Category Archives: Classic Rock

Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, HMO Blog, NWOBHM, Progressive Rock

HMO Diary: 1st December 2024

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It seems like I buy more box sets these days than anything else. Especially as we get nearer to Christmas there seems to be a tempting set or two released every week. Just yesterday I got the new box set reissue of Porcupine Tree’s 2007 career-peak Fear Of A Blank Planet. Loads to take in here: the album, documentary, bonus tracks, radio sessions, live stuff etc… So far, I can say that the album sounds superb, the documentary is very interesting and the packaging is very deluxe.

But all this box set activity has got me casting my mind back to a time when a box set purchase was just an annual treat, if that, and what my earliest box set purchases were.


Might as well start at the beginning so I looked out the oldest one I’ve got: Iron Maiden’s The First Ten Years. Released in 1990, my copy is not much to look at any more as it’s missing the lid but it’s still a worthwhile 10CD set of the band’s classic singles. And as a bonus it has the entertaining Listen With Nicko spoken word series from the band’s drummer Nicko McBrain. Possibly the first metal podcast ever? Anyway, I stuck on the first disc which features the Running Free and Sanctuary singles, the highlight of which was a barnstorming live version of Drifter.

The Maiden set is sadly bereft of any reading material which is a shame as one of my favourite features of a box set is a good book. That got me rummaging around for my copy of Free’s Songs Of Yesterday box from 2000. This was a very good box set for the time, comprised almost entirely of unreleased recordings and alternate versions. But it sprang to mind because it also had a particularly good book and I’ve had a great time today reading that and listening to the first two discs of the set. Phil Sutcliffe had written an excellent history of the band for Mojo magazine in the late 90s and expanded it here for the box set. It’s a fascinating read about a talented, tortured band.

It’s been a fun weekend of listening and reading with a wee bit of nostalgia too. I think I’ll be giving Cheap Trick’s Sex, America, Cheap Trick from 1996 a whirl next. Got any recent box set purchases or any memories of your first ones? Pandora’s Box? Thirty Years Of Maximum R&B? The Misfits? All belters.

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

Blackfoot – Tomcattin’ (Album Review)

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Blackfoot – Tomcattin’ (Atco – 1980: Rock Candy Reissue)

Of Blackfoot’s three classic “animal cover” albums, 1980’s Tomcattin’ is my favourite. A rushed follow-up to the band’s 1979 breakthrough Strikes, it’s the band’s hardest and heaviest album. In southern rock terms, remarkably so. The band’s mix of suvvern hallmarks (Rickey Medlocke’s hollerin’ vocals and the rootsy dual geetars) and British blues rock (shades of Free and Humble Pie) is still evident throughout but there’s a downright crazy as hell attitude all the way through this album. The band sound like grizzled, aggressive road warriors: loving and leaving; fucking and fighting. So even a relatively Skynyrd-esque boogie like Gimme, Gimme, Gimme charges at pace and often erupts into aggressive metal riffs. And on superb tunes like Warped, On The Run and Every Man Should Know (Queenie) the band fire up like Nuge-style wildmen. I know this is the “cat” album but Tomcattin’ is the dog’s bollocks.

Black Metal, Classic Rock, Death Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, HMO Blog, NWOBHM, Progressive Rock

HMO Diary: 27th October 2024

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I finally got my hands on the new Blood Incantation album Absolute Elsewhere yesterday. I had ordered the deluxe box set and the supplier I used kept putting the shipping date back so had to cancel and get one on eBay before they all vanished.

First few listens and it’s a pretty stupendous mix of Morbid Angel style death and spacey, melodic prog. And the production is wonderfully warm and natural. It’s also got the Luminescent Bridge EP, a documentary, the soundtrack to the documentary and a cool book too. Could be an album of the year contender although it would be up against another recent purchase: Doedsmaghird’s Omniverse Consciousness. An offshoot of avant black metallers Dødheimsgard, this is like a grimmer companion piece to that band’s excellent 2023 album Black Medium Current. But also quite similar too, so if you loved that album then you need this.

Ermaghird!

While I’m on the topic of album of the year contenders I have to mention Deep Purple’s =1 which continues the band’s remarkably creative and fresh late stage. It’s a bit overlong but emotionally it’s been the standout of the year and kicked off a huge Deep Purple binge and a reappraisal of some of their later albums that I’d not given enough time to. Now What?! in particular has become a new favourite, up there with the band’s very best work.

-1 for the artwork though

And I can’t sign off without saluting ex-Iron Maiden vocalist Paul Di’Anno who has passed away aged 66. I never followed his career post-Maiden to be honest, but his work on those indispensable first two albums is more than enough to put him in the HMO Hall Of Fame.

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

Deep Purple – Mandrake Root (Song Review)

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“It’s some thunder in my brain”

Deep Purple’s 1968 debut Shades Of Deep Purple has only a hint of the explosive contribution that Purple would make to metal’s birth a couple of years later but it can be heard clearly and excitingly on the album’s Side-B opener Mandrake Root. It’s a great, funky rocker that makes sterling use of the E7#9 “Hendrix” chord and some raunchy crooning from the band’s normally mild-mannered original singer Rod Evans. But it’s when the band launch into a short bass-propelled instrumental freak out that sparks start to fly. In their live sets the band would use this track to launch into huge jamming extravaganzas. Here, it’s kept fairly brief but it still allows the band to tap into the sonic danger that they would become known for. Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, a tentative presence on the rest of the album, blasts out some violent, noisy tremolo abuse that is the record’s strongest shade of the Deep Purple we all know and love.

Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Song Reviews

Alice Cooper – School’s Out (Song Review)

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“We can’t even think of a word that rhymes”

I adore Alice Cooper’s School’s Out album and listen to it a lot. But the majority of the time I skip its opening title track. It’s such an overplayed song that you can end up taking it for granted and I like to keep it fresh so that, when I do listen to it, I hear it for the timeless rock ‘n’ roll classic it is. It’s such a great idea, perfectly executed. The genius main riff is like a clarion call to party, Dennis Dunaway excels with his bouncy basslines, and Alice’s threatening voice is the perfect vehicle for the witty and anarchic lyrics. The band set out to capture the joy and energy of that last day of school and with School’s Out they get a snotty, rebellious and jubilant A+.

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.

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

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.