Category Archives: NWOBHM

Classic Rock, Genre, Heavy Metal, NWOBHM, Progressive Rock

Iron Maiden – Brighter Than A Thousand Suns (Song Review)

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“Cold fusion of fury”

Iron Maiden’s 2006 album A Matter Of Life And Death proved that the British metal veterans were still an act to be reckoned with, delivering some of their most vital and creative material for years. No track illustrated this better than album highlight Brighter Than A Thousand Suns. Making great use of a churningly tense and ominous time signature, it’s one of Maiden’s proggiest and heaviest songs. Frontman Bruce Dickinson goes all Van Der Graaf Generator with dark, coded lyrics that depict the dawn of the nuclear age (and the influence is made crystal clear with a lyrical nod to the VDGG track Whatever Would Robert Have Said?) Musically there’s a Rush-like feel with the band twisting and turning through a range of moody, tricky sections. And Dickinson responds to the song’s dynamic shifts with a vocal performance that builds in intensity in a breathtaking and explosive way. Brighter Than A Thousand Suns is a track that is stylistically uncharacteristic for the band but, in terms of theatrics and excitement, has all the spirit of Maiden at their most classic.

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

Fist – Name, Rank & Serial Number (Song Review)

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“Now tell me the positions of your guns and armoured forces”

The debut single from South Tyneside’s Fist, this darkly amusing track depicts a military interrogation from the point of view of a stymied torturer who, despite his best efforts, can only obtain his captive’s Name, Rank & Serial Number. It’s a fantastically vibrant and catchy track. In particular, Keith Satchfield (who sadly passed away in early 2025) deserves a medal for his infectious, rhythmic vocals and inventive lyrics. Fist’s recording career ended up all too brief but in that short run they released some of the best tracks of the whole NWOBHM era. On Name, Rank & Serial Number, Fist managed the rare feat of being classic and definitive while also being startlingly original.

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

Gillan – No Easy Way (Song Review)

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“You are so lovely, you are so beautiful”

There’s no easy way to shake off sorrow but listening to this classic Gillan tune, from 1980’s thumping Glory Road album, is guaranteed to blow away the blues. Gillan were a monster band and on No Easy Way they are at their boisterous, swaggering best. Guitarist Bernie Tormé runs riot all over this, unleashing a chaotic torrent of guitar to kick things off and then livening up the whole track with all sorts of howling bends and bombs. “Let it all pass by” is a bit of classic Ian Gillan life philosophy and he’s on brilliant rock ‘n’ rolling form here too. The sweet way he sings the quiet middle section is a wonderfully heartwarming bit of emotional connection.

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

Def Leppard – High ‘n’ Dry (Album Review)

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Def Leppard – High ‘n’ Dry (1981 – Vertigo)

With sought-after producer Mutt Lange cracking the whip, Def Leppard transitioned from plucky NWOBHM up-and-comers to genuine big-league challengers with their second album, 1981’s High ‘n’ Dry. The surging Let It Go, the taut Mirror, Mirror (Look Into My Eyes) and the tough ballad Bringin’ On The Heartbreak all pointed towards the band’s subsequent mega-success. But the whole album was full of songs like You Got Me Runnin’ and Lady Strange which inexplicably remain deep cuts despite being in the top-tier of the band’s discography. Although it wouldn’t be the album to catapult the Leps to fame, High ‘n’ Dry is the most consistently and credibly hard-hitting record of their career: lean and mean British metal with gleaming production, anthemic harmony choruses and a slew of killer guitar riffs and heroic soloing from the album’s M.V.P.s Steve Clark and Pete Willis.

Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, HMO Diary, 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.

Black Metal, Classic Rock, Death Metal, Genre, Heavy Metal, HMO Diary, 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.

Black Metal, Classic Rock, Genre, Heavy Metal, HMO Digests, 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, 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.

Black Metal, Death Metal, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, HMO Digests, 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.

Black Metal, Classic Rock, Genre, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, HMO Digests, NWOBHM

HMO Digest – 10th September 2023

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It’s been aeons since the last HMO Digest! It’s time for another catch up on all things HMO.

Blog Recap

I don’t normally post in any sort of theme/series but I’m really enjoying doing my ongoing series of posts about instrumental songs. I’ll definitely be doing more stuff like this in the future. But, as far as instrumentals go, I’ve got plenty more to get through and you can expect some folk, prog and death metal over the next couple of weeks.

HMO Salutes

“Curse… the Gods! Too many people… have died.” Most recently, Bernie Marsden (died aged 72), most famous for his time in Whitesnake and co-writing all-time classic rock tunes like Here I Go Again and Fool For Your Loving.

The period since the last HMO Digest has also seen the passing of: Pete Brown (died aged 82) the poet, musician and co-writer of many extremely classic Cream cuts; Frehley’s Comet bassist John Regan (died aged 71); Mark Adams (died aged 64) – bassist and co-founder of doom pioneers Saint Vitus; Tank’s Algy Ward (died aged 63); and Metal Church drummer Kirk Arrington (died aged 61).


Up And Autumn

A weird September heatwave has just kicked in which is annoying as I was starting to get into a lovely Autumn vibe, listening to one of my go-to albums for this time of the year: Anathema’s Alternative 4. One of the best albums of the whole 90s British gloomy northerner scene, Alternative 4 is right at the sweet spot between the band’s metal beginnings and the emotional rock they’d become known for. And it’s being reissued on vinyl soon so if you don’t already own this classic… now’s the time.

New Stuff

Since it’s been a while since the previous digest, I’m just going to focus on some recent new albums I’ve bought (as opposed to reissues, box sets etc…). The biggest one is the new Virgin Steele album The Passion Of Dionysus. It still has all the idiosyncratic flaws of their other latter-day releases but I just find this band totally fascinating and this is their strongest release since The Black Light Bacchanalia (which, despite my muted review, has become one of my most listened to albums of the past few years). Yow!

There’s also the new Marduk album Memento Mori which is only just out. On first listen it sounds utterly caustic and hellish. These are compliments. There’s also been a “new” Akercocke live album Decades Of Devil Worship (actually an unreleased live recording from 2007) which is a complete blast, the band sound at the top of their game. And I’ve also posted my favourite songs from the new Albert Bouchard and DHG albums.


Upcoming Releases

September is looking pretty exciting in terms of new releases: to kick off there’s the eagerly-awaited return of Primordial with their new album How It Ends; Blood Incantation follow up their 2022 ambient release Timewave Zero with a new half brutal/half ambient EP Luminescent Bridge; Mayhem release a new live album Daemonic Rites; and space rockers Hawkwind celebrate the anniversary of their classic live album Space Ritual in super deluxe style with an 11-disc box set. Do not panic.

Thanks for reading! If you like seeing photos from my collection remember to check out the HMO Facebook page as there’s more of that stuff there. And if there’s any kind of topics you’d like to see me cover on these digest posts then let me know.