Pagan Altar - Volume 1

Witchfynde - Give 'Em Hell

There was a lot of very cool stuff on Neat, much of which I'm belatedly discovering.
Anyway, some recommendations...
*Venom - Welcome to Hell; Black Metal; At War With Satan
*Raven - Rock Until You Drop [I'll have to do an Unsung review on that one soon!]; Wiped Out; All For One [some folks credit this Raven (not to be confused with the US mid-70's band) as inventing speed metal, and although you might come up with earlier examples of the genre (Night Sun anyone?) they certainly beat Canada's Exciter to the punch (Exciter think they invented it - they seem like nice guys, but sorry, they're wrong)]
*Witchfinder General - Death Penalty
*Holocaust - Live: Hot Curry and Wine [not 100% great, but there's some classics here, especially 'The Small Hours' which was covered by Metallica on Garage Days Revisited]
*Witchfynde - Give 'Em Hell
*Angel Witch - s/t
*Cloven Hoof - s/t [a couple of tracks are a bit lame/mainstreamy hard rock, the rest is classic stuff with a Venom influence]
*Sabbat - History of a Time To Come [not sure if this counts, being circa '88, but it's a killer]
*Warfare - Metal Anarchy [Venom meets the Exploited?]
*Samson - Survivors [not really a modern metal sound, but still, a better album than some folks rate it as being]
*Tank - Filth Hounds of Hades [kinda between Motorhead and Venom - and produced by Fast Eddie Clarke! A couple of tracks suck a bit but mostly pretty good stuff]

"Angelwitch" by Angelwitch (The CD re-release has lots of exta stuff including their best tune IMO Baphomet which was on the seminal 'Metal For Mutha's Vol 1' Compilation)
"Rock 'til You Drop" Raven
"Spellbound" Tygers of Pan Tang
"Iron Maiden" Iron Maiden (Yeah I know they're huge now but the debut IS a NWOBHM classic)
"Demolition" Girlschool
"Praying Mantis" Praying Mantis, for more melodic fare
"British Steel" Judas Priest (They'd been going for years but this came out at the same time as the NWOBHM and is Brit Metal in excelsis. Plus it also features probably the best use of a tray of cutlery in metal))
"Rocks Off" (single) Def Leppard. Pre mega US success, a top tune on their own indie label and another unlikely John Peel fave.

Budgie
UFO
Diamond Head
Samuel Prody
Zior

Try my "Release the Grease" compilations here :

http://rebelbass.blogspot.com/2007/11/release-grease-4.html

http://fattyghettoblaster.googlepages.com/radiorebelbass

For some dandruff shaking good stuff

Diamondhead, Praying Mantis were the best who didn't make it, but had more than one decent tune

Fair dues to Venom, they invented Black Metal, but they are shit

Witchfynde, why do people still sing the praises of this lot, turgid sub Sabbath tosh, I know i had 2 of their albums, the 1st had a primitive charm, the 2nd was plain horrible

Vardis-Quo on speed lotsa fun

Girl-shoulda been huge, easily the best NWOBHM band i saw

Saxon-the first album with Frozen Rainbow on it is amusing, and the one with 747 on it is great, if they came from LA they would have been massive, but they came from Barnsley and have no sense of humour

Riot-us rockers ,same era first three albums are classic, then the singer left anfd they got some dork in

at the same time the US had a bunch od Styx influence preening buffoons, of which Legs Diamond were the best by far. Anyone remember Starcastle [snigger snigger]

lots of bands were great live, made terrible albums, stand up Quartz, Spider, Fist, White Spirit

Bernie Torme had some great singles out before he joined Gillan

and finally same era but not really NWOBHM but featuring a future Maiden drummer, Pat Travers Makin Magic & Putting It Straight, if you like trad metal you really should give theese two a listen

Almost forgot Trust-french metallers. early stuff was spot on

Shakin Street featuring this young lady

http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/les%20goupes/S/Shakin'%20Street/pics/6058_2.jpg

they were great honest, had a future member of Manowar in them

DEATH TO FALSE METAL

I kinda like the nostalgia but thought (and still think) most NWOBHM bands were pretty awful, but each to their own. I saw loads of 'em live but only bought albums by relatively few.

Angelwitch were ok live in a cartoon Sabbath kinda way but I didn't think their records did them justice.

Always thought Paul Samson was shite, but when Bruce Dickinson was with them I quite liked Samson. Girl were great but wore make-up & were too American influenced for British rockers at the time.

Everyone knows what Iron Maiden & Daft Leotard were/are like. Probly Saxon too - had a few decent songs but I always hated Biff's voice.

Thought Diamond Head were ok tho I'm always a bit surprised by the enthusiasm a lotta people show nowadays. They never seemed to get that many fans at the time! Not saying it's as a result of Metallica's references to 'em, but that's when it seems to have started.

White Spirit were ok in a more traditional (with keyboards) kinda way. Praying Mantis were okish in an almost Wishbone Ash way.

Quite liked Tygers of Pan Tang for a few albums, but unlike everyone else I liked them better from the 2nd album. Their last couple were dreadful tho. Loved 'The Cage' - which has 'Makin Tracks' on, Shelby....

Off the top of me head, Raven, Vardis, Witchfynde, Spider, Venom, Witchfinder General, Lightning Raiders, Girlschool, Rock Goddess and Jaguar were amongst the ones I thought were kak.

Tank are still the worst band I've ever seen live. Sounded like they were all playing different songs in different tempos.

As a cuppla non-British bands have been mentioned, I'll just add that I thout Trust were shite (also had Nicko McBrain), Riot were ok & as mentioned - not NWOBHM (or even metal really) but I LOVE Pat Travers's 70s stuff.

love

Moth

Handsome Beasts, anyone?

I'm afraid this grouping together of all these bands into one convenient lump for marketing / journalist purposes got my goat at the time. I've never liked that sort of thing, really. It worked with Punk and to some extent with Post Punk, but that was it, really.

NWOBHM was just silly. The bands reminded me of those saturday afternoon wrestlers we had on World Of Sport on ITV. Ridiculously tight spandex over beer bellies and clumsy macho posturing.

I'm afraid to my ears a lot of these second division heavy rock bands really didn't do it for me. Even Diamond Head, who seem to be getting the most praise and respect, here. I suppose I'd already seen enough of the likes of Judas Priest, UFO and Scorpions by this time and had started seeking out new sounds. Like (heh) Pop Will eat Itself.

I was designing sleeves for a few bands mentioned here in 1989-90. Almost all of them either wanted a nubile babe on the cover or a skull.

This is for fellow saddoes. A few years ago a fellow old skool metal head chum and I had a reminisce about about old issues of Kerrang and, in particular, the old ads for the semi-legendary Shades Records in Soho's Wardour Street. We waxed lyrical about how they would say things like "Angelwitch! Huge! Buy or Die!" or, "NEW! Jaguar! buy or FOAD!". And, if a new example of a particular sub-genre came along that they rated they'd say stuff like "Candlemass! The most immense doom album ever! Delete Witchfinder General!"

So, for some reason, this spontaneous and utterly pointless game started where we would, if texting each other, attempt to end the sent text with the most obsure 'Delete..." ever i.e "Delete Bitches Sin!". Of course, seeing that we ran out of bands years ago.... we are still doing this....the rules of engagement have been altered so that contemporary prog bands (Say, Pendragon), glam-metal bands (RATT et al), Southern Rockers ( 38 Special etc al) hard core bands (Circle Jerks) and more were allowed if the sendee initiated the genre. Naturally we have repeated ourselves loads but if a name is sufficiently amusing and enough time has elapsed since first entered then it can be used again. My mate texted me once saying he was at the till in the supermarket when he started giggling like an eejit cos I'd just ended a text to him with "Delete Molly Hatchet"

Odin be praised! The NWOBHM lurches to 100 posts! It's lasted longer than the actual genre! Let's carry on! See if we can get to 666 posts!

Please excuse me.
I've only just worked out what NWOBHM stands for !!

*blushes*

Carry on !!

:o/

While we're discussing NWOBHM just thought I'd mention that 80s band Stampede (formed in 1981 by song-writing duo Reuben and Laurence Archer) - are reforming this year!

http://www.myspace.com/stampedeofficial

Seeing as this has been unearthed...

Does anyone recall Nightwing? They were a kind of melodic/pomp rock band that I think had been going for awhile and they also started getting a bit more press when the NWOBHM was in full swing sorta like Magnum did. I'm pretty sure I saw them as a support band a few times and kinda liked 'em but never got any albums. I was just googlin' them the other day. Now it seems their albums go for quite a lot.

ps The 'Delete' game is still going.