CD Review: Loverboy - Rock 'N' Roll Revival


CD Review: Loverboy - Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival
Fontiers Records
All Access Review: B-
Loverboy - Rock 'N' Roll Revival 2012
The critics are going to have a field day with this one –not that Loverboy has ever been a real favorite of theirs. So often in their history the multi-platinum Canadian rockers have been blithely dismissed as “middle of the road,” “lacking substance” … blah, blah, blah. Their legions of fans, of course, have a much different opinion. This time around, their detractors are going to be merciless – quite possibly for all the wrong reasons.
Predictably, they will characterize Rock ‘N’ Revival as a pointless exercise, 75 percent of the record being unnecessary live versions of Loverboy’s greatest hits. After all, what does anyone need of another Loverboy concert album when there’s Live, Loud and Loose (1982-1986) to turn to when only balls-out, karate-kicking, pump-action rock and roll shot full of adrenaline will make everything all right? Evidently, Loverboy felt everyone needed a refresher course on how to kick ass onstage.
An odd album, though, Rock ‘N’ Revival consists of three new original tracks and nine live cuts – a strange juxtaposition of Loverboy again flogging its past glories while offering just a tiny glimpse of where they’re at today. It’s those in-concert recordings that had many scratching their heads. For whatever reason, Loverboy chose to remove all traces of crowd noise, leaving some to wonder whether they were songs the band reworked live in the studio or played out in front of actual people. The answer: they are concert recordings. Some might ask, “What’s the difference?” Well, in the end, nothing really, except that once you hear them, you want some context, some explanation of just what in God’s name it is you’re listening to. Or, to put a finer point on it, there must discernible reasons why Loverboy felt the need to put this out.
Forgive the confusion, because ultimately the Bob Rock-produced Rock ‘N’ Revival sets out to do what its title demands of the record. Heard in their naked form, live versions of beloved tracks like “Turn Me Loose,” with its increasingly gnarled guitars, Mike Reno’s primal screams and delicious slow-burning build-up, are transformed, even if the difference is only slight and they do seem occasionally ponderous. “The Kid is Hot Tonite” grows more potent as an anthem, the unexpectedly wild guitars and soaring synthesizers charged with electricity, as they are on the high-flying anthems “Working for the Weekend” and “Lovin’ Every Minute of It,” both of which have a nastier edge than they ever did before. The same goes for “Lucky Ones,” which is unexpectedly heavy and caught up in snarls of razor-wire guitar riffs and leads, even if the intro seems awkward and a bit out of tune. The excitement fades a little down the stretch, though, with Loverboy playing the more pop-minded “Always on My Mind” and “Queen of the Broken Hearts” almost strictly by the book.
So what about the new stuff? Does any of it contain that same spark of hot-blooded, hormonal drive and hard-working ethos that powered a younger, hungrier Loverboy to the top? Well, one out of three isn’t … great. A stirring reminder of how Loverboy could rally the masses, the title track is a stomping, rousing call-to-arms that takes aim at the current state of the music industry and pulls the trigger, with Mike Reno passionately advocating for a return to rock and roll values and those irresistible Loverboy hooks grabbing you by the shirt. More of a transcendent ballad, the melodic “No Tomorrow” wouldn’t be a fish out of water in modern-day Nashville, and that’s both a blessing and a curse for Loverboy in that it sounds exactly like what’s on the radio these days, which flies directly in the face of their thesis statement for Rock ‘N’ Revival. And although “Heartbreaker” is undeniably catchy, it also feels as lightweight as aluminum, even if there are moments in the choruses when it grows hair on its chest.
Loverboy has the right idea. Rock and roll needs to take a good look in the mirror and remember what made it fun and exciting in the first place. If only Loverboy would heed its own advice, they might just be able to start that Rock ‘N’ Revival they so desperately want to see.

-            Peter Lindblad

News: Deep Purple 'Machine Head' tribute LP gets release date


September 25 is the drop date for ‘Re-Machined’
'Re-Machined' Deep Purple Tribute 2012
In the wake of Jon Lord’s sad passing comes news of a September 25 release date for the much-anticipated Re-Machined – A Tribute to Deep Purple’s Machine Head.
Compiled to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the one of the truly groundbreaking albums in rock history, Re-Machined has taken on special meaning in light of Lord’s death, the virtuoso keyboardist having contributed greatly to the influential sound of Deep Purple.
Among the more interesting tracks on Re-Machined is a version of “Space Truckin’” by Iron Maiden that was actually recorded in 2006. It’s been on the shelf gathering dust ever since.
“Initially we didn’t think we’d be able to contribute anything due to our touring commitments,” explained Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson in a press release related to Re-Machined. “Then we remembered ‘Space Truckin’ which we’d recorded as a single B-side during our A Matter of Life and Death album session, but never used. However now, thanks to Kevin Shirley’s remixing skills, we’re able to include it on Re-Machined.”
Of course, “Smoke on the Water” is represented – two different re-imagined versions being put forth, one by indie-rock favorites Flaming Lips and the other a collaboration between Carlos Santana and Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix. And what Deep Purple tribute album would be complete without participation from Metallica, who rework “When A Blind Man Cries,” a song Deep Purple recorded during the Machine Head sessions but which actually appeared on the B-side to “Never Before.”
Due out on Eagle Records, Re-Machined: A Tribute to Deep Purple’s Machine Head will be included initially as a limited edition Classic Rock “fanpack” on September 3.
Track Listing
1) Smoke On the Water - Carlos Santana & Jacoby Shaddix
2) Highway Star - Chickenfoot
3) Maybe I'm a Leo - Glenn Hughes & Chad Smith
4) Pictures of Home - Black Label Society
5) Never Before - Kings of Chaos (Joe Elliott, Steve Stevens, Duff McKagen, Matt Sorum)
6) Smoke on the Water - The Flaming Lips
7) Lazy - Jimmy Barnes with Joe Bonamassa
8) Space Truckin' - Iron Maiden
9) When a Blind Man Cries - Metallica
10) Highway Star - Glenn Hughes/Steve Vai/Chad Smith

CD Review: Loudness - Eve to Dawn


CD Review: Loudness – Eve to Dawn
FrostByte Media
All Access Review: B+
Loudness - Eve to Dawn 2012
Unlike their English counterparts, Loudness did not have the benefit of riding any “New Wave of Japanese Heavy Metal” to glory overseas. Until high-voltage guitarist Akira Takasaki and drummer Munetaka Higuchi left their old band Lazy and unleashed Loudness in the East – the Far East that is – in 1981, relatively few Japanese music observers gave hard rock and heavy metal a second thought. To them, such noxious noise held little potential for commercial gain. If the scene wasn’t dead, it was at the very least comatose and in dire need of resuscitation.
Into this power vacuum stepped Loudness, not cautiously but rather with all the smoldering, pent-up intensity and commanding authority of a deposed emperor looking to avenge a palace coup. By way of introduction, Loudness’s sizzling debut album, The Birthday Eve, rained down torrents of Takasaki’s sulfuric riffs and molten solos down upon a nation that didn’t know it was thirsting for the hard stuff. Like a shot of grain alcohol, it didn’t go down smoothly, but it did pack quite a wallop. On top of that, Loudness’s first live appearance was a sellout, and each succeeding record brought increasing sales – leading some to think that Loudness, despite the obvious obstacles of language, cultural differences and an ocean of distance, could repeat that success in America.
And they did – to some extent. Thunder in the East, the band’s initial U.S. release, crawled its way onto the Billboard charts and camped out for 19 straight weeks, topping out at No. 74. Loudness then went on the attack with Lightning Strikes, which surged as high as No. 64 before hitting a plateau; by that time, so had Loudness. The American invasion that held so much promise had fizzled. In the aftermath, there was a sense that Loudness could have been bigger worldwide, that for some reason they’d succumbed to commercial pressure and pulled their punches on their U.S. recordings.
Free of such crass concerns today, Loudness holds nothing back on the hot-wired new FrostByte Media LP Eve to Dawn, an album that toggles between furious thrash, melodic power metal and traditional chrome-plated metal – see the Judas Priest-like charge of “Hang Tough” – with wild abandon. It’s not garage rock, but Eve to Dawn, so full of vitality, feels as if it was birthed in one, brought into this world kicking and screaming from the top of its lungs. Far from polished, it would be unduly harsh to call Eve to Dawn sloppy, but it is an untidy recording. Still, warts and all, Eve to Dawn is compelling, zapping “Come Alive Again” with a TASER full of electricity and landing a flurry of devastatingly heavy, teeth-rattling haymakers like the stampeding “Survivor,” the grinding “Pandra” and “The Power of Truth,” an absolute wrecking ball of a song caught in a hurricane of drums. Going for the knockout every time, singer Minoru Niihara – that raw, banshee-like wail of his raising the hair on the back of necks from Tokyo to Tallahassee – goes looking for a fight on the bruising rumble “Gonna Do It My Way” and defiantly scratches out a list of society’s ills on the nasty, hook-happy closer “Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!”
But the man everybody pays to hear is Takasaki, and he is in rare form. A supremely skilled craftsman, Takasaki specializes in the kind of flashy, spectacularly frenzied and diverse shredding heard everywhere on Eve to Dawn, with special consideration given to the dazzling solos in “Keep You Burning,” “Pandra” and the ambitious “Comes the Dawn,” mostly a seven-minute riff orgy with cutting violins and sinister bass lines that bow to Takasaki’s fleet-fingered fretwork. The thunder in the East is louder than ever.   
-            Peter Lindblad

DVD Review: Peter Gabriel - Secret World Live

DVD Review: Peter Gabriel – Secret World Live
Eagle Vision/Eagle Rock Entertainment
All Access Review: B+
Peter Gabriel - Secret World Live 2012
Shaken to the very core of his being by a gut-wrenching divorce, Peter Gabriel tried to figure out what it all meant on 1992’s somewhat glum and dispirited Us, the deeply introspective and long-awaited follow-up to Gabriel’s vibrant, sexually expressive solo breakthrough album So. Six years in the making, Us meticulously explored the emotional jungles of human relationships with naked honesty and a confused, exposed vulnerability, and Gabriel, searching for answers that were probably never there to begin with, came out the other end none the wiser.
Frustrated perhaps by his inability to find resolution, Gabriel seems to retreat into the secret sound world and experimental bubble of Us, living amongst its layers and layers of exotic textural sediment and its rich, immersive tonal environments as a reclusive artist who has broken off communication with outsiders. At the same time, Gabriel is an open book on Us, unabashedly baring his soul in descriptive lyrics so uncomfortably personal that they read like the notes of therapy sessions, Gabriel having apparently waived any invocation of doctor-patient privilege. Given all this, it’s understandable then that Us – despite the propulsive funk of “Steam” and the organic throbbing of “Digging in the Dirt” – couldn’t possibly rise to the mega-smash hit status of So. Us required too much of its audience – too much of an investment of time and patience, and even too much of their own damaged hearts
Out of this miasma of pain, guilt and intense self-reflection emerged Gabriel, somewhat healed and ready to face the world again with his ambitious “Secret World Live” tour. A spectacular staging of Gabriel’s hard-won perspective on gender relations – with two stages symbolizing male and female sensibilities and a visual bombardment of multi-media adventures – “Secret World Live” set up shop in Modena, Italy for two nights in November 1993, and the arty, uplifting performances were captured for a much-beloved 1996 Grammy Award-winning film. All gussied up for the new millennium, “Secret World Live” is being re-released this summer on Eagle Vision, and it looks as if it hasn’t aged a day, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Visually, this new and improved version is magnificent, revitalizing the multi-camera shoot and enhancing the already vivid imagery of the original film with gorgeous color and a well-rounded sonic remastering that adds power and energy to the sound. Bulging with extras, the newly-packaged “Secret World Live” includes a time-lapse movie of the elaborate stage set-up process, a revealing making-of featurette with exclusive period interviews – Gabriel doing most of the talking – and interesting behind-the-scenes footage, a beautiful still photo gallery from the tour set to an unsettlingly quiet version of “Steam” and a captivating 2011 performance of “The Rhythm of the Heat” featuring Gabriel and the New Blood Orchestra at the Hammersmith Apollo in London.
Truly a transcendent concert experience, the mostly joyful and celebratory “Secret World Live” finds Gabriel’s theatricality taking on more meaning and metaphorical significance. As the sensual, slow-moving melodic currents of “Across the River” and “Slow Marimbas” gently drift, Gabriel paddles an imaginary skiff up river on the conveyer belt that connects the two stages, with his band in tow, all gazing upward in wonderment. A makeshift oasis – complete with a tree of life – provides the setting for a wounded, yearning version of “Blood of Eden,” a song of disconnection, suspicion, self-loathing and rebirth beautifully rendered by Gabriel and singer Paula Cole. Needing no stage props, Gabriel and his team of handpicked musicians dance with a relaxed, whimsical choreography as they strut their way through the sweaty push of “Steam” and the chunky, dynamic grooves of “Sledgehammer,” before skipping and hopping around the life-affirming, uplifting cheeriness of “Solsbury Hill,” “Shaking the Tree” and “In Your Eyes” like carefree children in a playground.
That bounce in Gabriel’s step is nowhere to be found on the “Come Talk to Me,” where Gabriel, stuck in one of those typically British red phone booths, pleads with Cole to reopen negotiations to salvage whatever the song’s characters once had together. Heavy-handed and interminably drawn out, this particular scene, which opens the movie, is a wet blanket and lacks the subtle, if obscure, drama Gabriel once employed to jarring effect, like when he famously donned the old fox head and dress in concert for Genesis. Worse yet are the distracting and off-putting close-ups from the small camera mounted on Gabriel’s head for “Digging in the Dirt.” The self-indulgent stagecraft used in both instances seems uninspired and hopelessly dated as if Gabriel didn’t care that the expiration date on such hackneyed devices had long since passed.
All is forgiven, however, when “Secret World” arrives, with upside-down camera shots and flashing lights heightening the tension and excitement of its more aggressive parts and Gabriel handling the tender, more meditative spots with warm humanity. As a bonus, the new edition of “Secret World Live” features the cascading “Red Rain,” not included on the original version. And, of course, this dark waterfall of emotions and melody is as affecting as ever, its mood penitent and heartfelt.
An orgy for the senses, if a tad melodramatic in spots, “Secret World Live” – accompanied by a booklet packed with gorgeous photography – is a spiritual awakening of sorts, with Gabriel’s charisma and refreshing openness bonding audience and cast in ways that language cannot explain. Helping Gabriel make this stirring journey is a backing band that is without peer, as Tony Levin’s agile, sinewy bass movements, David Rhodes’ unassuming guitar figures, and Manu Katche’s splashy drumming – not to mention the flood of keyboards, Shankar’s violins and other strange instrumentation that washes over it all – craft a sublime vehicle for Gabriel’s meditations. Even though his musings have an insular quality on Us, there is a universality to Gabriel’s lyrics that connects with people of all creeds and colors. Never has that been more apparent than on “Secret World Live.”

-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Testament - Dark Roots of the Earth


CD Review: Testament - Dark Roots of the Earth
Nuclear Blast
All Access Review: A-
Testament - Dark Roots of the Earth 2012
Forget the kerfuffle over Testament’s use of blast beats on Dark Roots of the Earth. Such concerns are small potatoes when measured against the enormity of the Bay Area bashers’ latest sonic blitzkrieg on a metal community still dazed by the fire-bombing wrought by Formation of Damnation, unleashed by Testament in 2008. Utilizing a drumming technique associated more with death metal than thrash on “Native Blood” and the unremittingly hostile “True American Hate” – both of these clean-running machines riddled by head-spinning fusillade of fiery riffs and saber-rattling twin-guitar leads – Testament willingly violates a long-held taboo to forge steely, sharp broadswords of battle-scarred aural barbarism that could cut through armor as if it were butter.
Recorded and engineered by Andy Sneap, who seemingly can do no wrong lately, Dark Roots of the Earth, out now on Nuclear Blast, is a somewhat less ferocious animal than its predecessor, despite its full-bodied, high-impact sound. That’s only because Testament chooses to occasionally indulge its more refined progressive inclinations on such complex, tempo-shifting pieces as the tightly-woven, seven-minute descent into madness that is “Throne of Thrones.” The lengthy melodic ballad in “Cold Embrace” – veering cringingly close to power-balladry – cycles through a hoary underworld of intricate acoustic passages and gentle tendrils of electric-guitar arpeggios before periods of crushing heaviness swoop in to lay waste to anything resembling song structure, while the title track initiates a deliciously slow, tantalizing burn that eventually becomes a bonfire.
Not to worry, Testament hasn’t turned into Rush, as the clawing, growling riffage and monstrous brutality of “Rise Up” so violently attests. As defiant as ever, powerhouse singer Chuck Billy seems to detonate land mines every time he opens that raging mouth of his to speak gruffly of war, freedom, death and the end of days – not to mention the oppressed Native American experience that Billy confronts head on in the explosive, deliriously infectious “Native Blood.” Always mindful of maintaining an exhilarating pace and planting hooks with the teeth of bear traps – always biting right through the bone – guitarists Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson fluidly wield their axes with impressive precision, rich tonality and diabolically diverse dynamics on such rugged earth-movers as “A Day in the Death” and “Man Kills Mankind.” Sneap and Testament take all of those elements, including the blizzard of beats pouring out of Gene Hoglan’s drums and the thick, gripping bass undertow of Greg Christian, and shape tracks into chugging, monolithic thrash-metal war ships.
This is not your father’s thrash, the raw and sometimes hairy character of old-school recordings sanded smooth on Dark Roots of the Earth. Incredibly detailed, the album’s rigorous attention paid to raising dark melodies and the complex, artistic soloing of Skolnick and Peterson – apparently born of jazz and King Crimson studies – out of the usual Testament tumult strengthens and boosts the force with which Testament attacks. Experiencing almost every song on Dark Roots of the Earth is like getting gored by a bull and then shot by a hunting rifle. Physically, it slams into the body and boggles the senses. Having medical personnel nearby ready to lend aid might not be a bad idea.

-            Peter Lindblad

Loverboy out to start a 'Rock 'N' Roll Revival'


Canadian rockers took the world by storm in the '80s
By Peter Lindblad
Loverboy in 2012
To this day, amassing a boatload of Juno Awards, as Loverboy did in the ‘80s, certainly gives Mike Reno a great sense of achievement. And seeing all those gold and platinum record awards that line the walls of his home studio has to be incredibly gratifying.
But there is another trophy sitting in his office from the good old days that Reno treasures above the rest, and the singer swells with pride every time it catches his eye.
“It’s a crystal piece made by Tiffany’s, and it comes in a leather case that opens. It’s a handmade leather case, and it’s about the size of a bottle of Crown Royal … you know, in the box,” explains Reno. “And inside is a Crystal Globe Award [from Columbia Records]. It was given to us on the top floor of the penthouse apartment at the Chrysler Building in Manhattan years ago, when Loverboy sold multi-millions of records outside of its own country.”
Not many people can claim they have one, but Reno does, and Loverboy was the first Canadian act to ever receive one. “There was only three or four of them ever given for people that sold international stuff,” continued Reno. “So we were a Canadian band that sold so many records outside of Canada that we were given the Crystal Globe Award for selling over five million [copies] of one record outside of our own country. That was a huge honor, the highest on the totem pole.”
While it’s highly unlikely Loverboy will ever move such an enormous number of units again, given the state of the music industry and radio’s aversion to playing new music from classic rock bands, Reno and company aren’t throwing in the towel just yet.
On Aug. 14, Loverboy’s new album, Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival, will drop via Frontiers Records. An invigorating blast of recently recorded live versions of Loverboy classics – minus the crowd noise but still bristling youthful energy – and three infectious new recordings boasting the kind of big, juicy hooks and irresistible melodies that made them arena-rock heroes, Rock ‘N’ Revival finds Loverboy feeling a bit nostalgic.
Anxious to revisit past triumphs with an old friend, producer Bob Rock, Loverboy turns “No Tomorrow” and “Heartbreaker” loose on curmudgeonly critics who’ve already written them off as dinosaurs lost in a world that’s passed them by. Reno isn’t conceding anything, and it’s Loverboy’s adherence to its tried-and-true recording process that’s going to win the day for them.
“When we record, we don’t do a whole lot of overdubs. When you hear the keyboards, it’s a part,” says Reno. “The keyboards played a counterpart to the guitar, so the ‘na na na na na nu nah,’ keyboard, keyboard, keyboard, beat … ‘na na na na na nu nah,’ keyboard, keyboard … it’s kind of what we started doing years ago, and it’s kind of what we do. So when Doug (Johnson) gets done on keyboards, he’s going to play that, and then Paul’s going to write a part to fit where the hole is, and the bass is going to chug along really, really cool with the drums, and our drummer [Matt Frenette] is insane. He can play the most insane, high-energy stuff, and then I kind of do this piercing tenor, and I just stay right in this pocket.”
Rock, it seems, is as happy as can be to be working with Loverboy again. Though he’s known for his production work with the likes of Metallica, Aerosmith, The Cult and … (gulp!) Michael Buble, among others, Rock made his bones as an engineer working alongside the band and Bruce Fairbairn on blockbuster Loverboy albums like Get Lucky, Keep it Up and Lovin’ Every Minute of It.
Of Loverboy’s latest studio efforts, Reno says of Rock, “He was so into it, he left the control room, and came out where we were doing the track and he put on the headphones and he was like one of the band,” said Reno. “He was rockin’. He put a guitar on, and he’s just standing there rockin’ and he’s looking around. And then after we ran through it a few times, he went, ‘We’ve got it. That’s it. That’s the energy I was looking for.’ And he said, ‘I don’t get that anymore. Everybody records one track at a time nowadays.’ He said, ‘It’s such a pleasure to work with Loverboy again ‘cause I remember how you guys record originally.’”   
Recapturing the studio magic of the past is one thing. It remains to be seen whether or not that translates into the kind of mind-blowing album sales Loverboy once experienced.

Ground Zero
Recently, Loverboy went back to where it all began, the Refinery Night Club in Calgary, Alberta, to perform for a gas and oil company. Being so close to ground zero, the memories came flooding back to Reno.
“They put us in a hotel that was a half a block from where the Refinery used to be, and I went down there and I stood there, and I went, ‘Holy sh*t. This is where it all started,’” said Reno.
One frigid night in 1979, Reno found himself at the Refinery, a venue that played host to numerous international rock acts back then. Owned by Paul Blair, future manager of Loverboy, the Refinery was a place where starving rock hopefuls like Reno used to go to “get in on a free dinner.” Sated by the meal and the show he’d seen, Reno left through the back door. Outside, he heard sounds coming from an abandoned bus repair shop nearby and with some trepidation, Reno decided to investigate. It was Paul Dean playing guitar into a tape recorder.
After introducing themselves, Reno and Dean talked. As it turned out, Dean had just been let go from his band Streetheart. “They’d canned him for asking too many questions about where all the money was going and why can’t we get paid every once in a while, so the band canned him over the phone,” recalls Reno.
As the conversation continued, Reno could see that Dean “was at a low point in his life.” As for Reno, he’d just quit a band in Ontario. “I was coming across Canada to drop my girlfriend off in Calgary to finish her master’s degree at the university there,” he added, “and I was going to go visit my brother in California. So, it was one of those kinds of times in our lives where our paths just crossed. I was looking for something to do. He was obviously looking for something to do, and we were both in that mood where, ‘I don’t want to get involved with another band, but I’ll sit here and write some songs if you want.’ That’s how we did it for a while. We didn’t make any commitments to each other. We just said, ‘Let’s write some songs, and let’s see what happens.’ And that’s how it started right there. And it was on the way home from the Refinery that night, and Lou Blair was one of Paul Dean’s best friends, and he was kind of a business guy, and Paul was a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player and songwriter. And so was I, so the three of us got things started as a little team. Lou was going to manage us, and we were going to write songs, and then we kind of met guys. We met Doug Johnson. He was in Calgary. And then everything kind of started from there. So that’s really how it started.”
Almost immediately, Dean and Reno – who chose the name Loverboy while looking at the fashion magazines their girlfriends were reading when they were all gathered together to watch movies, with Reno thinking it would get “kind of a rise” out of people – discovered they had a songwriting chemistry that would take them far. In fact, one of their early jam sessions bore fruit in the form of “Turn Me Loose,” one of those fist-pumping, powerhouse anthems Loverboy seemed to produce at will in the’80s.
“I started off writing that song on a bass actually,” admits Reno. “I’m actually a drummer, and drummers and bass guitarists kind of go hand-in-hand. They work the bottom end of the groove. So, we had some people drop by. It was kind of a good time for music in Canada – everybody was playing music. There were concerts and clubs everywhere, and bar bands. So music was everywhere, and there were bands playing everywhere. We used to snag a guy if he was on his way home … ‘cause we’d stay up late. If a band would finish playing let’s say at the Refinery, a couple guys would walk over and we’d say, ‘Can you sit on the drums for a couple minutes? Mike wants to play this lick.’ So I went and started playing a drum pattern for the guy, just a basic drum pattern and it kind of goes like this. He goes, ‘Okay.’ And then I would hop on the bass, and Paul was doing something, and I’d be going, ‘Doo da, doo da.’ And finally, he looks over at me and goes, ‘If you keep playing that goddamn riff, I’d better start thinking about writing some guitar for it to wrap around it,’ because I just kept playing it all the time. I was driving him crazy. I’d play “doo da, doo da” on bass, and it kept driving him crazy until he said, ‘Let’s do something with that riff and then maybe you’ll stop playing the f**king thing.’ It was really quite simple. I was just bugging him, just playing that riff over and over, ‘cause I’m not a great bass player. That riff was just in my head, and we just decided to finish it off.”
That hooky little ear wig would worm its way into the heads of millions of record buyers, and yet, initially, none of the U.S. record labels wanted anything to do with Loverboy. So, they eventually went with Columbia/CBS Records Canada.
“We got a record contract finally after everybody had turned us down,” said Reno. “Jeff Burns [the man who signed Loverboy] saw some potential and got us a record deal – barely. So we had to work within the confines of the small amount of money we were given.”
Though Loverboy wasn’t blessed with unlimited financial resources for their self-titled debut album, which they began work on in March of 1980, they were fortunate to have, in studio, a dream team that nurtured their “all for one and one for all” recording process.
“So, we had a producer, Bruce [Fairbairn],” relates Reno. “It was one of his first projects [to break through in the U.S.], and we just started kicking ass. We just went into the studio, and there was a young guy [Bob Rock] there from another band, playing in a [Vancouver new wave] group called The Payolas. And he was a guitar player, and he was mixing, and the sixth guy was running around, changing tapes, getting coffee and making sure everything was good, moving carts around. His name was Mike Frazier, and you look up Mike Frazier and you realize he’s worked with everyone from AC/DC to … I don’t know, Metallica or something. Bob Rock worked with Metallica. You look up Mike Frazier, and you’ll see what I mean. He’s a big producer. So, we started with Bruce Fairbairn at the helm, and the whole thing about Bruce is, he let us record right off the floor. He didn’t boss us around like some producers do, and some producers try to change the way you play and make everything different and sterile. Bruce got off on the fact that when we played together – we sounded better than when we played separately. So he insisted on us playing everything together at the same time – we’d set up and just play. And so basically, that’s what we did. And he let us do it.”
That first Loverboy album turned out to be a valuable learning experience for two men who would go on to do great things in the music industry.
“Bob Rock was basically cutting his teeth,” said Reno. “He was the engineer, and Bruce Fairbairn gave Bob a chance and Bob Rock gave Mike Frazier a chance, and Jeff Burns gave Loverboy a chance. And Bruce Allen said, ‘This is kind of cool.’ So, Bruce Allen, who’s managed Michel Buble and Bryan Adams and Anne Murray, and all these great people … he managed BTO for all these years. BTO had just finished, so Bruce Allen was looking for something to do and he took us on. And the whole thing just gelled from there.”
Released in November, 1980, Loverboy’s first album yielded not only “Turn Me Loose,” but also “The Kid is Hot Tonite,” both of which actually came out in 1981. Behind the scenes, the promotional machinery established by Allen and Blair was working overtime. And on the strength of those hit singles, two million copies of the LP were sold in the U.S., where evidently nobody cared one whit whether Loverboy was from Canada or Bora Bora.
“I don’t think anybody even knew we were Canadian back then,” said Reno. “It was the weirdest thing. Some people still don’t know we’re Canadian. When we started doing really well and the record started selling, America took over. New York … the record company was in New York, and they just started pumping us everywhere. We were on tour with Kansas, and then right after that, we were on tour with ZZ Top. And after that, we went on tour with Journey. And then after that, we went on tour by ourselves, taking with us Joan Jett and Huey Lewis, and different groups like that. And we were always in the States, so people thought we were American. It’s not that we said we were American. They just assumed. And we told everybody we were Canadian, but they still didn’t get it. They thought we were American, and they still do to this day.”
It wasn’t just the music that set Loverboy apart, but the clothes as well. A woman who worked in Bruce Allen’s office had a husband who owned a leather shop just down the street. She said he’d give the upstart band a big discount on anything they wanted. Reno said he tried on “… a million pairs [of leather pants]. I took a black pair and a red pair, and the red pair just fit really great. And I started wearing them around, and people kind of started saying, ‘Look at the red leather pants.’ So when they started shooting videos, I wore the red leather pants and then one thing led to another.” The thing is Dean wore them just as much as Reno did … at least according to Reno he did. As for the headbands that completed the look, Reno says they were there to simply soak up sweat “… so my hair wouldn’t look so sh*tty.”

Lucky Strike
Wanting to strike while the iron was hot, Loverboy couldn't just rest on their laurels. On the road, in support of their breakout debut LP, Loverboy was searching somewhat to find their identity. They soon figured it out, and when they got off the road, they quickly raced back into the studio to knock out another set of tunes for the wildly successful Get Lucky, which dropped in October of 1981.
“On the first album, you’ve got songs you’ve been cultivating your whole life,” said Reno. “And there were four different styles in addition to our rock thing – we had new wave, we had a little reggae, we had some heavy stuff, we had the pop stuff. That was kind of an experimental record, the first record. Then, when we played live, we realized that we were more like a high-energy rock band. And, we’d just come off a tour. We had a chance to play songs off the second album in front of people and see their reactions, and maybe we’d change a few things and rewrite some things. So we came home and we had the five weeks off and we went in the studio, between tours, and during the five-week break, I mean we cut the stuff right off the floor – just recorded it and finished it. Then we managed to squeeze another week of holiday in, and then it was back on the road. So the first record was all the things we’d come up with through our whole lives and the second album was all the things we ran off through the recording in five weeks in that break. So they were very different, but it was a really cool way to do a record. We didn’t have a lot of time to over-think it. We just cut the stuff and went back out on the road.”
Get Lucky [for more on how the cover was created, see our previous Loverboy post from July] came out while Loverboy was on tour with Journey, and it caught fire almost immediately, with the deliriously catchy smash-hit “Working for the Weekend” and the painful ballad “When it’s Over” propelling the LP to incredible heights. “’When it’s Over’ was a very personal song for me,” said Reno. “It was about break-up I had, where I just realized it was over. And it was kind of a tough song to sing. I almost cried singing it. Those things you never forget, right?”
Love hurts, but having a hit record is a soothing salve for any kind of wound. At its apex, Get Lucky, with that iconic cover of somebody’s backside – not Reno’s, but actually, that of a teenage girl – clad in red leather pants and fingers crossed in a very naughty manner, indeed – surged to #7 on the U.S. Billboard charts. In all, the album garnered Loverboy a record six Juno Awards. Nobody’s ever topped that.
“It was a fun record to do, and every time we play songs off that record, [fans] jump up and down,” said Reno. “I think it was our best-seller. So, yeah, [Get Lucky is] probably my favorite.”
Another factor in Loverboy’s meteoric rise was the explosion of MTV. Blissfully unaware of the potential power of this emerging medium, Loverboy was directed by management to shoot a few videos while of concerts staged in Albany, New York, while the band was on one of its earliest tours. “Loverboy sent them two or three videos for the first week they opened, because they didn’t have enough to play 24 hours a day,” said Reno. “Remember, it was rock videos 24 hours a day on MTV. Well, they didn’t have enough to play, so they played us like 10 times a day and it made us hugely famous.”
Those indelible onscreen images of Loverboy giving everything it could possibly give while sweating through a vigorous, turbo-charged workout of “Working for the Weekend” are burned into the collective memories of those children of the ‘80s, whose workaday lives still leave them pining for happy hours and rowdy Saturday nights. That song has already lived an incredible life, having appeared in movies, television shows, at sporting events and in video games. Permanently woven into the colorful fabric of pop culture, “Working for the Weekend” – a working-class anthem if there ever was one – shows few signs of aging. Reno is amazed at the song’s longevity, as well as that of the band.
“They say you can foresee things. I didn’t foresee me being 60 years old, or being 57. I didn’t foresee myself being 57, never mind being 57 and still playing a hundred shows a year,” said Reno. “I never even thought about it. We just wrote songs and had fun, and went on the road and tried to earn a living. That’s what we did. We didn’t expect it to go long or short. We had no idea what was going to happen. I don’t think the Rolling Stones had an idea they’d be going all these years. It’s kind of the same for us or at least me anyway. I’m kind of digging it. I didn’t know I’d be playing a hundred shows a year, and just loving what I do. I just love being in a rock band.”
That wasn’t always the case, however, for Reno.

On Top of the World
Between 1980 and 1984, it seemed Loverboy could do no wrong. Everything they touched seemed to turn to gold, or even platinum. With Get Lucky flying off the shelves, selling an obscene four million copies in the U.S., Loverboy was on top of the world. And with Keep it Up, the band’s 1983 LP, the band kept on rolling.
Almost dizzy with sexual desire and red-blooded riffs, the lusty “Hot Girls in Love” rose all the way to #11 on the U.S. singles charts, becoming their biggest-selling song to date. “Queen of the Broken Hearts” followed, and it took off, too, with MTV’s omniscient support. Out on the road again, Loverboy got its name on top of the marquee, as the band barnstormed its way through its first headlining tour. A year after Keep it Up did exactly what the title said it would for Loverboy, the band recorded the stirring U.S. theme for the 1984 Summer Olympics, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop You Now.”
It seemed nothing could slow Loverboy’s momentum. But, for 1985’s Lovin’ Every Minute of It, Loverboy wanted to try something different. Opting for a heavier, edgier sound, Loverboy ultimately settled on veteran metal producer Tom Allom, of Judas Priest and Black Sabbath fame – although he wasn’t their first choice.
“We wanted to record that album wet. We wanted to get a cool, big sound, like Def Leppard and Foreigner, and so we looked at who was doing those records, and it was Mutt Lange,” said Reno. “But he was too busy. So we used Mutt Lange’s engineer … I can’t remember his name. Mutt Lange’s engineer, Mike [Shipley] … and then we stayed in this house. It kind of drove us crazy all of us staying in this house. We weren’t that kind of band. And we had a chef, and then we just cut it after three weeks, it just wasn’t working for us, so we said, ‘Let’s just drop it and forget about it.’”
Then, along came Allom.
“We tried to get an English kind of a guy again, so we got Tom Allom, who had done Judas Priest, and we thought, ‘That’s cool. Judas Priest sounds like good sh*t,’” said Reno. “So we thought we’d give it a try. We kind of liked the English sensibilities, because one of his favorite quotes was [affects an English dialect], ‘Change nothing, immediately!’ And after you think about that for a second, it really makes perfect sense. So, he also liked the way we recorded in the room, and not a lot of bands do that. They try to do it, but it doesn’t happen with them. We just kept with people we could get along with, and we had a lot of fun with that record.”
In particular, Loverboy enjoyed their first U.S. Billboard Top 10 hits, the stomping, ballsy title track – written, actually, by Lange – and the romantic charmer “This Could be the Night,” written with Journey’s Jonathan Cain. In 1986, Loverboy again caught the record-buying public’s ear with “Heaven in Your Eyes,” one of the many shiny trinkets the Top Gun soundtrack offered. Doug Johnson balked at participating, however, due to the film’s glorification of war.
By now, however, Loverboy was growing weary of that familiar cycle of nonstop touring and recording that had broken so many of the greats over the years. And when the band went to work on making 1987’s Wildside, Reno admits his enthusiasm was waning.
“I kind of lost a bit of interest, and I just said, ‘Let’s just pick some songs, and I don’t care who writes them. Let’s just do this and get it over with,’” said Reno, with perfect candor. “And it kind of shows, and then I started to write songs with other people, and the guys said, ‘We don’t like those,’ and I said, ‘Well, I don’t like those.’ And everybody went … we all kind of went, ‘Swallow it.’ And kind of around the same time music was … with the record companies getting pissy and radio was changing, I didn’t know what to do. So, we were experimenting, trying to get a new sound. And it was … after a while, I just went, ‘Who gives a sh*t? I just don’t care. Let’s just record it and move on.’ And that’s kind of basically how it went to be honest with you.”
Not surprisingly, Wildside stiffed, despite the minor flare-up caused by the single “Notorious.” Disagreements over the direction of the band intensified, and a sea change was occurring within the music and radio industry that would finally derail the hit-making juggernaut that was Loverboy. Around 1990, Reno said, the band needed a break.
“It was a mixture of things. It was an equal mixture of … we’d recorded some things and had sent them to the record company, and they would say, ‘That sounds too much like your other stuff. Can you record some different stuff with a different flavor?’” remembered Reno. “So we recorded some stuff and we sent it to them, and they said, ‘That doesn’t sound anything like you guys.’ And we said, ‘Well, Christ. Make up your minds.’ And then they started saying, ‘Well, we don’t think we want another record right now. So just hang out and do whatever you want.’ At the same time, radio changed. They just started to play stuff like the Culture Club and Pet Shop Boys, and there was no room for rock ‘n’ roll like Journey, Cheap Trick, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon … you know, that stuff they just stopped playing on the radio. So the record company didn’t want anything because of that, radio wasn’t playing anything, they dropped us off. And so we just basically sat around and said, ‘Let’s just stick this out for a while.’ The record company is not interested. Radio’s changed, they’re not playing anything … what are we going to do? So we just decided to raise our kids for a few years.”

‘We’ve been sitting around for too long’
Out of the public eye, Loverboy tended to matters on the home front. On indefinite hiatus, Reno and company were in no hurry to get back to business. Then, tragedy struck, as good friend Brian MacLeod of the Canadian band Chilliwack took ill. A concert was organized in 1991 to raise funds for MacLeod’s medical care.
“A friend of ours was suffering from a really rare form of cancer, and he needed special drugs that weren’t available unless you bought them yourself,” said Reno. “Because in Canada, we have socialized medicine thing where if you get sick, they’ll take care of you, but they only take care of you with medicines that are approved at the time. And the medicines he wanted to try were going to cost like 60 grand. So we all got together to try to raise money for them. And his name was Brian McCloud, he was playing in a band called Chiliwack that did very well, and then he formed another band the Head Pins. And him and I were great friends.”
It was a shared interest in boating brought Reno, Frenette and MacLeod together.
“We both had boats. He lived on a boat. We recorded songs on his boat. We went on trips on his boat and my boat, and our drummer Matty had a boat,” said Reno. “We became the Royal Vancouver Rock ‘N’ Roll Yacht Club, and we went away, did things and had fun, and we were always cutting up. He was just one of those guys who lived in the studio every day, and I ended up writing a lot of songs with him and hanging out. When he got sick, we were all pretty much devastated. We would do anything to help him, ‘cause we were taking a bit of a break at the time.”
Some of the biggest stars in rock at the time gathered together to do what they could for MacLeod.
“I think it was Bryan Adams who said, ‘Let’s raise some money for the guy,’” said Reno. “And in town that month were The Cult, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Bryan was home … Bryan Adams, all the guys from Chiliwack. We just said, ‘Let’s get our groups together, do one set each. Offer the tickets for whatever … $40,’ and even the bar went to the guy. So we raised all this money for him, but what we’d done is we kicked open his guitar case – it was a sellout – put it up on the monitor, and we played the set list, and the audience response to our show was so enlightening that both our managers and us … as we walked past the audience, we said to our managers, ‘Book us some shows. We’ve been sitting around for too long.’ And that’s how it started. That’s how we got back at it. We’d had our break, and we’d been forced out of it by doing this benefit, and then we were back at it.”
Various greatest-hits packages and live albums – including 2001’s Live, Loud and Loose – have satisfied fans’ desire for new recordings, but where Loverboy – who have carried on with Ken Sinnaeve (Guess Who, Red Rider, Steelheart] after bassist Scott Smith was declared dead in 2000 after being lost at sea – really shines is in a concert setting, where their exuberance and unbridled excitement always carries the day, just as did one particular time in a football stadium where they shared the bill with a host of rock ‘n’ roll heavyweights.
“We were in Denver or something and we were playing JFK Stadium in Philadelphia,” Reno recalls. “We got kind of invited at the last moment, and it was a three-day drive. And you had to drive constantly to get there, and we finally got in this tour bus … we’re driving as fast as can, basically hanging out there and kind of getting directions. And we get into the JFK Stadium, pull the bus up, we’re on in less than an hour … basically, all we had time to do was run a hose over our hair, slick it back, throw on some rock and roll clothes and jump on stage, having the crew set up equipment and stuff. We went up onstage and started playing and got in front of the audience and there were 90,000 people at JFK Stadium rocking to Loverboy. And we did this thing where we split the audience in half, and one half said ‘bullshit’ and the other half said, ‘F- you.’ Paul and I were doing this thing and we were getting into it so much, and we had 45,000 people saying ‘F- you’ and the other 45,000 people saying ‘bullshit.’ And everybody was psyched and getting louder, and we’d just had this whole routine worked out. We’d just gotten off the bus after a three-day drive and had wet our hair down with a hose backstage, threw on some leather pants, and we looked from the side of the stage and there were all these people from the Kinks to the Pretenders and Foreigner, and they’re all watching us because they couldn’t believe how we’d gotten the audience going. They came out of the dressing room going, ‘What the f**k is going on with these guys, right?’ That was very memorable.”
Loverboy hopes to create more unforgettable moments on tour in 2012 with their old friends Pat Benatar and Journey. “You know what it’s going to be like? It’s like going to a high school reunion,” said Reno. “We know all the guys in their bands, and they know us. We’ve got big hits and they’ve got big hits, it’s just going to be a hit fest, really. We’ll play like seven songs that were all in the top Hit Parade, then Pat Benatar’s going to play seven or eight songs that were all on the Hit Parade, and then Journey’s going to come out and play 14 or 15 songs – ‘cause they’re the headliners – and they’re all going to be from the Hit Parade. You know, it’s going to be like a family reunion. It’s going to be a total riot to go to that concert. It’s going to be nothing but hits.”
And for the most part, so is their upcoming LP release. Whether any of their newest creations cause the kind of sensation that “Working for the Weekend” did years ago remains to be seen. About the first single, the stirring title track that kicks things into high-gear on the record, Reno explains, “It wasn’t [written in] anger. It was angst. I had a little angst because I didn’t hear anything I liked on the radio. You know, chances are, they won’t play it, because we’re a classic rock band and nobody plays any new classic rock songs anymore, which is another frustrating problem. But, at least I gave it a shot.”
That’s all anybody can ask of them at this point.

DVD Review: Ozzy Osbourne - Speak of the Devil


DVD Review: Ozzy Osbourne - Speak of the Devil
Eagle Vision
All Access Review: A-
Ozzy Osbourne - Speak of the Devil 2012
Rudy Sarzo writes in the photo-filled booklet that accompanies “Speak of the Devil” of Ozzy’s “fragile mental state” as the “Diary of a Madman” tour soldiered on in the aftermath of Randy Rhoads’ unthinkable death. That old saw about how “the show must go on” meant as much to a distraught Ozzy in his time of mourning as it ever did for any entertainer down through history, and Sarzo, Ozzy’s bassist at the time, shudders to think how the singer would have reacted had his traveling circus been shut down.
Desperate for the warm, sympathetic embrace of thousands of rabid fans, Ozzy and his carnival of the damned rolled into Irvine Meadows, California, on June 12, 1982, after an understandable delay and held a head-banging Irish wake for the virtuoso guitarist, slamming Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” “Children of the Grave” and the encore “Paranoid” to the wall after ripping the throat out of a slew of Ozzy’s solo hits. Now out on DVD, with audio restored and remastered with crystal – perhaps even unnatural – digital clarity, this is more than just a historical document of an electrifying performance from one of metal’s legendary front men. As he pounds his chest during a blazing rendition of “Crazy Train” – with Rhoads’ replacement, the underrated Brad Gillis, hungrily tearing through the song’s familiar riffs and manhandling its scorching leads – or somewhat clumsily executes one of his exuberant frog jumps, Ozzy, clapping away with arms raised, makes a grim reaper-defying gesture here as he drinks in the healing elixir of rock ‘n’ roll, as trite as that sounds. Ozzy is born again, his rebirth a devilishly delightful rock ‘n’ roll spectacle.
And it takes place while he’s surrounded by a really cool medieval castle for a stage and all the smoke, fire and pulsating multi-colored lights that rock ‘n’ roll fantasies are made of – plus a laser-lit bat that flies overhead during Ozzy’s dramatic entrance. Visually, though awfully dark on occasion, “Speak of the Devil” is filmed with professional sensibilities, combining expansive faraway shots and close-ups that often focus on the careening, razor-sharp musicianship and clenched-teeth intensity of Sarzo and Gillis during marauding, energetic romps through “Over the Mountains,” “Steal Away (The Night),” “I Don’t Know,” and “Flying High Again.” When, in a moment of unscripted playfulness, Ozzy bites into Gillis’ head and threatens to bash his skull as he grinds away during a blistering “Suicide Solution” solo, the camera frames the moment artfully, just as it does when Ozzy welcomes Gillis to the band with a big bear hug while the new guy shreds “Mr. Crowley.”
All of Ozzy’s demented, crowd-baiting antics are on display, as the comically ghoulish dwarf mascot “Ronnie” is hung during an otherwise lovely and wistful reading of “Goodbye to Romance.” Later, before launching into “Paranoid,” Ozzy slips on a glove that shoots fireworks out of its fingers. And the staging is absurdly massive and gloriously tone-deaf to fading calls for rock to be less ostentatious. Up high in one of the fortress’s balconies is hooded keyboardist Don Airey, whose regret-tinged piano colors the eco-friendly, peace-loving “Revelation (Mother Earth)” with all-too-human expressions of sadness, while his sinister intro to “Mr. Crowley” is pure horror-movie magic. On the staircase that serves as a drum riser, Tommy Aldridge pounds the night away, throwing the sticks aside and using only his hands in the midst of a frenzied drum solo midway through the show.
Everybody gets their turn in the spotlight on “Speak of the Devil,” and if there were any extras – maybe a featurette on the tour’s outlandish theatricality, perhaps some interviews with Ozzy or any of his band mates to give context to the event (Sarzo’s emotional insider’s perspective in the accompanying booklet shining some light on the inner workings of Ozzy’s crew), or just a smattering of behind-the-scenes footage – this DVD would be absolutely essential. As it is, “Speak of the Devil” is a captivating snapshot of a time when Ozzy was on the verge of going off the rails but somehow managed to keep the train rolling.
-            Peter Lindblad

Best of 2012 ... so far (Part 2)


Unveiling the top five hard rock and heavy metal albums of this half year
By Peter Lindblad
And then there were five. Fine specimens of skilled musicianship, thrilling energy and conceptual artistry, these sparkling diamonds bear hardly any rust, even if Judas Priest is nowhere to be found among them. From the devastating brutality and white-hot intensity of Whitechapel and Kreator to the steam-punk splendor and adventurous progressive spirit of Rush and black melodic magic of Kill Devil Hill, 2012 has been a banner year for hard rock and heavy metal up to this point.
And though any of the four mentioned above could easily have garnered the top spot, none of them did. There is another whose mystical vision and raging metal tumult simply boggles the mind. It is a perfect storm, one that would make meteorologists quiver with excitement. And it will leave you disheveled and dumbstruck, scrambling your brains so thoroughly that you might not remember where you are or how you got there. Feel free to agree or disagree with the list or its order, as long as we can do it over drinks at an establishment of my choosing.
Whitechapel - Whitechapel 2012
5. Whitechapel: Whitechapel – Nobody’s taken a bigger leap forward in 2012 than Whitechapel. It’s not enough anymore for deathcore’s biggest breakout act to take audiences by brute force. It’s not enough for them to terrify the easily offended with gore-splattered lyrics. These tortured Tennesseans with the swarming, intricately woven triple-axe attack have gone all in on their self-titled not-so-pretty hate machine, with back-breaking tempo shifts, maximum riffage and crazed dynamics threatening to consume Phil Bozeman’s guttural growl. Pretty little piano passages – a tribute to a fallen friend – set listeners up for the kill, as the imaginative sonic architects of Whitechapel makes good on their promise to conquer expectations.
Kill Devil Hill - 2012
4. Kill Devil Hill: Kill Devil Hill – A thick slab of surging, darkly melodic doom metal, Kill Devil Hill’s powerhouse debut bulldozes gothic ruins of riff-heavy rock and builds towering, monolithic new song structures atop the sacred burial grounds of Pantera and Ozzy-led Black Sabbath. More than the sum of its talented parts, Kill Devil Hill – created by former Sabbath and Dio drummer Vinny Appice, with ex-Pantera bassist Rex Brown onboard – introduces to the world Dewey Bragg, a man with the voice of a lion, and guitarist Mark Zavon, whose Panzer-like guitar forays seem directed by Rommel himself. The Alice In Chains comparisons are unavoidable, but with Brown lending heft and potency to the low end and Appice beating the living daylights out of his kit, Kill Devil Hill – immersed in all the haunting blackness and gloom of a graveyard after hours – boasts way more sonic mass than its grunge-era counterparts.
Rush - Clockwork Angels 2012
3. Rush: Clockwork Angels – 2112 was a great album … for its time. Clockwork Angels is better. Blasphemy, you say? Clockwork Angels is heavier – “BU2B” and “Carnies” – and more complex musically, although perhaps less raw and angry. The elaborate story, welded to some of the most grandiose sonic architecture the Canadians have ever constructed, of Clockwork Angels is wonderfully crafted, a mature, thought-provoking concept with none of the holes or the confused hokum of the 2112 saga. Where revisionists might see 2112 as the epochal moment where Rush’s power and progressive-rock inclinations clashed to create a compelling piece of art – which 2112 surely is – Clockwork Angels finds Rush still suspicious of totalitarian authority but more articulate and elegant about how they construct a response to it. And “The Wreckers” is one of Rush’s finest creations.
Kreator - Phantom Antichrist 2012
2. Kreator: Phantom Antichrist – Across a hellish, smoldering wasteland of apocalyptic imagery fly these four horsemen of thrash, soaring to dizzying heights on spiraling arpeggios, pounding whole cities into piles of ash with bombing drums and frenzied riffs that attack with an unquenchable blood lust, and speeding at high velocity into the unknown with an unrestrained fury bordering on madness. Screaming for vengeance, tracks like “United in Hate,” “Death to the World,” and “Civilisation Collapse” rain torrents of fiery thrash down on the unsuspecting, while “Until Our Paths Cross Again” and “Your Heaven, My Hell” offer brief moments of bruised beauty amid an outpouring of transcendent power-metal drama. Once again, Mille Petrozza whips this reconnaissance mission of the damned through its paces, and the result is a magnificent manifesto forged of startlingly brilliant technical musicianship and cataclysmic, compelling song craft. Phantom Antichrist will make you a believer.
High On Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis 2012
1. High On Fire: De Vermis Mysteriis – In the eye of a wintery hurricane of blustery, tempest-tossed guitars and roiling rhythmic seas stands High On Fire’s Captain Ahab Matt Pike, daring an angry God bent on destruction to silence his roaring, ragged voice as he relates the woeful plight of Jesus’ cursed twin brother. Mystery, madness, time travel and gale-force riffs threaten to tear the good ship De Vermis Mysteriis to pieces, but Pike’s able seamanship steers this scarred vessel through treacherous, rumbling melodic currents and violent, battering storms of sludgy metal. Epic is too small a word for such a monstrous beast. It’s only four letters after all. 

The best of 2012 ... so far (Part 1)

Picking the finest metal, hard rock releases of the half year

By Peter Lindblad

If this were a physical examination, the patients known as hard rock and heavy metal would get a clean bill of health. 2012 has witnessed a flurry of fine rebound albums from the reinvigorated likes of Fear Factory, Slash, Rush, Prong, and Kreator – to mention a few. No one is writing them off anymore. Even Van Halen returned from a long self-imposed exile to prove to everyone that Eddie was still God and that nepotism can work, even if they do have incredibly bad taste in first singles – “Tattoo”? Really?
There’s a new half a super group called Kill Devil Hill that’s fusing Pantera grooves with Black Sabbath’s gothic dirges and churning out wickedly melodic metal. For so long, Whitechapel has been chained to a radiator in the grim, dingy basement known as deathcore, but with their latest hate-filled self-titled missive, they have blasted their way out of their restraints and moved on to more adventurous sonic exploration. Cattle Decapitation has scared everybody out of their wits with some of the most uncompromisingly brutal music in recent memory, and progressive-metal architects Gojira have given the French – the French, of all people – a reason to get excited about their musical export business.
And there’s more to come. Testament is going back to its Dark Roots of the Earth, Dying Fetus hasn’t been aborted and The Deftones are reportedly set to release a record this fall. Strap yourself in folks. 2012 is going to be a white-knuckle ride, and a crash is inevitable. As for the first half of the year, I’ve compiled my Top 10, which is subject to change. The first five (Nos. 10-6), included here, are just a taste.  

Fear Factory - The Industrial 2012

10. Fear Factory: The Industrialist – Jackhammer industrial beats and raging vocals swim in the deep, toxic pool of disturbing dystopian visions, crushingly heavy guitars, and cinematic soundscapes of what may be Fear Factory’s most ambitious concept record yet. Fascinating alien melodies probe and prod a sound that is at once cavernous and claustrophobically condensed, with Dino Cazares constructing a Byzantine labyrinth of densely layered guitars under the imaginative lyrics and righteous bellowing of Burton C. Bell.

Slash - Apocalyptic Love 2012

9. Slash, Featuring Miles Kennedy and the Conspirators: Apocalyptic Love – On the heels of a scintillating live album, Slash lays down some of the slinkiest, most infectious grooves of his career, with knock-down, drag-out brawls like “You’re A Lie,” “Standing in the Sun,” “No More Heroes” and “One Last Thrill” capturing at least some the grit and dangerous energy of Appetite for Destruction. Providing a thrilling foil to Slash’s smoking, snaky leads is singer Myles Kennedy, whose spine-tingling vocals circle high above the fiery rock ‘n’ roll crashes Slash and The Conspirators gleefully orchestrate. Axl can have the Guns ‘N Roses name. Slash doesn’t need it.
Prong - Carved into Stone 2012
8. Prong: Carved into Stone – In full gallop, with smoke blowing out of its nostrils, “Eternal Heat” charges hard out of the gate, setting the blistering pace and aggressive tone for what is surely one of the most punishing records of Prong’s career. Seething with rage, Carved into Stone abandons industrial rigidity for a thicker, fuller sound that takes a baseball bat to society’s sick head and beats it bloody with violent, bare-knuckled poetry. Urgent and restlessly creative, Carved into Stone is a heat-seeking missile that’s locked onto its target and that target is you. Get ready to be blown apart.
Over Kill - The Electric Age 2012
7. Over Kill: The Electric Age – Relentless from beginning to end, The Electric Age spits fire and rages against the dying of their light – with apologies to poet Dylan Thomas – by tossing this exceedingly vicious and extraordinarily tight thrash-metal Molotov cocktail right in the face of a dogma that believes extreme music is entirely a young man’s game. Rarely has Over Kill sounded so dangerous and desperate, as rampaging drums, searing guitars, and the venomous, teeth-gnashing vocals of Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth propel these grizzled, gasoline-guzzling East Coast veterans on a high-octane journey through an urban wasteland of garbage-strewn dark alleys and lawless streets.
Accept - Stalingrad 2012
6. Accept: Stalingrad – Thankfully, Wolf Hoffman didn’t empty his bag of riffs on 2010’s Blood of the Nations, considered by many as the best metal album of that year. A worthy successor, the storming Stalingrad is one scorching meat grinder of a track after another – thanks to Hoffman’s rugged, gnarly guitars and the sweaty toil of a band that’s regained its hunger – and singer Mark Tornillo’s balls-to-the-wall screams are winning over converts who swore they’d never accept an Accept without Udo Dirkschneider.