Articles with the Tag Metal Monday

Metal Monday: M.O.D., Manowar, Mucky Pup Oh My!

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Quite a few good metal bands are filed under “M”: Metallica of course, as well as fellow thrash metal giants Megadeth, M.O.D. (Billy Milano’s jokey follow-up to S.O.D.), Manowar (power metal for fantasy readers), My Dying Bride, Motorhead, Morbid Angel, Mercyful Fate and Mucky Pup. Yes, Mucky Pup, the band which shot to fame through a Bloom County song writing contest Burke Breathed ran for Bill the Cat’s then band (don’t ask). This was the result:



Bonus appearance by Adam Curry. Mucky Pup was actually the first hardcore band i’d ever heard, through my brother, who had taped their 1989 album A Boy in a Man’s World. Still can recite most of the lyrics by heart, though the tape was lost years ago and I’ve only recently found a copy of the record again. Fun band, fun music. Moving away from Mucky Pup’s happy hardcore, My Dying Bride with its synth laden, slow, slow doom metal could not be more different. Again introduced to this by my brother, I like them as much as I like Mucky Pup, evne if their musical styles are diametrically opposed:



This goes on for over twelve minutes in the album version… From their 1995 album The Angel and the Demon, this is “The Cry of Mankind”. Love to play this late at night, when it’s dark and all the old fears are waiting at the window… Some people may find it all horribly overblown. A chance of pace now, get ready for some hi-octane NWOBHM courtesy of Motorhead, featured in the best episode of one of the best sitcoms ever, The Young Ones — here’s “Ace of Spades”:



Now some naff metal. Manowar is a band dedicated to fulfilling all the cliches about metal listening, Tolkien reading geeks and their fantasy life, with their songs about awesome adventures and sword fights and heroes returning from the death and motorcycles and stuff, but I can’t help but like them. Especially this, the first song of them I ever heard, during the annual top fifty countdown the sole Dutch heavy metal radio show at the time did. This is “Battle Hymn”



Morbid Angel is the third most selling Death Metal band in the world, which must in part be because they found a winning formula early on and never varied it much. This is one of the better early songs, “Blessed Are the Sick”:



Let’s end with a bit of Megadeth, Beavis and Butthead style:



Eh-heh heh eh heh heh.

Metal Monday: Unleashed in the East

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Judas Priest. Who could guess the leather daddy lead singer was gay?

For the “J” installment of Metal Monday there’s only one band that can be featured, the lawbreakers themselves: Judas Priest. To me Priest is the perfect link between hard rock and heavy metal, sort of halfway inbetween hard rock pioneers like Sabbath and Deep Purple and NWOBHM bands like Maiden, able to match both. Discovered them sometime in the late eighties, when I found a huge stack of their records on a flea market, for a guilder a piece. Not quite in pristine quality when I got them, played them so much over the years the grooves have worn out — long live MP3s.

Now the least interesting thing about Priest is that their lead singer, Rob Halford, is gay, which he only openly acknowledged in 1998, though it really couldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, considering the outfits he tends to wear. Heavy metal may unironically celebrate the macho leather look, but Halford is a bit over the top even so. Again, it shouldn’t matter and luckily for most fans it didn’t, but it seems still to come as a bit of a surprise to outsiders. Metal has a bit of a reputation as neanderthal music I guess…

The other thing everybody knows about Priest is that they were accused of putting subliminal messages in their songs to get their fans to commit suicide, to which Halford said that would be the dumbest thing a musician could do, kill of their fans and that they’d rather subliminally influence their fans to buy more albums…

Priest’s music has evolved a lot over the years, though the core qualities remain the same. One of their earliest classics is “Diamond and Rust”, a Joan Baez (!) cover from 1974 here in a great recent version:



1980 album British Steal saw this breakthrough hit, complete with naff videoclip:



From 1990 comes Painkiller, which may be one of the few songs in which I prefer the studio version. The quick pounding drums come through much better that way. Especially with the sound turned up to eleven on headphones. Still haven’t lost the buzz…



And of course, no metal band should be without their serial killer shoutout — The Ripper:



Metal Monday — on Sunday!

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Because of a post I’m doing tomorrow remembering the bombardment of Middelburg then seventy years ago, I thought I’d do MEtal Monday today… We’re at “I”, so let’s have an Iron Maiden classic first, eh?



In Extremo is a band I discovered one night in 2006 or 2007 when I was idly zapping past some German channels and found a live registration from Wacken 2006. I don’t know what kept me, but it might have been the extremely loud bagpipes. It was brilliant though; turns out In Extremo is a folk metal band who take their inspiration from all sorts of traditional songs and take them up to eleven, as the selection below will show.

Spielmannsfluch:



Villeman Og Magnhild:



Vollmond:



Not everybody’s cup of tea perhaps, but I love the combination of traditional instruments and songs with metal.

Metal Monday: Indian!

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Heavy metal is immensily popular in large parts of the world outisde Europe and North America; surprisingly so for a genre of music often seen as only belonging to white suburban scum. Yet bands like Maiden regularly sell out giantic stadiums all over South America, as well as all over India, as Rajan Datar discovered for BBC Radio Four:

With the collapse of The Iron Curtain in the 1980s, a new frontier was open for Western Music acts to exploit. For years, fans in Eastern Europe had been starved of live performances by Western bands and singers due to the difficulties involved in trying to perform in countries cut off by ideology and politics. So where is the new frontier now? Perhaps bands should look east? With the rise of India and China as economic powerhouses, complete with growing middle classes, are these now the new territories for bands and artists to target as they seek new audiences and revenue streams?

Presenter Rajan Datar follows legendary British band Iron Maiden as they head to Bangalore for a sold out festival appearance. With exclusive access Rajan hangs out backstage with singer Bruce Dickinson, who not only fronts the band, but is also the pilot of the specially-converted plane which they use to travel the world whilst on tour. He speaks to the promoters who are trying to make India the new destination of choice for Western music artists and hears from fans who have travelled for days from all parts of the sub continent to be at the concert. He also discovers, with surprising results, which musical genres sell in India and which don’t.

The actual programme is much less obsessed with filthy lucre than the description makes it sound; the best part is when it’s once again confirmed that Bruce Dickinson is a sweetie, as he calls out to the Indian fan the programme had been following. Worth checking out.

Meanwhile, over in Germany, it’s Power Metal that used to be king, with Helloween its masters. Naff as only a German band trying to make serious music can be, but I still have a not too secret linking for them. This is “I Want Out”:



I already linked to another “classic” song of theirs back in October 2007, but here are two more. First, “Dr. Stein” in a so new it’s still wet 2010 version:



Then, “Keeper of the Seven Keys”, the obligatory pseudo-fantasy story each metal band had to do in the eighties. Includes lyrics for optimal enjoyment:



Metal Monday: the pride of Zeeland

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The nineth Metal Monday sees us reach the “G” and what better band to showcase that Zeeland’s pride, Gorefest? It was actually my younger brother who discovered them first. He was then a much more intense metalhead than I was, but since then has migrated through playing LARP and D’nD into a Dutch Neil the hippie, without changing much both in his convictions and look… Whereas I mostly dabbled in bands like Iron Maiden and Anthrax, he went for the full death/black metal experience and hence found out about Gorefest early, just before their first cd came out in 1991. That cd, Mindloss for me is still one of the classic death metal albums, one that every metalhead should have in their collection; their later work is less essential.

Confessions of a Serial Killer:



Reality – When You Die:



Decomposed:



Tangled in Gore (from the demo)