“Burn all the sinners in my way”
In the mid-80s Canada’s Cobra Records reckoned that, as long as you put a wild cover on it, any old metal shite could sell 20,000 copies easily. So they set out to create a bunch of pretend metal acts and whack out some albums. One of these was Piledriver.
Although Piledriver boasted various fictional members (including “Knuckles” Akimbo on guitar and “Former” Lee on drums!) all the backing tracks were written, performed and produced by Leslie Howe with vocals handled by Piledriver himself (real name: Gordon). But by second album Stay Ugly, Leslie was gone and Piledriver was assisted by none other than Virgin Steele’s David DeFeis (writing and producing as “The Lion”) and Edward Pursino (writing and playing guitar as umm… “Bruizer” Bernette).
The Fire God is one of the album’s standout tracks. Leathery speed metal with a blasphemous flavour of Venom. It’s crude enough that it sounds a bit bashed out but it’s not just any old metal shite either. It’s got heart, hooks, harmonies and ripping guitar. It was good enough that Virgin Steele did their own version years later and it’s proof that good music can come out of the the most crass and contrived circumstances.
HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD 
Leave it to us Canucks to pull a scam of pretend bands and 20,000 records printed and have people buy it!!
Lol
I read about these guys as they got some mag coverage but I wasn’t one of those 20,000 people! haha
But Piledriver wasn’t the only one check this link out …
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/the-band-everyone-thought-was-the-beatles-revisit-the-klaatu-conspiracy-of-1976.html
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I think it’s still happening today. Look at Sloan, for example they can’t be real!
It wasn’t just Piledriver! DeFeis also did an album as Exorcist called ‘Nightmate Theater’ and then roped his sister in to sing in a pretend “all-girl” metal band called Original Sin! All in the one year!
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Ha you mean Sloan isn’t real???
Next thing you know it you will tell me Blackmore is a medieval mandolin wizard!!
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Oh c’mon! Sloan has got to be hoax! Surely!
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I like hoaxes
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I liked the harmony intro in this song but that’s it. Lol.
It was a smart move by Cobra to do what they did. Spotify did that at the start as well, getting fake bands and artists up and running and on to their playlists. They paid the fake artists a wage and kept all the earnings from the listens.
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Didn’t know that about Spotify! I think Cobra were on to something yeah. I’d love to know if this stuff was as successful as they hoped though.
At least you liked the intro haha! It reminded me of the intro to Manowar’s Hail And Kill a bit.
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Oh yeah good pick up on the Manowar song. 100 percent similar. Lol.
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The name is familiar and the song rings of having heard it before but that’s all.
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That’s probably more than most people manage! You’re on to ’86 now aren’t you? You should check it out!
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I will put them on the list.
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It’s more a solid album than “great” but worth a listen!
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M.E.A.T Mag had some great content about this band. I need to dig up their behind the scenes info. I believe Dogs With Jobs was the follow up band.
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That rings a bell. Now there is a version called The Exalted Piledriver. Would love to see the mag stuff you’ve got! Was that articles from the time or later on?
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Would have been 1990 or so, when Dogs With Jobs put out their CD.
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Cool. It would be interesting to see what it says because I’m not sure when the truth came out about who was in the band.
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I will look for the magazine this weekend. I’ll go through all of 1990 until I find it! I remember it has a LOT of behind the scenes chatter about Piledriver.
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Interesting business philosophy – and new-to-me CanCon!
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New to most people I imagine! Although I’d have thought there should be at least 20,000 people out there that know this stuff.
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I do like the intro to this track, the sound of someone cooking breakfast.
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Sinners On Toast I think.
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It’s all they had left in Sainsbury’s last time I went. That and fucking quinoa.
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