Welcome to the Feasts Of Metal! Kindly leave sobriety & pop songs at the door because here is where I rustle up some great eats in my gallows themed kitchen with Cannibal Corpse soundtrack. I'll also introduce you to my favourite metal bands, albums, gigs, anything headbangy, since I became a fan in 1981. Crank it up!
Im the grand old age of 41 this year but Candace Kusculain, singer of Walls Of Jericho, can get me drooling like a teenager every time I see or hear her. She is my perfect woman and I want her babies. See what I mean? Her beauty reduces me to writing gibberish on a blog, without a care or damn.
Of course the important bit is the fact she is in an awesome band who write some pretty fine f**king music but sometimes its fun to revert back to our most basic instinct and slobber like a kid on his first date.
"You're Cut Off" the brilliant new animated video from Virginian thrashers Municipal Waste. New album "The Fatal Feast" is out now! A truly kick ass band!
I need to go here. Or better still, I wish a local cafe would create something similar. Not saying it would be easy, far from it, the potatoes would make it harder for me because im not a fan of hash browns in a fry up, but I would certainly do a much better job than the guy in this video. Ive eaten large fried breakfasts in Ireland (not this big obviously but big) and always finished them with room for a bit more so I would be confident in getting my £15 back. Im starving now.
Before it was annoyingly changed to 'Download' (look im old fashioned okay?) this festival was a one day event called 'Monsters Of Rock' and it was as great back then as it is now (but with more long haired guys). I of course went to a few and due to a moody 'press pass' got to meet Guns n' Roses, Bon Jovi, WASP (who were dicks) and Maiden and witness the highs and lows (I was there when two fans were crushed to death in 1988).
If you weren't born in the 1980s its difficult to explain just how big an impact heavy metal made on fans lives. We wore patched denims/leathers, scrawled bands names on school desks and made compilations on music cassettes. Its much the same now (minus the cassettes) but back then it was new and and growing bigger before our very eyes.
I don't have a time machine for the 'Feasts Of Metal' but we do have the next best thing, Youtube! So sit back, grab a few cold ones and enjoy a few vids of early 'Monsters Of Rock'! Mosh \m/
Nuclear Assault in Newport on September 29th, 1989 was another early great gig I was part of. Cant remember who supported them but I do recall it was a very lively and loud concert. Nuclear Assault were touring their brilliant 'Survive' album and at the ass end of eighties were one of the top thrash metallers on the scene, easily on par with Testament and Over Kill. Of course this was the birth of the awesome Thrash era, and I consider myself ONE LUCKY MOTHERF**KER to have been alive and witness it as it happened.
Damn I wish we'd had Smartphones and Youtube back then because I would have captured all my gigs in all their moshy, sweaty glory! I remember one guy climbing the stack of Marshall amps to the right of the stage as Nuclear Assault were halfway their blistering set, and when the crowd encouraged him to slam into the waiting denim clad arms from 20ft up, he did and the audience split in two. It would have been a perfect Youtube moment because it looked as if he'd landed on the deck (but really he'd been caught by a few of us because Metalheads are not dicks).
1. Thrashard
2. Beneath the Wheel
3. Enemy Within
4. Strategy
5. Labeled Uncurable
6. You Say I'm Scum
7. Gun Control
8. Kill the Words
9. Drown You Out
10. The Trade
11. Standing in Line
12. Give a Hoot
13. Worker Bee
14. Abduction
There is no escaping the fact that Poison Idea were big. Not in commercial terms, obviously, but in life, death, music and influence they were truly massive. Formed in Portland, Oregon in 1980 by frontman Jerry A the band seemed to get progessively more dangerous as they went along, almost deliberately pushing a lifestyle to its ultimate limits just to see what would break it. In a game of 'let's see who's the more punk' Jerry A once pointed a loaded gun at Dwarves singer Blag Dahlia and when guitarist Pig Champion died aged 47 this year it was a great loss of talent, but no great suprise.
But while Jerry A frequently breathed fire or sliced his head open onstage with broken glass, he also wrote lyrics that could rival Charles Buckowski in their beautiful ugliness, stark realism and savage honesty. And despite their seeming indolence and over-the-top drink/drug consumption Poison Idea were phenomenal musicians, capable of playing faster and tighter than any of their peers even when they couldn't stand up.
Their fans include Nirvana, Amen, Pearl Jam, Pantera, Machine Head, Turbonegro...and you if you've got any sense.
*This was an article in Kerrang! magazine a few years ago.
And now back to me. I first heard Poison Idea with the 'We Must Burn' and was intantly blown away. Their music is beautiful like a hot woman wearing nothing but hot pants and heels punching you in the face. Such a shame that a lot of our younger Metalheads have never even heard of this band, I think its criminal. Way way waaaay underrated. The albums 'Feel The Darkness' and 'Blank Blackout Vacant' are the most talked about but I love all their stuff. Its how (I believe) the Sex Pistols should have been.Punk might have been born in Britain, but the Americans did some fine tweakings to the genre and Poison Idea were at the front.
It was thanks to Metallica that I got into The Misfits and later Samhain. The 'Tallica guys were always wearing Misfits tee shirts and covering their songs and thus it was inevitable I (and many other metalheads no doubt) would check the horror punk band out. No easy task either because like ive mentioned before, YOU try tracking down an album by a relatively unknown American punk band in a small town in Wales in the 1980s, pre internet and MTV. Luckily Swansea had a cool music shop called Musiquarium which specialised in rare vinyl imports, and the first Samhain record I bought was 1986s November Coming Fire, released on Glenn Danzig's Plan 9 record label. You can listen to it in its entirety below! Make sure you do too because its brilliant, dripping with moody melodies and almost creepy bass.
Track listing ~
1.Diabolos '88
2.In My Grip
3.Mother of Mercy
4.Birthright
5.To Walk The Night
6.Let The Day Begin
7.Halloween II
8.November's Fire
9.Kiss Of Steel
10.Unbridled
11.Human Pony Girl
