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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1131. Nirvana / Nevermind. 1991. 5/5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1128. System of a Down / Toxicity. 2001. 4/5

It’s hard to take in sometimes that System of a Down was first formed way back in 1994, generally before all the changes that happened to heavy metal and alternative music had really taken shape. But it didn’t take them long to find their feet and their standing in the music world, and with a style that was very much their own. After releasing their eponymous first album in 1998, the band comprising Serj Tankian on vocals, Daron Malakian on guitars, Shavo Odadjian on bass and John Dolmayan on drums moved back into the studio to produce their follow up, titled Toxicity. Also returning to produce the album was Rick Rubin, which only augured well for the final product.

Without a doubt, Toxicity is one of the most significant albums to come out since the turn of the century, and for many teenagers in particular at the time it was a defining album . And there are plenty of reasons for that. The album comes with riffs and lots of them, they're loud, they've got cool rhythm patterns (very much an underrated aspect of SOAD), the songs contain abstract and 'intellectual' lyrics, shouted vocals and more. It was one of those albums where you would allow people to try and attack you for being a fan of the band because the music was so different and out there, and that they obviously just ranted on about abstract things – and then you could have the sheer joy of actually telling these people what it was that the lyrics were talking about, and well and truly take the moral and intellectual high ground.
Toxicity copped a fair barrage on its release, especially as it occurred just a week before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. The heavily politically motivated lyrics on several songs caused a stir, and this then led to several songs being banned from their airwaves, in particular “Chop Suey” whose lyric of “I cry when angels deserve to die” was taken somewhat out of context during the hysteria following those attacks – even though the song and album were recorded and released well before the actual events. This didn’t stop the song being nominated for awards or selling huge numbers of copies as a single release.
After the attack, Tankian published an essay exploring 9/11’s fallout from multiple angles. “If we carry out bombings on Afghanistan or elsewhere to appease public demand, and very likely kill innocent civilians along the way, we’d be creating many more martyrs going to their deaths in retaliation against the retaliation,” he wrote. “As shown from yesterday’s events, you cannot stop a person who’s ready to die.” Given recent events in Afghanistan, he was shown to be bang on.

Describing this album's musical content isn't easy. What you have here with Toxicity is an alternative album that transcends genre labels and many musical conventions, tying in an amazing range of genres with an incredibly diverse array of (generally) short tracks. There's thrash metal, hardcore punk, Greek and Middle Eastern music, folk, jazz, progressive rock, nu metal, art rock, and probably a dozen others in the mix. Listing here the bands that SOAD have at different times cited as their musical influences would take longer than these podcast episodes usually come out to. It all feels like the ingredients to a primordial soup, but this album sounds surprisingly fresh, creative and original even 20 years after its release by an alt-metal band. It is certainly no sophomore slump. The songs are generally pretty short and rock hard at high tempos, which can be a blessing and a curse; the fast tempo helps them fit in uncommon time signatures and gives them flexibility in structure, but this also becomes somewhat predictable and uniform as the album goes on, and many songs sound underdeveloped because of how short they are. One aspect of this album that I'm not sure many people talk about is how progressive it is, and this is probably one of the few albums that could be called both progressive metal and hardcore punk. In these short songs, the band fits in various structures and completely ignores the concept of a normal song structure. Even on the lead hit “Chop Suey!”, the band fits in various, diverse segments and abandons any transitions, but it works really, really well. The melody and catchiness also really helps, but it's an oddball song that somehow still became their biggest hit. And, even though the songs are structurally similar, they don't sound much like each other. There isn't one song here that you would think, "gee this sounds just like the last one".

Even for music in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, given all of the ways heavy metal had evolved and broken off and formed new extensions of themselves, this was DIFFERENT. This was frantic yet serene. It was angry yet intellectual. It was madness wrapped in a cocoon of sanity. It was strictly formed lyrical and musical tomes smashed by a sledgehammer and thrown at you from a distance of ten paces. Noting about it actually seemed to fit together, and yet it made perfect sense. It was never designed to be sat down and listened to in your armchair with a nice hot cup of tea, though 20 years on their would be youth of that generation who now do exactly that.
It’s possible I may never have truly discovered this album if I wasn’t involved with younger people at the time of its release through the cricket club I played in. The album first came to me from one of my best friends on one of his sojourns down from the big city, and I was pressed to listen to it more by the youngsters I then played cricket with on weekends. I didn’t take much convincing. Everything about it was a part of what I had listened to in music for 15 years or more before its release, it’s just that I didn’t always get all of that on one album, or in this case in a 30 second period of each song on the album.

Is it a surprise that five albums came about really quickly... and then the band went on a hiatus that has produced almost zero new music since? No, probably not, and that isn’t always a bad thing. Some things are hard to both reproduce and also to follow up. Toxicity is a product of its time, tied to it by the fact that it reflects so many different styles of music in one 14 song album that all more or less came into being in that same era. Everyone hopes for a new album from the band, much like they did after the same hiatus periods taken by bands like Faith No More and Soundgarden, and yet when they returned with new albums so many years after their previous ones, there was the general feeling of disappointment.

20 years on, Toxicity still brings out the same feelings of joy and amazement that it did on its release, and for an album like that, that is quite an achievement.

1127. Helloween / Helloween. 2021. 5/5

So Covid-19 may have delayed the release of this album by about 12 months, and it has certainly put a stop to any touring to promote it, but the album arrived as promised, and that is something I don’t think any fans of the band thought they would ever hear – Hansen and Kiske back in the band that they helped to create the major success of. Along with the initial tour to celebrate their reunion the band released a new single, “Pumpkins United”, that was written by Deris, Weikath and Hansen, and featured all three vocalists in capacities during the song. And when it was announced that a new album was to be recorded, it was announced that it would be helmed by this writing trio. Well, for whatever reason, that isn’t what happened.As it turns out, the writers are pretty much as they have been for the last 17 years for Helloween, with Deris and Gerstner doing the lions share, Weikath adding his 2-3 and Grosskopf 1-2. In fact, the only difference with the writers here is Kai Hansen’s 12+ minute monster “Skyfall” which concludes the album. Of course, that doesn’t mean that band members weren’t involved in the song writing process in other ways, but those being credited with the songs are the same as always. And perhaps that becomes a problem for some fans, as they could suggest that means the songs won’t be any different to what they have produced over recent albums.

But the songs they were writing on this album had lots more variables. Firstly, the addition of an extra guitarist, which opens up how the songs could be constructed. That of course could be done anyway, but with three different guitarists all adding their own flavour or style to the mix it was always going to improve what came out. And of course, the biggest change of all was the addition of not one, but TWO extra vocalists, all with their own style and their own way of interpreting how a song of a portion of the song should be sung, and of course the magnificence of their layered harmony vocals throughout. If for nothing else, that is what people should be coming to this album for.
And this may well beg the question – why would this album be any better than the last half a dozen or so released by the band? Some people either didn’t enjoy them, or didn’t listen to them. My own point of view of those albums is that I liked them all, and consider all of them around 7.5 to 8 out of ten. So musically, even if they were on a similar path I was always going to be okay with it.
I can give you a few reasons as to why this album is probably the best the band has released since Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy back in 2005, but the one, outstanding, fully fledged reason is the one that is the most obvious – from the very first note that is sung by Michael Kiske, this is already a winner. And it is hard to convey the joy of hearing Michael Kiske singing again for Helloween. I do enjoy both of the Unisonic albums, but they don’t match this. This is pure unadulterated Helloween.

And look… I am not taking anything away from either Andi Deris or Kai Hansen, or the great backing vocals of all of the other members of the band. Truly. Because they are tremendous. But it is Kiske that is the star turn. Because – after Keeper 1 and 2 – he was the voice of Helloween. Yes, I LOVE Kai’s singing on those early albums and on everything he has done with Gamma Ray, and I love Andi’s vocals on all of the albums since. But Michael is the pure voice, the one that dominates in different keys, that soars where it needs to, and is still and always will be the major factor in Helloween’s vocals. No matter what other elements have made this the album that it is – and there are, don’t get me wrong – as soon as you hear Michael you know it is Helloween. This reunion would not have worked without him.
But the combination of the three main Helloween vocalists here is superb. In the main it is Michael and Andi who share most of the lines, but Kai has his moments as well, and that is superb that he is. Many people don’t know just how good Gamma Ray is, but they are as awesome a band as Helloween, and Kai has been their lead vocalist for most of their albums, so it is great that he still holds a place in getting his shot here too – obviously along with his guitaring. And Andi Deris is again superb. As the man holding down the number one spot in the band for 25+ years, he had the most to lose by the return of these two former members, and yet he seems to have not only taken it in his stride, but thrived on it. He risked losing his profile, but I think he has only strengthened it because he has been so accommodating in the whole process. When they played live he had to accede those older songs back to Michael and Kai to be the major vocalists, but he did so stylishly. And here, he and Michael combine and mesh seamlessly, each taking their turn on the microphone and making every song a moment in time to remember.

And of course the musicianship is second to none. Drummer Dani Loble is a powerhouse behind the kit and has been a revelation since coming into the band. His drumming here is exceptional, and the sound he has got going is really superb. Part of this amazing experience is the fact that one of the people involved in the band was able to find Ingo Schwichtenberg's drum kit that he used to record the two Keeper album back in the late 1980’s, and that is the kit Dani used to record this album. And to me, his genuine excitement to be using that kit just shows not only how invested he is in the band and also its history. Alongside him as the other latecomer, Sascha Gerstner again delivers. His guitaring has always been great, and his song writing particularly strong. I probably didn’t pay him enough attention until I saw him perform live with the band on two tours of Australia, but seeing him up front just proved to me what a terrific addition to the band he has been since he arrived 20 years ago. “Best Time” and “Angels” are his two tracks on this album and again they have purpose in the lyrics and strength in the music. And as always on bass guitar, the grand old man of the four string, Marcus Grosskopf, who has been there since the very beginning, playing the most immaculate and amazing bass riffs, running those enormous hands all the way along the fretboard. You can only wonder why Marcus has always felt underrated as a musician and a songwriter. He rarely seems to get a mention when it comes to the great bass players, and yet he most definitely is. Just listen carefully to his work on this album again, it is amazing. And his one track on the album that is credited to his writing, is “Indestructible”

It is interesting to look back at the debut EP and first three albums by Helloween - Walls of Jericho, Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I and Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II, and note that all but three songs were written by either Michael Weikath or Kai Hansen – Michael Kiske’s “A Little Time”, “You Always Walk Alone” and “We Got the Right” are the only exceptions. They were the guitarists, the leaders. The guys that drove the band. Take a look at the songs on those four albums. That is an amazingly incredible collection of brilliant material to come from just two people in such a short space of time. What if they had stuck it out, and stayed together in Helloween. Could they have followed that up? History shows that without Hansen the band was not able to, but that is not to say it would have worked if Kai had not gone off to form Gamma Ray and record the brilliant Heading for Tomorrow album. Michael Weikath here is credited with three songs, the wonderful opening track performed so brilliantly by Kiske, “Out for the Glory” along with “Robot King” and “Down in the Dumps”. Kai only has the one writing credit, but it is pure Kai with it being the grandiose 12+ minute closing track “Skyfall”, the hallmark epic Kai Hansen song. There is some suggestion out there that Kai did not write more for the album because it would then become too much like Gamma Ray than Helloween. Whether or not that would be true, and while I would like to have heard more songs from Kai on the album, I also hope it is because he is saving them all up for the next Gamma Ray album... whenever that may be...

I think this album is a triumph. It is everything that could have been expected from this band and this reunion of old and current members. I think they have gone about it in a very sensible and ordered fashion. They finally came together and let bygones be bygones. They then toured together, putting together a great range of hits from the past and form the current day, and not only mixed three guitarists into the setting, but three vocalists as well. And THEN, they wrote and recorded an album together. And all of that has paid off.
The opening salvo of “Out for the Glory” is magnificent, followed by the brilliance of “Fear of the Fallen”. I still get shivers down my back every time I listen to this song, just listening to those harmonic vocals of Michael and Andi. It is a triumph, just fantastic. “Best Time” reminds me of the original Helloween because it is a happy song, just like their happy guitars were the hallmark of the band in its early years. “Indestructible” against soars because of the combined vocals of Andi and Michael. And the closing track on the album, “Skyfall”, is another masterpiece.
But there are others I could quite easily have included as absolute favourites, but that would mean including pretty much the whole album! “Mass Pollution” is a great song, one of Andi’s heavy tunes he likes to pump out every album, and so is “Rise Without Chains”. In all, Andi wrote four songs for the album as well as co-writing “Best Time” with Sascha. So much for ‘reducing his visibility’ with the arrival of the other two, hey!
What comes across best about this album is that it does successfully reintegrate the familiarity and love of the past with the solidity and finely tuned machine that is the band that has been playing for the last 20 years. It is the best of both worlds, but there was no certainty that it would work. But it has, and for all of the right reasons. None of the current five members has been overlooked or pushed out of the way. Indeed, they have retained their place in the structure as main songwriters and as performers. And Michael and Kai have not just been brought in as window shopping and to bring in the money. Michael’s vocal contributions, as I have already gushed over, make this immediately feel like we are back in the Keeper days, and it is both comforting and tremendously exciting to hear. And Kai’s vocal presence is also wonderfully succinct, while hearing his guitar solos in the mix once again also helps to regain that nostalgic presence.

I know not everyone will appreciate it, but for me, this lived up to all the hype, and lived up to everything I could have hoped for and imagined in a reunion of these members. Now let's get this pandemic behind us and get these guys back out on tour and showing us just how good these songs sound live!

1126. Michael Schenker Group / Immortal. 2021. 3/5

If any of you have followed the career of one of the finest axemen ever, the great Michael Schenker, then you’ll know he has rarely stood still over the past fifty years. Starting off with his brother Rudolph in the band Scorpions, through to British legends UFO, and then onto the several projects that bear his own name, Schenker has been releasing music and touring many places in the world – not Australia unfortunately – consistently since he first graced the stages of the world as a teenage guitar prodigy. And while the genre of the music he plays on has tended to gravitate between heavy metal to soft rock, the one saving grace is almost always Schenker’s guitar playing and the riffs and solos he produces that punctuate everything he puts his fingers on. Having spent thirty years in various forms of The Michael Schenker Group and the McAuley Schenker Group, in recent years he has done a supergroup type deal with the Michael Schenker Fest, and those album releases with a multitude of vocalists and other band members have been excellent. Then as Covid-19 gripped the world, as with so many other artists Schenker was forced to change his initial plans, and instead find another project to pass his time. And what came to fruition instead was this album that he brought out once again under the moniker of The Michael Schenker Group, celebrating his 50 years in the music business. Titled Immortal, it is an extension of what he has been doing over the last several years, but it is also a celebration and a chance to not only look back in a way but to mark the anniversary with a release that stands on its own.

Michael Schenker has again utilised several bodies to not only help record the music, but to contribute to the vocals on the songs, something he has made a habit of over the last decade or so. Perhaps it is his method so that he can have several styles of songs on the same album and not be tied to the way one vocalist may interpret it, or maybe he just enjoys having his different style of songs sung by singers who do the most justice to them. Whatever the reason behind it, there are different levels of songs here for fans of the band to listen to, and while there is something here for everyone, it is likely that as a whole package it won’t appeal to everyone’s tastes.

The faster and heavier songs utilise the brutal and electrifying vocal chords of Ralf Scheepers, lead singer of Primal Fear and renowned for his amazing singing style. Scheepers is electrifying alongside the double kick and guitar licks that dominate the songs that he is a part of, “Drilled to Kill” and “Devil’s Daughter”. These are for me the best two songs on the album, partly because of Ralf’s involvement but because they are the fastest songs on the album. Then you have the much more AOR feel that legendary vocalist Joe Lynn Turner brings to his contributions on “Don’t Die on Me Now” and “Sangria Morte”. “Sangria Morte” in particular is a song that is difficult to get your head around. While “Don’t Die on Me Now” is a song you can almost believe could be performed by Rainbow, “Sangria Morte” has a completely different sound and feel to it, and is one that takes some listening to in order to get the most out of it.
As for the remainder (but one) of the songs on the album, they are voiced by Ronnie Romero and Michael Voss. Having already mentioned the Rainbow influence with Joe Lynn Turner’s vocals here, it may come as no surprise to you that Romero has been singing in the reformed touring band of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, and you can hear how he got that gig on his tracks here. On the other hand, Voss has been handed the reigns of the slower tempo and melody songs, the ones that for no other reason than personal taste, I can quite happily skip over. They aren’t bad songs, but for me they are just a tad boring. Schenker finds a way to sneak a couple of these kinds of songs onto almost all of his albums, and for me those albums would be better off without them. But given they always appear you know that Schenker himself must be a fan of them.

The album concludes with a terrific rendition on “In Search of the Peace of Mind”, apparently the first song that Michael Schenker ever wrote – at the kitchen table of his family home when he was 15 years old - and which appeared on the very first Scorpions album “Lonesome Crow” back in 1972. It features vocal contributions from Gary Barden, Robin McAuley and Doogie White, all former lead vocalists for Michael Schenker groups, and also has a new solo written by Schenker for the occasion. It adds to the nostalgia of the occasion of celebrating his 50 years in the industry, and is a nice counterpoint to where it all began for him and where he finds himself now.

On listening to this a few dozen times, there is a lot to enjoy on this album, and Schenker’s ability to draw from so many rock and metal influences over the years has allowed him to remain relevant in an era where similarity can be a curse. What is important is that the songs contain a drive and emotion, that the vocalist, whoever it is, is helping that drive and emotion, and that Schenker himself has his moment on each song to shine, otherwise why are you turning up in the first place? For me it makes songs such as “After the Rain” such a disappointment because they offer none of this, and seem to be here just for the hope that a ballad will draw some fans back again and again. And this is the complete opposite reason why anyone will come to a Schenker-titled album. We are coming for his guitar, to hear his riffing and soloing and enjoying it for the legend that his is. And yet, so often in the past, in on some of the songs here, he is ignorant of that and continues to try and sell up some tripe that is no more than filler material.

The good news here is that on most tracks Michael Schenker dominates, and he is in fine form. He even occasionally duels with the keyboards in a nod to the old Blackmore/Lord days of Deep Purple which is also lots of fun. For those that like me want more guitar from Schenker, the best songs here include “Devil’s Daughter”, “Knight of the Dead”, “Sail the Darkness”, “Come on Over”, and the opening track “Drilled to Kill”.

1125. Alice Cooper / Detroit Stories. 2021. 3.5/5

It was probably time for 73 year old Detroit native Alice Cooper, formerly Vincent Furnier, to start slowing down a little when it came to writing and recording new albums. He had been amazingly productive when it came to this over the years, with new albums coming out sometimes before you had even had a chance to fully digest the previous one. However, slow down he has, and since 2010 Alice has brought out just three new studio releases, 2011’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare, 2017’s Paranormal, and now this year’s Detroit Stories. It marks Alice’s 21st studio album as a solo artist and add to those the seven albums that he did with The Alice Cooper Band before he went out on his own, that is a lot of material to write and record over 50+ year career – and that’s not to mention the live albums or the material done with other acts either!
The album is written about Alice’s origins, and especially the origins of the hard rock music scene of Detroit when he was growing up, and when he came back with The Alice Cooper Band. Here, Alice and his co-writers tried to incorporate those memories of the Detroit music scene into the songs and into every part of the album as a whole. Not only incorporate those sounds into this album, but he also used musicians of that similar ilk, and indeed used songs from Detroit bands of that era, performing his own cover versions of those songs to further intone his Detroit Stories. Alice was making a real attempt to return to the roots of rock and roll, mixing a lot of blues, jazz and soul along with the hard rock and humour that Alice has always been renowned for.
There is a cast of thousands helping out to perform on this album, and in a lot of ways it is an old time Detroit reunion given the people involved. Producer and co-writer Bob Ezrin is back, the man who helmed the desk for most of those Alice Cooper band albums in the early 70’s as well Alice’s first solo pieces, and his recent albums as well. His influence is noteworthy here again. In amongst the tracks that he and Alice co-wrote with other people, there are four cover songs here from other bands tied up in the history of Detroit hard rock. The opening track is a cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll”, though the lyrics that paint a picture of New York are morphed here to reflect Detroit instead. The cover of Outrageous Cherry’s “Our Love Will Change the World” has a more Alice-defined rock sound than the original. The cover of MC5’s “Sister Anne” is very much played in an Alice Cooper way, so much so you could believe it really was one of his songs, and the album concludes with a cover of Bob Segar’s “East Side Story”. All have been included to flavour the history that Alice has tried to purvey with this album, to look back at the music that in some ways made him the artist he is today.

Once again there is the return of the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper Band to not only help out in the writing of several tracks, but indeed to perform on two of them. Drummer Neal Smith co-wrote “Social Debris”, and bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway co-wrote “Drunk and in Love” and “I Hate You”, and both of these two and guitarist Michael Bruce joined Alice to record “Social Debris” and “I Hate You”. It has been a nice part of the last three albums to have that history recognised and have these guys come together to still be a part of something special. Others who are prominent in the recording of the album include MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, Grand Funk Railroad’s singer and guitarist Mark Farner, and legendary guitarist Joe Bonamassa.

Alice Cooper often has a theme or indeed a story behind every album he records, and that works really well here again. By looking back and trying to make a record that not only pays tribute to the music that shaped his career fifty years ago, he has also tried to keep it relevant to the music lovers of today without losing its own uniqueness that has Alice Cooper stamped all over it. How he has managed to do this, as well as utilise all of the musicians he has gathered together here, in the middle of a pandemic, is quite amazing. And yes, once again the songs that Alice seems to do best, those ones where he pokes fun at things without changing stride and yet still being able to keep it in a serious mode is amazing.

The great thing about Alice is that every album he releases, you can put on and listen to it from start to finish without any qualms, because it is Alice Cooper. Sometimes it is for the music and the musicians, and sometimes it is just for the stories Alice is telling through his lyrics. Above all, how can you not just enjoy listening to Alice sing? It is almost comforting putting on his albums, just to listen to his dulcet tones coming through the speakers.
What Alice is a genius at is being able to adapt his music not only to the genre rock is following at the time, but still being able to make it so that it doesn’t lose its ‘Alice Cooper’ feeling. What do I mean by that? Well, simply that an Alice Cooper album is always an Alice Cooper album, but they are still different in adapting to the style of the time. Listen to Killer or Welcome to My Nightmare or Constrictor or Trash or Dirty Diamonds or Brutal Planet or this album. Every single one of them is different in musical style based on the era it was written and recorded, and yet each album is still essentially Alice Cooper. He has been a chameleon and a genius in order to be able to do this for 50+ years. Anyone who enjoys Alice Cooper’s music will be able to put on any one of those albums and enjoy it for what it is, because their essence never changes even if the style of music does.

Is this a great album? I wouldn’t say so, but terming any album “great” in the current day always feels a bit wrong. If you like Alice Cooper in every era, then you will enjoy this album. I don’t know how long you will listen to it before you move on to something else, or how often you will pull it off the shelf to listen to in preference to any of the other 27 Alice Cooper albums in the future, but for what it is, in the year we are living, it has all the usual Alice Cooper goodness about it.