Tag Archives: metal

108. eat the rich

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“In which Motorhead make it clear, it must be done, the rich must be eaten. It’s the only way we’re ever going to set all the children free. And Eat The Rich (the movie) in all its punk, sloppy, inconsistent atonal elegance is a much overlooked masterpiece. How could it not be, with Lemmy on board as the communist insurgent’s right hand man? But he’s no communist. Nor anarchist, leftist, activist of any kind. He’s a hard rock bassist, which is its own justification, it seems. Which is pretty much everything I could ever say about the monster that is-was-shall-always-be Motorhead. You don’t explain it, you just get it (or not). Maybe not the kind of stuff I listen to a lot in my day to day life … but every now and then, f***ing essential.” (Philip Random) 

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317. requiem

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“I still remember the first time I heard Requiem, track one side one of Killing Joke‘s self-titled debut album.  It was 1981 sometime, a friend’s place. I walked in and he had it cranked LOUD. Like nothing I’d ever heard before. Intense, violent even, yet not in a particular hurry. Like a genuinely dangerous metal band had embodied the vehemence of punk. Or whatever. The best music is always beyond words. Call it the future, I guess, lobbing us a wake up call. I remember it was stormy that day, great black clouds forcing the horizon.” (Philip Random)

KillingJoke-1980-gatefold

793. si senor, the hairy grill

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“Yello being one of those outfits that defy categorization. True, their greatest renown has come from their dance floor stuff, but dig into any of their albums and you’ll find nothing if not variety. In the case of Si Senor The Hairy Grill (no idea what any of that means), it’s techno beats and textures crashing into full-on metal wailing. And it f***ing works.” (Philip Random)

811. a light in the black

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“Rising was Rainbow‘s second album, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the cover that grabbed me: God’s (or perhaps Lucifer’s) own hand thrusting from the waves of a boiling storm, grabbing a rainbow straight out of the sky. And the music’s mostly up to it (even if, like me, you were never that much of a metal fan), particularly something like A Light in the Black that storms so fiercely for your heart and soul, you tend to forget your biases. All hail the dark and mysterious power of Ritchie Blackmore‘s guitar, and the rest of the band for that matter.” (Philip Random)

Rainbow-1976

836. wardance

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Killing Joke were mixing metal with repetitive beats with their own unique apocalyptic take on life-the-universe-everything long before it was a thing, and to solid, intense effect as Wardance makes abundantly clear. “It’s a 1980 track but I didn’t hear it until 1982, with the Falklands War in full weird roar far, far away. An apparently civilized nation going enthusiastically to war for a more or less random chunk of rock in the remote South Atlantic. It had to be a joke, definitely a joke. And it would kill almost a thousand people before it was done.” (Philip Random)