Metally

Lesser bands might have been put off their stride by the death of their lead singer, but not AC/DC. No sooner had Bon Scott met his whiskey-sodden end in 1980 than AC/DC recruited a new singer, Brian Johnson–who sounded almost exactly like Scott–and released, in Back in Black, the biggest-selling album of their career. For Those About to Rock…We Salute You is a suitably triumphant follow-up. The cannon-punctuated title track–the most auspicious marriage of music and artillery (more…)

essential recording
Nothing succeeds like excess–at least that’s the case with Queen’s breakthrough classic, A Night at the Opera. On one level, the title is a reference to the band’s operatic pretensions, best in evidence here on the classic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which was championed by headbangers a generation before being revived by the Wayne’s World set. Of course, A Night at the Opera was also the title of a Marx Brothers movie, and the reference isn’t lost on Queen, who seldo (more…)

Queen brought a whole new meaning to the phrase over the top. While rock & roll flamboyance stretched back at least as far as Little Richard, Freddie Mercury continued to camp it up, taking little seriously and smirking at the music’s growing pretensions while partaking in them no small bit. Many of the band’s singles hold up extremely well, such as “Killer Queen” and “You’re My Best Friend”. The quartet’s canny sense of melody and sophisticated vocal harmonies–not to mention Merc (more…)

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While not as timeless as Ride the Lightning or Master Puppets, Metallica’s debut album–originally released in 1983–is still a fine piece of thrash metal, and as good a marker as any for the debut of the genre. Fusing the rapid-fire attack of bands like Motorhead with a guitar style reminiscent of such British heavy metal bands as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, Metallica essentially created a new kind of metal. Several of the songs from this 1983 album have since become classics, i (more…)

essential recording
They’d soon crash, and hard, thanks to their own excesses. But Rocks captures Aerosmith at a crazily driven peak of creativity; anyone who heard it and continued to dismiss them as mere Stones clones was just being willful. This is blues rock cranked up to ’70s stadium level, the sound of the Trans Am, or maybe the Porsches several of these guys (surprisingly) remember driving. The psychic battering they would succumb to on the next year’s Draw the Line is fores (more…)

Sure they’re big, dumb, and obvious, but weren’t the Ramones? Isn’t Britney? (Especially Britney!) It is, after all, no mean feat to forge a bona fide rock stereotype, let alone become a self-perpetuating parody of said cliché in the bargain. Fashions may come and go, but the Scorpions still “Rock You Like a Hurricane”–and now at sporting events the nation over, no less. The material here leans heavily on the Hanover band’s ’80s prime, a period when they burnished their melodic (more…)

30 years since the formation of Husker Du and 20 years since their explosive demise and the subsequent release of his first lauded solo effort Workbook – called a “masterpiece” by critics- Bob Mould is marking anniversaries with an album filled with self-reflection and an unflinching examination of the world around him. Standouts like “Wasted World” and “I’mSorry Baby, But You Can t Stand in My Light Anymore” highlight an artist completing a cycle decades in the making, his talent (more…)

Though the songs aren’t quite as good as those on Ritual De Lo Habitual, this album is much more consistent, with a heavy rock-funk-punk mix that’s a pleasure to hear. The slower songs (especially “Summertime Rolls” and “Jane Says”) work well, while the up-tempo material–in particular the closer “Pig’s in Zen”–is both catchy and ambitious. It’s a fine album overall, and if the band’s Zeppelin-ward aspirations don’t quite work, their music is still quite good in its own right. –G (more…)

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