“Sweet and timely caress”

No prizes for guessing what Sucking My Love is about. It has been suggested by members of Diamond Head that it’s actually about the music business but I think that’s a rubbish attempt to gloss over the fact that one of the NWOBHM’s prime creative forces wrote a big long song about getting a blowjob.

The centrepiece of Diamond Head’s classic 1980 album Lightning To The Nations (aka The White Album), Sucking My Love is Zeppelin-meets-UFO heavy rock. Brian Tatler’s pentatonic guitar riffs are ingeniously simple, timeless and unforgettable. The track has a wonderful dark atmosphere and, following a cool Maiden-esque quiet section (all harmonics and celestial percussion), builds to a guitar soloing climax akin to UFO’s Love To Love. But the star contribution comes from vocalist Sean Harris, a man with such a tremendously forceful and charismatic voice that he’s even able to imbue the word “tasty” with Percy Plant levels of mythic power.

It’s a magical, evocative track that transports me right to the NWOBHM era every time I listen to it. Although it wasn’t one of the band’s more forward-thinking compositions, Sucking My Love shows that Diamond Head had the rarefied ability, class, and grandeur to compete with metal’s old gods. Tasty.