Archive for the ‘1983’ Category
Warlord – Deliver Us re-released
Warlord’s famed 1983 album Deliver Us has been re-released digitally via iTunes and Amazon a few weeks ago. According to Bill Tsamis and Mark Zonder, this version is how they heard it in the mixing room. It’s only $6.93 on iTunes!
Later this week, a reissue of the Lost and Lonely Days/Aliens EP will be ready for purchase. This will include a “special surprise” as official Warlord management puts it.
Both releases will be coming out on vinyl and CD soon, too.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Warlord is playing Keep It True 2013 and doing 2 shows in Greece. There are talks of a USA show as well. I hope that happens, I will be there!
Satan – Court In The Act
I’m not quite sure how I ended up hearing this album. It was either through Kelz or Daniel. It doesn’t 
matter, I owe one of them a great debt of gratitude for this one. Satan were a NWOBHM outfit featuring Brian Ross on vocals (for this LP) who also spent time with Blitzkrieg. Steve Ramsey ended up in Blind Fury, Pariah (UK) and Skyclad.
I don’t know what more to say about this album other than it absolutely rules and is definitely one of the best albums from that genre. It’s one that I have been listening to since about 1986 and still can never grow tired of it. Ross’ smooth vocal delivery and all of the backing music work perfectly together. I’ve recommended this album to many people and those who have heard it always seem to fall in love with it. If you’re into the the NWOBHM sound and like stuff like Blitzkrieg, Persian Risk and Tokyo Blade, you need to hear this album. You shall not be disappointed, trust me. Would I ever steer you wrong? No. Never.
It was a huge disappointment when I bought their follow-up albums Suspended Sentence and Into the Future. The replacement singer was just awful and the music took a turn for the worse as well.
Enjoy!
Quiet Riot – Metal Health (1983)
Let’s just be straight here, I love this album. I have since it was released. 1983. I was 13. It was a tough year for me…I 
guess 83-85 were a little difficult. Not necessarily because of going through the typical teenage bullshit, but there were other things going on that really made those some tough years. But hey, I got through it. I spent a lot of days and nights listening to this album. I used to have this little one speaker GE boombox that I would put under my pillow at night to keep listening to music as I went to sleep and so my parents wouldn’t hear it. Not that they had a problem with QR, they just had a problem with my obsession with music. haha It was a thin cassette player so I only needed to remove my bottom pillow to make it fit and not kink my neck. Usually sometime in the middle of the night the player ended up on the floor and the second pillow was back in its proper place.
I picked this up right after hearing Metal Health on the radio. “huhuhuhuhuh, the song says bang your head.” It was catchy. I never cared for Cum On Feel The Noize. It was goofy…still is. I was never a Slade fan, but I don’t dislike them, just never really got exposed to them beyond the 2 songs that QR did, which are goofy. Beyond the goofiness of COFTN, this album is pretty great. Especially songs like Breathless, Run for Cover, Don’t Wanna Let You Go…the whole damned thing. When I pop in the CD I never skip any tracks, not even COFTN, it’s just part of the flow of the record.
In 1999 I got to see them with this lineup. They did an autograph signing earlier in the day at Mars Music and of course I went. They were all in good spirits except for Frankie Banali who seemed to have his ass on his shoulders a bit that day. I brought a few things to get signed like some odd QR EPs, a few CD covers and a few WASP CD covers. Apparently Frankie didn’t have one of the WASP CDs that I brought and asked if he could have mine. I told him no and he got a little peeved about it. “Well I’m not signing anything else.” “Fine, dude, no biggie,” and I finished out my time with the rest of the band who were gracious. Cavazo gave a head nod towards Frankie and just shook his head at him in disapproval. They had about 200 people show up to meet them which I thought was a decent showing for a concert that was getting no promotion and was at a shitty venue.
I came home after the signing to chill out for a while before the show and realized that I had 2 of the WASP CD/EPs so I brought it to the show. We got to the Riverview Theater and I swear it looked closed. This place was trying to get revitalized and they were bringing some decent bands there but it never seemed to take off for them. For this show only about about 40 people showed up…FORTY PEOPLE. I felt really bad for them. They came out and played like there were 20,000 people there. Kevin never once commented on the size of the crowd. They were awesome. After watching Cavazo play I gained a lot more respect for him as a guitarist. That guy is really friggin’ good.
After the show the band came back out to hang out with everybody. I was talking with Rudy Sarzo about his days with Whitesnake and such Frankie came up to me and said, “Hey, come here a second.” “Sorry I was such a dick earlier. I was having a bad day.” I told him it was no big deal and pulled out the spare copy of the WASP EP that I had and handed it to him. He was shocked and gave me a big sweaty hug. haha. “Until today I didn’t even know that this EP existed.” I ended up talking with him quite a bit for the time they hung out. I told him that his first 2 albums with QR were big influences on me when I was learning how to play drums. All of them were nice and Kevin seeked out every person in the room and thanked them personally for coming out. That wasn’t the asshole Kevin Dubrow that I had read about in the ‘zines, this guy was actually nice.
It was a fun day and night and I finally got to meet a band that I had loved for 16 years. The news of Kevin’s death in 2007 really brought me down. I had read just prior to that that he had gotten himself clean and sober. It was too bad that those demons continued to haunt him and that he wasn’t able to continue down that path to recovery.
RIP Kevin.
These winter tears I’ll cry for you…
So back in 1983 (or 84?) Kelz called me and told me of some tape he picked up at the Record Bar at Tower Mall by a band called Warlord. The album was called Deliver Us. It had a colorful little cover and was on Metal Blade Records, which we were discovering at the time seemed to have the greatest bands ever. He just kept going on and on about how great it was. So finally on a Sunday during church or sunday school, he slipped it to me for listening.
wow.
WOW.
This was one of those life changers. Seriously. The voice. The guitar work. This beast on the drums. Obviously this was pre-Internet so we had no way of knowing anything about these guys.
Now I’ve mentioned plenty of times before how some of us had parents who thought that metal was evil and was going to make us kids want to sacrifice goats and paints walls with the blood and such…ok, well there was that one time, but I digress. But this album wasn’t really one of those. Sure it has a song called Lucifer’s Hammer which is about nuclear war. And sure there’s a song called Black Mass which talks about the events of a black mass, but not in a way that made us want to become Satan worshippers. Such silliness. Unfortunately our parents were more brainwashed by this stuff than we were. I guess they meant well. Whatever. My mom found Kelz’ tape that I had hidden under my mattress and threw it away. So ultimately I had to buy him another one. I bought one for me too and just learned how to hide things better. It was tough being a metal kid in my house sometimes.
So in 1984 Warlord releases “…And the Cannons of Destruction Have Begun”. It was a bit of a let down as they had a new singer and they rerecorded most of Deliver Us. The new singer just didn’t have the feel as the original guy. The upside was that there were a few new tracks with the new singer and he sounded GREAT on those. Soliloquy, Lost and Lonely Days and Aliens were all fine songs, albeit played a little sloppily.
In 1986 when I met Big Bill, I turned him onto Warlord and he flipped out over them much like we did. He ultimately ordered the video that went with the …”Cannons” LP. We watched thiat thing practically every week. When he got the video and other merch that he ordered from them, there was a handwritten note that said “Call me if there are any problems…Thanks…Mark.” and had a phone number attached to it. So one day when we were hanging out, Bill called and it ended up being the number to Mark Zonder’s house in LA. We freaked out. I got to talk to the guy a few times and he was always super cool. He told us of the final split of Warlord and how he was making some extra cash doing studio work and touring with the dance band Animotion. I remember specifically one of the phone calls that we made to him. He was in his home studio and the guys from Fates Warning were over there. Granted this is before Mark joined the band but apparently he was already good friends with those guys. Unfortunately I didn’t get to talk to the FW guys but I could hear them in the background talking and playing a little bit of music. Trippy stuff.
Warlord had a penchant for writing good ballad style songs, sad songs…Winter Tears, Soliloquy, Ms. Victoria, Lost and Loney Days. Even their upbeat songs always seems to have a tinge of sadness to them. Maybe it was in the chords that Bill Tsamis used when he was writing, maybe in the vocal delivery…but it was there.
I really don’t know how to say it in any other way than “I LOVE WARLORD”. For a band that really only had on true studio album, it had such a major impact on me. OK, sure they did a “new album” a while back with Mr. Cans from Hammerfall on vocals, but it just wasn’t quite “Warlord-ish” enough for me. That’s not to say that’s it not a good album, because it is, but it’s not…ugh…I don’t know how to say it. I think you understand.
Winter Tear’s lyrics:
The morning woke, the day was breakin’ . . . she left me far behind
She was gone, I couldn’t take it . . . no more tears to cry.
We gathered ’round her place of resting, for the last goodbye
She lay in white like a dream unending, the saddened clouds they cried . . .
Tears for all the joy we had
Tears for all the pain
All the years I have to live
These Winter Tears, I’ll cry for you until we meet again
You gave me life, you gave me lovin’
Showed me what love could bring
And every night when I think about you
I begin to sing . . .
Tears for all the joy we had
Tears for all the pain
All the years I have to live
These Winter Tears, I’ll cry for you until we meet again
Tears for all the joy we had
Tears for all the pain
These Winter Tears I have inside
Will always cry your name.
The years I have to live . . .
These Winter Tears, I’ll cry for you until we meet again
So come now, children of the beast, be strong and…
Shout at the devil!!!
My first recollection of hearing Crue was probably on the radio (K-94 or FM-99) when they first played Looks That Kill. Maybe it was on Metal Shop? Not really sure. But I do specifically remember when I first heard the album in its entirety. It was late fall of 1983 and I was on a camping trip with the Scouts. Hunter March, one of the older guys in the troop, said, “Hey Sean, you like metal, check this out.” So I popped the Shout at the Devil tape in my Walkman and freaked out. The opening track sort of wigged me out. It was pretty evil for the time. Then they started singing about the devil and things seemed right in the world again. hahaha. I listened to the tape all that night and was hooked. This band had quite a different sound. A good sound.
Now, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to my older blogs, you know that my mom didn’t approve of the metal in general. She got swooped in by some other parents at my church that it was of the devil. You know, the whole KISS = knights in satan’s service type crap. We had to be subjected to some anti-heavy metal seminars from guys like Albert Long who would stand on stage in front of us showing metal videos, album covers and reading lyrics trying to convince us that rock and roll was going to send us to hell. Little did he know that he was opening us up to a whole new world of bands! Thanks Albert!
One weekend we took a church trip to somewhere in North Carolina to see one of his seminars. While there we visited some mall and I bought 2 7″ records…Huey Lewis’ Finally Found a Home (b/w Walking on a Thin Line) and Crue’s Looks That Kill (b/w Piece of Your Action). Funnily enough I am pretty sure Mr. Long was pounding on the Crue during his seminar.
That stuff was pretty jank, ya know, those seminars. Hearing him say that Angus Young was possessed by the devil was absolutely hilarious. One of my favorites was when he showed the video for Twisted Sister’s You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll. Satanic? Really? Dude. C’mon. Anyway, I wish I still had that Crue 45.
I really love this album except for Helter Skelter. I’m not a Beatles fan in the least and don’t really care to hear covers of their songs (exception being Sacred Rite’s Eleanor Rigby). Danger, Ten Seconds To Love and Too Young To Fall In Love are my faves.
There is a pretty funny and somewhat embarassing story attached to Looks That Kill. I went over to Kelz’ house as his band was jamming. They ripped into Looks That Kill and I grabbed the mic and started singing it (poorly, I’m sure). Kelz’ mom busts in the jam room and asks what song that was and if we knew the lyrics. Like a dumbass, I spoke up. D’oh. It’s not like it’s a bad song, but the fact that it was Crue sent her over the edge (again). She was pretty much the mastermind of the “metal is evil” campaign.
I guess they all meant well but at the time it sucked for us. Having to hide tapes and trade them secretly really sucked.
Anyways, Crue ruled on this album…not so much afterwards.
The Metal Files 
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