Category Archives: Heavy Metal

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.

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

Blasphemy – Fallen Angel Of Doom…. (Album Review)

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Blasphemy – Fallen Angel Of Doom…. (Wild Rags – 1990)

Fallen Angel Of Doom…. is the seminal 1990 debut album from a notorious band whose beer you most definitely do not want to spill: Canada’s Blasphemy. In addition to their much-imitated image and imagery, these graveyard-bothering powerlifters mixed the guttural brutality of death metal and grindcore with the satanic primitivism of old Sodom and Bathory and shrouded it in a sepulchral, occult atmosphere to create a distinctive brand of black metal so bestial and ritualistic it spawned a micro-genre of its own. And even after decades of all sorts of black metal innovation and antics Fallen Angel Of Doom…. still sounds like the evil, intimidating real deal.

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.

Genre, Heavy Metal, Song Reviews, Thrash Metal

GWAR – Maggots (Song Review)

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“How to describe such vileness on the page?”

I’m all for humour and wit in music but actual comedy bands or records have limited appeal for me. They might make me chuckle but I’m not going to need many repeat listens. Infamous intergalactic metallers GWAR are a rare instance where a band ventures well into the “comedy” zone while still coming up with enough good music and songs to make me want more. Here’s Maggots from their breakthrough 1990 album Scumdogs Of The Universe. Of course, GWAR can’t resist a joke about boogers but that’s the only bit of Maggots that bugs me. It’s a snotty, shlock-horror thrasher with great riffs, Oderus Urungus’ charismatic gurgle and an extremely catchy chorus where a buzzing fly provides a surprisingly inventive and infectious hook.

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.

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

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.