Category Archives: Heavy Metal

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

HMO Digest – 1st May 2024

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Demon Driver

The big news at HMO Mission Control recently is that, at the tender age of 48, I got my first car! At the moment I’m too busy trying to figure out what gear I’m in to want the added distraction of music but I can’t wait to get some Yngwie on.

Bon (and on and on) Jovi

Last weekend I binge-watched Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story. It was a bit like their career: really good fun in the early stages but then increasingly dull as it wore on. It doesn’t help that, with the possible exception of Richie Sambora, nobody in the band seems particularly compelling. Top marks for being so thorough and candid though.

HMO Charts

Darkthrone move up 666 places on the strength of their excellent new album It Beckons Us All…

Coffin Storm are a new entry with their debut album Arcana Rising. Quality doom-laden cult metal.

Mötley Crüe go down, down (and hopefully will just go away) following their wretched new song Dogs Of War.

The only way is up for Bulletboys, as they grant fans the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in classic tracks such as Smooth Up In Ya. Buy, buy, buy!

HMO Salutes

HMO salutes Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues fame who has recently died aged 82 and ex-Scorpions drummer James Kottak who died, aged 61, back in January. I’ve always been a big fan of The Allman Brothers Band so the passing of guitarist/singer Dickey Betts, at the age of 80, was very sad news. But the worst news of all was the death of Magnum founder, the wonderful Tony Clarkin, whose death at the age of 77 basically signals the end of music as we know it.

Recent Purchases

Judas Priest’s Invincible Shield and Saxon’s Hell, Fire And Damnation haven’t particularly blew me away but are both enjoyable late-career outings. Bruce Dickinson’s more creative and revelatory The Mandrake Project fares better. I also picked up a lovely vinyl reissue of Reverend Bizarre’s II: Crush The Insects and a wonderfully compiled NWOBHM set All Systems Go: The Neat Singles Vol One.

You Won’t Get Out Of Here Alive: Waysted Volume One (1983-1986) compiles three albums and two EPS from Waysted’s initial run and UFO’s Lights Out is now more essential than ever, with the addition of a brilliant live show. I haven’t quite got to grips with the (two!) new Ihsahn CDs and Midnight’s Hellish Expectations yet but initial impressions are positive. And the previously mentioned Darkthrone and Coffin Storm albums are two of the year’s best so far.

Upcoming Releases

Anno Domini 1989-1995, the new Tony ‘The Cat’ Martin era Black Sabbath box set is the one I’m looking forward to the most but it looks like it’s been pushed back a bit so that should free up some cash to buy the new John Entwistle The Ox box set and the reissue of Heavy Load’s Metal Conquest instead.

That’s all for this digest. Until next time… mind the roads!

Album Reviews, Doom Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal

Anathema – Alternative 4 (Album Review)

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Anathema – Alternative 4 (Peaceville Records – 1998)

Anathema’s Alternative 4 hits a sweet spot between the doom-laden metal of their early days and the uplifting self-help rock of their final ones. Frontman Vincent Cavanagh finds his voice amidst beautiful layers of instruments but the album also has an edgy, urban darkness. It’s like vicariously experiencing the emotions of someone’s most profoundly drunken bender: from rip-roaringly jubilant to extremely fighty to having a big cry. Alternative 4 is a very British masterpiece of maudlin, metropolitan metal: one of the most unique and intoxicating albums I’ve ever heard.

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

Virgin Steele – The Burning Of Rome (Cry For Pompeii) (Song Review)

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“Where the winds of war are blowing freely”

In a tale as old as time, mismanagement and a shite label almost ensured that The Burning Of Rome (Cry For Pompeii) and its parent album, 1988’s Age Of Consent, were lost to history. But, by the Gods and Godesses, Virgin Steele were able to re-release the album in 1997, by which point they were hitting their stride as purveyors of peerless barbaric-romantic metal and their fans could finally rejoice in this mighty masterpiece. Bombastic and grandiose, it’s a totemic moment in the band’s career and frontman David DeFeis delivers the tale of a fallen warrior with heroic levels of nobility and passion. The Burning Of Rome (Cry For Pompeii) is easily one of the best metal songs of all time. I don’t just get goosebumps listening to it, I get them even just thinking about it.

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

Iron Maiden – Piece Of Mind (Album Review)

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Iron Maiden – Piece Of Mind (1983 – EMI, 2014 Reissue)

When you’re in a “back to basics” metal mood, like I am today, classic Maiden is just a no-brainer. For the first six songs, 1983’s Piece Of Mind is basically metal perfection with rousing boy’s-own stuff like Where Eagles Dare and The Trooper, the soaring Flight Of Icarus and more progressive fare like Still Life and Revelations which lend the album a dark, gothic aspect. Maiden were hitting the tour/record cycle hard in the 80s so, inevitably, the quality starts to get inconsistent towards the end but it would take more than a slightly silly song about cavemen to take down a beast like this.

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

Possessed – Seven Churches (Album Review)

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Possessed – Seven Churches (1985 Combat Records)

It came out of the Bay Area thrash scene but Possessed’s 1985 debut Seven Churches is now renowned for getting the death metal ball rolling. And quite right too: Jeff Becerra’s voice is demonic and cavernous; the riffing is brutal and relentless; and it closes with a song called… Death Metal! But it’s really more than that. As with other early efforts from the likes of Sodom, Kreator, Slayer and Celtic Frost there’s a primordial stew of dark extremity at work here that doesn’t fit neatly into any genre but has elements that can be extracted into loads of them. It’s not just the death metal guys that have worshipped at the altar of Seven Churches. And that’s why it still holds up today and always hits the spot, whatever kind of evil metal mood I might be in.

My 2008 Century Media reissue. Too black to take a good photo of, but it does fold out into an inverted cross!
Album Reviews, Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal

Dio – Holy Diver [Joe Barresi Remix] (Album Review)

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Dio – Holy Diver: Super Deluxe Edition (Warner Records 2022)

I can’t say that Joe Barresi’s 2022 remix of Dio’s Holy Diver is a revelation exactly but it’s a tasteful update. It loses a bit of ambience but adds punch and it’s great to hear a fresh new version of an album I’ve listened to a gazillion times. And because the remix lets us hear beyond the original’s fade-outs we get to hear more of Vivian Campbell’s inspired guitar playing. Holy Diver was always one of my favourite-sounding metal albums though, so when I find myself thinking “this sounds fucking great” I also remember… it always did.

Black Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, Song Reviews

Bathory – One Rode To Asa Bay (Song Review)

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“The God of all almightiness had arrived from a foreign land”

I often worry I use the word “epic” too much in my reviews but there is no song more deserving of the term than Bathory’s majestic One Rode To Asa Bay. The Swedish band’s seminal 1990 album Hammerheart explores Viking life, belief and mythology but its climatic track One Rode To Asa Bay depicts the arrival of a Christian missionary intent on erasing that way of life. The use of choral keyboards and relentless, driving repetition gives the song a hypnotic grandiosity and it’s impossible not to get swept up in Quorthon’s raw, impassioned storytelling. This is the extreme metal Stargazer. Epic.

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

Blue Murder – Nothin’ But Trouble (Album Review)

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Blue Murder – Nothin But Trouble (Geffen Records 1993)

Blue Murder were starting to sounding hopelessly outdated on their second album, 1993’s Nothin’ But Trouble. But in 1993 my taste in music was hopelessly outdated so I gobbled it right up. Compared to their bold debut album, Nothin’ But Trouble is a more calculated, commercial effort and there’s some rote wimphem here like Love Child and Save My Love. But I didn’t mind… back then I would have listened to Mr. Blobby if John Sykes was his guitarist. And there are some blazing rockers here like We All Fall Down and Cry For Love that took me right back to the glory days of Whitesnake’s 1987 and Thin Lizzy’s Thunder And Lightning.

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

Gary Moore – Run For Cover (Album Review)

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Gary Moore – Run For Cover (10/Virgin 1985)

Gary Moore had a good voice but never quite at the same level as his fiery guitar playing so on 1985’s Run For Cover he enlists two legendary, but troubled, vocalists to help out. “Voice Of Rock” Glenn Hughes lends his powerful, soulful singing to four songs, most notably the classy Reach For The Sky which could have fit right in on his superb 1982 album Hughes/Thrall. And then Moore’s old Lizzy pal Phil Lynott basically steals the show with his larger-than-life presence: duetting on bullet-strewn hit Out In The Fields and contributing his own thumpingly macho, but characteristically vulnerable, Military Man. I enjoy the whole album but it’s these guest appearances that make Run For Cover a favourite.

My copy is from this box set. Good music, crappy packaging!
Black Metal, Death Metal, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, HMO Blog, NWOBHM

HO HO HMO Digest – 25th December 2023

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It’s a time for giving, a time for getting, a time for forgiving and time for another HMO Digest.

Blog Shenanigans

Since the last digest, I’ve been having fun with the new “Album Of The Day” posts. It’s giving me the opportunity to post photos from my collection and talk about albums again but without having to “review” the albums. I used to do posts like these on Facebook and I don’t see why they should have all the fun. Especially when they tried to ban me for posting a picture of boobs (the cover of Akercocke’s The Goat Of Mendes album). I photoshopped a goat over the nipples but that wasn’t enough apparently!

Looking forward to 2024…I’ve been thinking that a lot of my gaps in posting are because I often listen to a lot of one band, for example Black Sabbath, and I’ll post about them and then feel like I can’t post about them again for ages. So from now on, I’m just going to post about whatever I like, whenever I like. So if that means 12 posts in a row about Virgin Steele then you’ll just have to put up with it.

Best Album Of 2023

I called it pretty early in my July post about their song Tankespinnerens Smerte. Dødheimsgard’s Black Medium Current was my top album of 2023. Excellent, eclectic and moving black metal.

The runner up was Primordial with How It Ends which finds the Irish band, ten albums in, at their soaring, defiant best.

New Stuff

Usually at the end of year I end up having a blow out on some ridiculous deluxe box set but that hasn’t happened this year, despite the best efforts of Camel and Mott The Hoople to tempt me. I did have a rare wander round the music shops in both Edinburgh and Glasgow and picked up some goodies though!

Incantation – Onward To Golgotha (Relapse Records 1992)

The last couple of months have been unusually good on the live album front too, with excellent new live releases from Cradle Of Filth with Trouble And Their Double Lives, Mayhem with Daemonic Rites and Tom G. Warrior’s Triumph Of Death with Resurrection Of The Flesh, a live set of classic Hellhammer tunes. UGH!

I also bought the absolutely stunning new revised and expanded edition of Dayal Patterson’s book Black Metal: Evolution Of The Cult. The original version was already (easily) the best book on the subject and essential reading for anyone interested in the genre. But the new edition has an improved layout, additional material and bands added that weren’t included in the original due to length restrictions. I’m going to love getting tore into this over the Xmas holidays.

HMO Salutes

Steve Riley – (died aged 67) drummer in many bands but is most known round these parts for his stint in W.A.S.P.

Charlie Dominici – (died aged 72) the former singer in Dream Theater, having appreared on their under-rated debut album When Dream And Day Unite from 1988.

Torben Ulrich  – (died aged 95) I normally only do these about people that are in my CD collection but Torben (father of Metallica’s Lars Ulrich) won the hearts of all in the metal scene when he uttered the immortal words: “delete that”.

What I Was Listening To While I Wrote This Post

Malokarpatan’s Vertumnus Caesar is another highlight from 2023. Excellent blackened, proggy heavy metal from Slovakia that takes you back to the era of formative black metal influences like Master’s Hammer, Tormentor (Hun) and Mercyful Fate.

Upcoming Stuff

2024 is already shaping up nicely, with the likes of Saxon, Ihsahn, The Obsessed, Ace Frehley, Bruce Dickinson and Judas Priest all having new albums scheduled for release. And there are so many great bands like the BulletBoys working on new albums (BulletBoys!) that I can’t even be bothered listing them. Although I will say that one of them is the BulletBoys.

And that’s about it. Hope you had an amazing 2023 and have an even better 2024. Thanks for reading and remember… FOLLOW THE MASTER.