vocals. “Ripper” came in with a great set of vocal chords and an uncanny ability to sound and sing like his predecessor, which for live performances was exceptionally handy as the live show barely missed a beat with the back catalogue of songs, something that is rarely the case when a band changes singers. What did have to be achieved was to find the right range for his vocals on the new songs being written, and given the slight change in this album’s direction that may not have been the easiest part to complete.
Despite all of this, what Judas Priest produced for their ‘comeback’ was like nothing they had ever recorded in their career, and that is where the major stumbling block was at the time, and remains to this day. The fact that they chose to record an industrial metal album at a time when industrial metal was at its prominence is not the issue. The issue is that it is so unlike a Judas Priest album that it becomes almost impossible to listen to. And even though as I said above that I went into this with an open mind, and that releasing “Painkiller II” would have been a disaster, you surely have to think that at least a few pieces of the past would make their way into the mix? But it is almost completely wiped away. This is a sound that has almost nothing to do with what Judas Priest had built their career on and it is somewhat shocking, even today. Honestly, to me it has the same mistakes that Dio made in writing and recording their Angry Machines album, in that there was no familiarity at all between that album and anything else they had released that it caused major fractions in the fan base. Much the same can be said about Jugulator.
And it comes from the very beginning. The opening track on a Judas Priest album is usually one of the highlights, the song that drags you willingly into the album. Think of “Freewheel Burning”, “Electric Eye”, “Sinner” and “Painkiller” as just a few examples. But, even though I like “Jugulator” as a song, it just doesn’t have that same drawing power. “Blood Stained” too has plenty of angst and drive to the song, and to be honest if you have made it through the two opening songs and not turned this off, and have also put completely out of your mind that this is a Priest album, you will be able to get more out of it. This album has more of a tame Fear Factory sound to it than any pretence of following the band’s previous doctrine, which is so very strange as it has more in common with the direction that Rob Halford took with two projects after leaving the band, Fight and Two. If both parties were heading down that path, then why part ways? Why remove the brilliant harmony guitars and great solos which act as the strength of the band to just side with the times? I don’t know the answers to these questions.

Anyone who saw the band live during this period knows full well that they were still just awesome, and that “Ripper” was great, but the new material just didn’t gel well with the old stuff. More than anything else that is what harms its overall appeal. There are still some terrific songs on this album, such as “Death Row”, “Burn in Hell” and “Bullet Train”, where when heard away from the rest of the album will garner a positive response. But the album as a whole just doesn’t work in a way that makes it a good Judas Priest album. It is so tied to the era because of the way the songs have been written and recorded that it doesn’t have a chance to stand on its own legs. That is a shame.

Rating: “Changing my course, blurred and scorched, breathing exhaust as we distort”. 2.5/5

1072. Motörhead / Snake Bite Love. 1998. 2.5/5

If there is one major factor that you can’t take away from this band, it’s that they never stopped producing albums on a regular basis. For the most part, no more than a couple of years ever separated albums being released. That’s a tough thing to do, to keep finding inspiration and ideas on such a scale as to be able to fill the required volume that an album must have. To keep the quality of the product high enough to convince the fans to keep buying them also takes some ability. Somewhere in that, there has to come a time when the product doesn’t quite stack up, and that either more time should have been taken in either writing or recording the album – or both – or that perhaps there needed to be a longer time between releases to ensure everything was right. Maybe, just maybe, this album is one of those points in time for Motörhead.
In several interviews and books, drummer Mikkey Dee has been vehement in his disappointment with the album as a whole, a couple of songs in particular, and the fact that it had all been done so quickly, without any thought of extending. Dee was quoted as saying an extra three weeks would have allowed the band to produce a ‘great’ album instead of a ‘shit’ album.
The previous album “Overnight Sensation” had been the first written and recorded back as a three piece, and so it was hoped that now that the band had settled on this again, that the writing would turn out as solid. Some quarters suggest that the missing piece of Wurzel’s writing may have been an influence in the changing style of the songs. No matter where opinion may lie, there is little doubt that the result is mixed.

Motörhead has always been at its best for me when the tempo is right and the songs have the right mix of heavy guitar and rock ‘n’ roll feel. For the most part there is very little of that balance here. “Love for Sale” and “Dogs of War” start the album off well enough but don’t light any fire like previous Motörhead albums have. The title track “Snake Bite Love” tries to inject a bit of old-fashioned rock ‘n roll into a heavier riff, while “Assassin” changes up the template but doesn’t really work.
“Take the Blame” that follows is probably the best song on the album. It has that fast pace, with blazing drums from Mikkey Dee in particular that dominate the track underneath Phil’s guitar and Lemmy’s bass and vocals, and the attitude that makes the best Motorhead songs.
“Dead and Gone” however is another Motörhead ballad, a style of genre that seems so alien to a band like Motörhead that it continues to be a surprise whenever I find a song like it on their albums. It just doesn’t fit with them, no matter how well written or played it might be. Certainly, Lemmy’s vocals never suit such a song which isn’t a criticism, it’s just a fact. In my opinion at least.
“Night Side” on the other hand just feels like it was thrown together in about five minutes, both musically and lyrically. In many ways it sums up how the whole album comes across, and it comes back to what has been said by the members of the band in the years since. “Don’t Lie to Me” is a typical Motorhead rock n’ roll song, combining that with a fast paced blues guitar progression that is fun enough to listen to, while “Joy of Labour” settles into that slow tempo that reveals the cracks in anything except top shelf Motörhead songs. Listening to Lemmy struggle over the vocals here makes it tough going.
Still, even these songs don’t quite prepare you for what can only be described as the boredom and sameness of the closing two tracks, “Desperate for You” and “Better Off Dead”. Neither of these songs provide even a glimmer of hope for the album. It’s a standard Motörhead progression while Lemmy’s doubled vocals can’t hide the weak lyrical content. It’s not that they are played poorly, just that they are both pulled from the same playbook that has been worn so thin that there is nothing stylish left. The tempo of the tracks is fine, which is at least a positive, but is no magic here that lifts them to a level that is worth getting excited about.

As it turns out, I had never heard this album until more than a decade after its release. Most of Motorhead tended to vanish from the perimeter for a good number of years, and I more or less stuck with the albums that I already knew rather than seeking out their new material when it was released. It wasn’t until around 2010 that I began to go back and find those albums released in that previous 15 years to see just what the band had put up as their offerings, and it is fair to say there was some gems and some wet molten mud. This one was one of the ones that I had problems with overall. The album is just a solid album. It doesn’t really have any highlights, and songs you would pick out to throw on a playlist for the car of a party. And it has a couple of songs that just make you look for the skip button. Which, of course, in the end, is how the damning aspect of an album can be judged.
The continuing changes in the music scene at the turn of the century had affected many long-term bands, with releases by bands like Metallica and Megadeth in particular dividing fans with the changes they had made. The differences here are not through experimentation of changes in taste in the band, but perhaps just through running out of ideas as to how to best bring forth the music that fans of the band loved. They were also battling it out with industrial metal and nu-metal which was the rising force of popularity at the time, which made it all the more difficult to find yourself heard. Whether this albums suffers most from that, or from rushing too much in the writing and recording to really pull out the average songs and replace them with a variant, or if it was simply just a lack of inspiration, this ends up being only an average album in the band’s discography.