All posts by Heavy Metal Overload

The HMOverlord
Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Song Reviews

Ted Nugent – Great White Buffalo: Double Live Gonzo! Version (Song Review)

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“It happened a long time ago, baby”

Ted had been yanking and cranking his Gibson Byrdland guitar so hard that by the fifth song on his 1978 live album Double Live Gonzo!, it had gone out of tune. But a mangled D chord isn’t enough to spoil the fun. If anything, it adds to the raw, honest vibe of this great performance. Great White Buffalo is a red-blooded garage rocker with vocals that make you feel like you’re round a camp fire as The Nuge relates the tale of the wasteful killing of the buffalo and the rousing climax where the Great White Buffalo returns to save the battered herd. The tone from that out-of-tune and out-of-control Byrdland is something else: guaranteed by Ted to “blow the balls off a charging rhino”. Presumably they would be put to good use?

Album Reviews, Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Progressive Rock

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis: Bold As Love (Album Review)

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The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis: Bold As Love (Polydor/Track – 1967)

I went through a period of being obsessed with Axis: Bold As Love when I was a teenager, listening to it nearly every night. I don’t listen to it anywhere near that much now but it’s still my favourite studio album from The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Mainly due to the wonderful sonic tapestries Hendrix creates on colourful psychedelic tracks like Bold As Love, One Rainy Wish, Castles Made Of Sand and the timeless Little Wing. They’re all masterpieces and, as a budding guitar player, I found Hendrix’s playing and guitar tones fascinating and inspiring. If all that wasn’t enough there’s also the essential proto-metal of Spanish Castle Magic and If Six Was Nine: two of Hendrix’s, and therefore 1967’s, heaviest tracks.

Doom Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Song Reviews

My Dying Bride – The Cry Of Mankind (Song Review)

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“You can’t expect to see him and survive”

On The Cry Of Mankind, Yorkshire’s My Dying Bride take an extremely simple but eerie guitar motif and build a monumentally dark, symphonic beast of a song out of it. It’s a masterpiece that manages to remain refined and elegant while still filling you with existential dread. And, as if the song proper wasn’t already crushing enough, The Cry Of Mankind‘s final minutes just let that six-note motif run on. But this time overlaying it with a haunting choir and the bellow of a foghorn so unsettling and otherworldly it feels like the last thing you might ever hear.

Album Reviews, Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Progressive Rock

Rush – Grace Under Pressure Tour (Album Review)

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Rush – Grace Under Pressure Tour (Anthem – 2006)

I’ve been listening to Rush quite a bit recently and you can’t have a Rush kick without taking in a live album or two. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to the excellent Grace Under Pressure Tour, recorded in 1984 but released as a bonus CD with their 2006 DVD set Replay x 3. The album they were touring, Grace Under Pressure, is right up there as one of my favourite Rush studio albums so it’s great to have some live tracks from the era. The guitar solo in Red Sector A is breathtaking and the lively, pumping take on the The Enemy Within is far superior to the studio version.  The recording is taken from one of the DVDs from the box set and isn’t a whole show unfortunately, but it’s still a great listen with some excellent performances. And, given the band’s fashion crimes of the era, the audio-only option is very welcome.

Replica tour book from the Replay X 3 box set
Black Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Song Reviews

Darkthrone – Blacksmith Of The North (Keep That Ancient Fire) (Song Review)

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“Sound of iron, hard at work”

You want riffs. And they don’t get much better than the angular, thrashy guitar intro that kicks off Darkthrone’s Blacksmith Of The North (Keep That Ancient Fire). Taken from 2008’s Dark Thrones And Black Flags, it’s easily one of my Top 10 favourite riffs since the turn of the millennium and I love the frost-bitten, crusty sound and Nocturno Culto’s echoing, gravelly vocals. It’s a flaming triumph and a cool, apt title for a band that has kept the ancient fire burning, hammering out quality metal with impressive regularity to this day.

Album Reviews, Black Metal, Death Metal, Doom Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal

Celtic Frost – Into The Pandemonium (Album Review)

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Celtic Frost – Into The Pandemonium (Noise Records – 1987)

On its release in 1987, Celtic Frost’s third album Into The Pandemonium achieved instant fame as a ground-breaking work of avant-garde ambition. Notoriously, Frost kicked off the album with an unexpectedly playful cover of Wall Of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio, brought in a soul singer for the should-have-been hit I Won’t Dance (The Elder’s Orient) and went all n-n-n-nineteen on the bonkers One In Their Pride. But the band also continued their established style with aplomb on formidable black thrash songs like Inner Sanctum and there were sumptuously dark, gothic tracks like Mesmerized and Sorrows Of The Moon that would influence future pioneering masterpieces like Paradise Lost’s Gothic and My Dying Bride’s Turn Loose The Swans. Overall, Into The Pandemonium has a mournful, decadent and poetic quality that I’ve loved for aeons. And, listening to it this week, it sounds as bold and adventurous as ever.

Album Reviews, Classic Rock, Doom Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal

Cathedral – The Carnival Bizarre (Album Review)

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Cathedral – The Carnival Bizarre (Earache Records – 1995)

Cathedral sound like they’re having a blast on 1995’s The Carnival Bizarre which is remarkable because a) you don’t normally associate bowel-loosening doom with good times and b) the band were just coming out of a frustrating stint as a major label act that resulted in the departure of talented guitarist Adam Lehan. But the band’s remaining guitarist Gaz Jennings takes up the slack on Cathedral’s third album, delivering a masterclass in doom riffing Sab-otage. The opening three tracks Vampire Sun, Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) and Utopian Blaster are Cathedral at their most entertaining and crushing but the rest of the album is thoroughly enjoyable with a playful array of superb deep cuts like the eerie Night Of The Seagulls and the tuneful Inertia’s Cave. And fans of Lee Dorrian’s exuberant and irreverent vocal interjections will not be disappointed either. Huggy Bear? Ohhh yeah.

Limited Edition CD/DVD Version

Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Progressive Rock, Song Reviews

Rush – Marathon (Song Review)

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“In the long run”

It wouldn’t score a podium place in my list of favourite Rush songs but Marathon is definitely a standout from the band’s 80s era. Taken from 1985’s Power Windows, this is Rush at the peak of their pop-prog powers with funky basslines, enormodome guitar chords and a rousing chorus that builds to a climax of Olympian grandeur with the addition of a 25 piece choir. As always with Rush, this is high-performance stuff but Marathon is also uplifting and accessible. I never get tired of it.

Album Reviews, Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal

Judas Priest – Killing Machine (Album Review)

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Judas Priest – Killing Machine (CBS – 1978)

I’m cranking the hi-fi high today for my favourite Judas Priest album: 1978’s Killing Machine. Alternatively titled Hell Bent For Leather in some countries, Killing Machine continued the band’s impossibly superb run of metal-defining 70s albums and was their most red-blooded and raunchy release to date. Alongside megaton leviathans like the resolute Delivering The Goods, the turbo-charged Hell Bent For Leather and tough, direct rockers like Running Wild are songs like the glam stomper Take On The World and the wonderfully wistful Evening Star that managed to simultaneously evolve and simplify Priest’s style without diluting their lethal state-of-the-art metal godliness.

Black Metal, Doom Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Song Reviews

Primordial – Gods To The Godless (Song Review)

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“We are your cross to bear”

On Gods To The Godless, the first song proper on their third album Spirit The Earth Aflame, Ireland’s Primordial nail the unique pagan metal style they will become renowned for: weighty black metal with rolling, folky rhythms and A.A. Nemtheanga’s impassioned vocals. Gods To The Godless is similar in topic to Bathory’s seminal One Rode To Asa Bay but where that song depicted a subjugated, converted Norse community with sympathy, Gods To The Godless takes the viewpoint of the oppressor. And Nemtheanga spits outs threatening declarations with spine-chilling intensity.