Author: wamdiness

Lifting its title from that of a Jack Kerouac novel in which the Beat Generation author documented his growing disenchantment with Buddhism, Bad Company’s fifth album found the blues-rock giants running out of inspiration somewhat, their muscular meat-and-veg moves (which on the first three albums had splendidly transcended their limitations) carried solely by Paul Rodgers’s voice, which was itself going through the motions.

A last-ditch attempt to at least try to move the band’s music forward a notch (even the band thought 1977’s Burning Sky wasn’t very good), the material was more mature and less raw than before.

The use of a guitar-synth, giving a suggestion of freshness to opening salvo Rock’n’Roll Fantasy, is retrospectively hailed as radical, but overall this sounds like a band out of time, treading water in hobnail boots. They’d taken a “tax year” out; punk had happened. Gone Gone Gone has a certain rock-to-drive-to momentum, as does Evil Wind. Oh Atlanta has charm by association since Alison Krauss reinvented it in 1995. The ballads want to hint at plaintive gospel, but stall at plain-clothes Godspell. Burn-out had begun.

The album also contained their first hit single (in the US, but not the UK) for three years in Rock’n’Roll Fantasy. As a result, the album took the band back into the US Top 5 and the UK Top 10.

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Other albums released in March 1979

• Roxy Music – Manifesto
• Frank Zappa – Sheik Yerbouti
• Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Angel Station
• The Only Ones – Even Serpents Shine
• Eddie and the Hot Rods – Thriller
• Chrome – Half Machine Lip Moves
• Motörhead – Overkill
• The Beach Boys – L.A.
• Van Halen – Van Halen II
• Ian Hunter – You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic 
• Supertramp – Breakfast in America
• Triumph – Just a Game
• Magazine – Secondhand Daylight
• Badfinger – Airwaves
• U.K. – Danger Money
• The Tubes – Remote Control
• Bachman–Turner Overdrive – Rock n’ Roll Nights

What they said…

“By the time Bad Company released Desolation Angels, it was evident that even Rodgers and Ralphs were getting tired of their ’70s-styled, conveyor-belt brand of rock & roll, so they decided to add keyboards and some minor string work to the bulk of the tracks. Although this change of musical scenery was a slight breath of fresh air, it wasn’t enough to give Desolation Angels the much-added depth or distinction that was intended.” (AllMusic)

“This is supposedly a return to form after Burning Sky, and it may be. I’ll just say that if I’d never mistake them for Free anymore, I’d never mistake them for Foreigner either. I don’t think. P.S. Are those syndrums on Evil Wind? Naughty, naughty.” (Robert Christgau)

“Bad Company’s small, honest breakthrough does make them credible and even sympathetic at a time when either the post-boogie puffery of Foreigner, Styx, Kansas et al., or the austere aggressiveness of punk would seem to have rendered their second-generation hard rock all but obsolete. Instead, Bad Company has found salvation, inspiration and balls in utter desolation. (Rolling Stone)

What you said…

Mike Canoe: Hmmm…I’m not not a Bad Company fan but it’s been hard to get excited about Desolation Angels. Aside from radio mainstays, Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy and Gone, Gone, Gone, the only song that raises my pulse is the Paul Rodgers-penned Evil Wind. There’s an easygoing shuffle to the rest of the album that’s too easygoing for my ears. Aside from the three songs I mentioned above, nothing is as interesting as the story that’s told by the sublime Hipgnosis album cover.

Gary Claydon: I always found it difficult to get excited about Bad Company. Not that I dislike them, it’s just that, in comparison to Free’s earthier and downright sexier blues rock, Bad Company were always a bit too smooth, a bit too polished, a bit too, well, 𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦. Which pretty much sums up Desolation Angels. Never been convinced it was an actual return to form, either but coming after the low point of Burning Sky it couldn’t help but seem that way.

No, Desolation Angels is what I’d call ‘serviceable’. Mid-tempo, bluesy AOR that neither reaches any heights or plumbs any depths. Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy, Gone, Gone, Gone and Evil Wind are all decent enough. Lyrically, it shares an air of melancholy with the novel that gives it its title but there is a distinct feeling of sameness about it all.

Bottom line, I think the band had run out of ideas by this point and the glory days of the first three albums were well behind them. Desolation Angels saw some reasonable chart action in the UK but I strongly suspect this was down to the existing, sizable (and loyal) fan base. I’d be amazed if they were picking up any new fans at the time, especially given that the musical landscape had shifted in a way that, in 1979, made Bad Company something of an anachronism.

Adam Ranger: A well-produced album with great playing and great vocals (as an aside, outside of rock circles, I never really felt Paul Rodgers got the kudos he deserved as one of the great rock vocalists).

This is a solid album with some great tracks, some nodding to Free including my favourite, Oh Atlanta. There are some nice riff-driven tunes such as Gone Gone Gone and Earth Wind. Lonely For Your Love harks back to earlier albums with its shout-out chorus.

However, some of the tunes are perhaps a bit bland such as the single Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy. A solid album – possibly the last consistently good Bad Company record – but it lacks the edge of those first three albums and doesn’t really have any memorable tracks. The album ends well with the choral crescendo of She Brings Me Love.

Greg Schwepe: Right now on any Midwest U.S. FM classic rock station, you can probably hear something from this week’s selection; Bad Company’s Desolation Angels. And if not from that album, anything from their other releases. And why is that? It’s because Bad Company are the epitome and definition of “classic rock.” Memorable songs, vibe, attitude, swagger, and a band that seems to be a bunch of amicable guys. Plus, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone saying “Man, I don’t like Bad Company and they’re a bunch of jerks.” Of the drawerful of band t-shirts I own, my Bad Company shirt gets the most comments out of any other; “Wow… cool shirt, I love Bad Company!” Not kidding.

Which brings us to Desolation Angels. While not their swan song on Swan Song, in hindsight, it appeared to be their last decent album. Sandwiched between Burnin’ Sky and Rough Diamonds, this is the meat in the sandwich. Burnin’ Sky might be an example of a band on their way down, then Rough Diamonds is an example of a band on their way out. Those two albums are not the ones a Bad Company fan would pull out to play first.

And so, you open Desolation Angels with yes, a classic rock anthem in Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy. Again, you’ve heard this on the radio a million times and you probably never tire of it, right? Great singable lyrics, great mood; kind of exemplifies everything we like about rock’n’roll.

Crazy Circles follows with an acoustic vibe, not unlike Seagull from their debut. Bad Company show they aren’t all muscular sing-along rock.

But the main riff of Gone, Gone, Gone shows they can be muscular sing-along rock. Might actually be my favorite song on the album. Evil Wind follows and shows why Mick Ralphs is underrated as a guitar player. Tons of memorable riffs and licks. I mean tons.

Over the whole album you have the vocals of Paul Rodgers, arguably one of the best in the pantheon of rock vocalists. He can bring it down a little (Early In The Morning), belt it out (Lonely For Your Love), or bring that steady warm vibe (Oh, Atlanta). And let’s not forget the solid drumming of Simon Kirke and bass of Boz Burrell, who also penned a few tracks on this album.

For the average music fan who does not own every Bad Company album in existence, Desolation Angels is probably the one they own. This got massive radio airplay and kind of brought them back to the consciousness of the average music fan. It had a buzz at the time.

I first got to see Bad Company on this tour in September of 1979. Several years ago, I attended “Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp” (see? Even Bad Company and that song kind of influenced this!) and one of the camp counsellors was none other than Simon Kirke. During the day, I was able to get my picture taken with him and have him autograph my copy of Desolation Angels.

The irony goes a little further as all campers were given a list of three songs to learn for the “audition” part of the day when they pair you with other campers so the camp counsellors could then “draft” their bands. One of the three songs was…yes, you guessed it… Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy and I got to perform that with Simon Kirke and other counsellors sitting in the audience (Night Ranger’s Kelly Keagy took the vocals on that one!). 8 out of 10 for me on this one that is a favourite for many reasons!

Philip Qvist: I think you can easily split the six albums from the classic Bad Company lineup into two groups; mainly their first three records, which were pretty much flawless, and then their final three, which had their fair share of flaws. That’s not to say that they were bad albums, even Rough Diamonds has its rather good moments, but they all lack something that Bad Company or Straight Shooter brought to the party.

And that neatly brings us onto Desolation Angels. It starts off on a strong note with the guitar and synthesizer-driven, Paul Rodgers-penned Rock ‘n’ Fantasy, it carries on with Crazy Circles, before we get to the rather good, if somewhat rare, Boz Burrell composition Gone, Gone, Gone, with Evil Wind and Early In The Morning finishing off a more than decent Side One.

However, the momentum starts slipping on Side Two, with Mick Ralphs’ Oh, Atlanta being the only real highlight – complete with strong harmonica playing from, I assume, Paul Rodgers. Although there are no stinkers on this side, the songs lack something to make them stand out.

By all accounts at the time, the constant grind of recording and touring was getting to Bad Co and it shows here. As I hinted at the start, this is not a bad record – but it is nowhere near as good as their first three albums, far less Free classics like Fire And Water or Heartbreaker. It’s a decent 7 from me this week.

John Davidson: I bought this on release and liked it well enough at the time, but other than Rock ‘n’ roll Fantasy it’s not an album that has stuck in my memory.

It would be harsh to call this corporate rock, but it’s definitely verging on dad rock – there’s not a hint of danger, edge or adventure in either the playing or the production. Instead, it’s well-crafted, professionally played blues-rock.

Side one features the better songs. The first four have a groove to them that invites the listener to sing along. Early In The Morning signals a change of pace to balladry – It’s a good song with some fine guitar work and along with closer She Brings Me Love seems to find an emotional connection.

Side Two follows the same template as side one. The songs are only so-so – though and listening to Rhythm Machine is like remembering your 16-year-old self watch your parents dance at a wedding.

Keith Jenkin: Solid album with plenty of variety that sounds much better away from the more energetic UK trends of the time it was released, like New Wave and the resurgence of Heavy Metal. As others have said, the band were already probably never going to top the first three albums, but while America embraced this one on the back of opener Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy“, in the UK it was overlooked and sold pretty poorly. Fast forward 45 years, and listeners looking for a good collection filler could do far worse than checking out or revisiting this very enjoyable classic rock record.

Final score: 7.22 (50 votes cast, total score 361)

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An enigma, a recluse, a sensitive artist who shies away from the limelight. Few people get close enough to get to know the real Kate Bush. But veteran music journalist Harry Doherty did – and he became her confidant throughout her early career. In 2005, as Bush prepared to release Aerial, her first album in 13 years, Doherty looked back on his friendship with the singer as she was poised to make her breakthrough in the late 1970s.

If there is one thing that can be said with absolute certainty about Kate Bush, it’s that she has never wavered from her determination to maintain control of her career, both creatively and professionally.

Back in 1978, when I first interviewed her just after the release of the debut single, Wuthering Heights, which immediately launched her career into orbit, she said: “You see people who are into the glamour and ego of it and not the work. It has nothing to do with ego. Music is like being a bank clerk; it’s still work, only on a different channel of energy.”

Nice work if you can get it, most people would agree – especially when Kate’s ‘job’ allows her the luxury of being able to leave 12 years (sufficient time for many artists to have a few hits and then disappear) between the release of her previous album (The Red Shoes, in 1993) and finishing her new one, Aerial. Not that she’s been working a regular nine-to-five on the new album, of course. Even so, it’s been a long time coming, and another long, long wait for her fans

Finally, with the release of Aerial, we see that she has been busy. But the 70 minutes of understated power, ecstasy, verve and creative ambition that that record represents is just the summary of her industry. It would be at least equally interesting to know what music she dismissed along the way, before finally deciding that the music on Aerial is what she wants people to hear; that this is where Kate Bush stands musically today.

Don’t be deceived by the apparent innocence of Kate Bush. Her aura might be one of peace, love and understanding – and indeed that is probably the genuine backbone of her personality – but over the years she has learned to apply layers of tough veneer to protect and insulate herself and her private life from the world outside her ‘inner circle’.

The Kate Bush who breezed into the interview room at EMI Records back in 1978, all politeness and wide-eyed wonderment, had the air of a singer destined for one-hit wonderdom. However, once she started talking about her music, her plans, her ambitions… even at that spring dawn of her career, you soon sensed that here was someone destined for greatness.

With Wuthering Heights, her startling, singular voice – which people either loved or loathed; there was no indifference – threw her into the spotlight and under the gaze of a whole nation. Within days of its release, everyone in Britain was aware of Kate Bush – or at least ‘that voice’, and its startling, wailing delivery of the name ‘Heathcliff’. Kate was on her way.

Kate Bush’s self-belief was instilled with the unstinting support of a solid family. A very musical family, they specialised in English and Irish traditional music and playing local folk clubs. I think that’s why Kate and I got on well from the start. I was a novice feature writer on Melody Maker then, as much as she was a kid in wonder at making a career out of music (Plus, I was a raw Irish man barely off the boat, and got on with her Ma quite well).

As a result, over the interviews that we conducted over the next few years, in her family home, recording studios, EMI boardrooms, video sets, we seemed to be growing together. I wanted her to succeed. She wanted me to see her succeed. And she wanted me to succeed too. I launched a music magazine once and asked her to the launch. The magazine was Metal Hammer – not Kate’s sort of thing. The launch party would be in the New Orleans Jazz Café in Beak Street, Soho. Kate wouldn’t go to the party so she arranged a private lunch in the same venue the day before; just me and her in a corner, putting the world to rights.

The young Kate never performed outside the confines of her home, but learning the piano at the age of 11, she quickly found that she could write her own songs. She quit school at 16 with 10 O-Levels, with a particular affinity for English and Music. “The reason I left was that I felt I could do something more in tune with my purpose – music,” she explained. This she was able to do with the help of an inheritance of an aunt who died. The money gave Kate the security to become her own boss and follow her own mind.

At one time, just before leaving school, she had an ambition to become either a psychiatrist or a social worker. Both careers made sense to her as an alternative to her first love: “I guess it’s the thinking bit,” she told me, “trying to communicate with people and help them out, the emotional aspect. It’s so sad to see good, nice people emotionally upset when they could be so happy.

“The reason I chose those sort of things is that they are, in a way, the things I do with music. When I write songs I really like to explore the mental area, the emotional values. Although in a way you can say that being a psychiatrist is more purposeful than writing music, in many ways it isn’t, because a lot of people take a great deal of comfort from music. I know I do.

“It’s very much a therapeutic thing, not only for me. If [people] let it into their ears, that is all I can ask for. And if they think about it afterwards or during it, that is even more fantastic. There are so many writers and so many messages, to be chosen out of all of them is something very special. The messages are things that maybe could help people, like observing the situation where an emotional game is being played, and maybe making people think about it again.”

It was March 1978 when Kate Bush said those things. At that point she had released just one single (albeit a very successful chart topper). Her debut album, The Kick Inside, was just about to released. And here she was, making statements that are as pertinent to her work today as at any time during her career.

Her label, EMI, must have caught the sweet smell of future success in the air. Later that year with the release of her second album, 1978’s Lionheart, they pushed the boat out and rented a castle near Amsterdam for the album launch party. The next morning (for most party guests, a very hangover-blurred one), Kate and members of her family flew back to London by private plane to attend an awards ceremony, where she picked up the award for best female singer, voted for by Melody Maker. It was the first of what would be the many awards she collected throughout her career.

After that it was straight back into the studio to continue work on her third album. When asked when the new record would be out, she answered with great certainty: “I don’t know. When it’s ready – and that won’t be for a while yet.” It wouldn’t be the only time during her career that she would say something would be ready “when it’s ready”. No matter that her record company or whoever else might be leaning over her shoulder, trying to hurry things along.

In the studio, too, she was starting to take control. “I knew what I was talking about in the studio. I knew what I should hear,” she explained. “The reaction to me explaining what I wanted in the studio was amusement, to a certain extent. They were all taking the piss out of me a bit.”

Kate was insecure then and I guess that she saw an ally in myself. Rock critics even then weren’t the best of friends… and she had precious few. Lionheart wasn’t the greatest of albums, but we both knew she was on the road to something more significant, and that formed the nucleus of many of our discussions. All she needed was a bit of faith. That came from her family, few friends, band and odd cynical critic, like my good self.

She was acutely aware of the danger of being pigeon-holed, and mindful of the problems it could create: “If you can get away with it and keep changing, great. I think it should be done, because in that way you’ll always have people chasing after you trying to find out what you’re doing. And, anyway, if you know what’s coming next, what’s the point? If I really wanted to, I guess I could write a song that would be so similar to Wuthering Heights. But I don’t. What’s the point? I’d rather write a song that was really different, that I liked, although it might not get anywhere.”

Not only was Kate exposing her penchant for musical exploration rather than standing still, she was also displaying sheer bloody-mindedness along the way. With the track Oh England, My Lionheart, she was expecting a barrage of criticism because of the blatant soppiness of the lyrics. Her reasons for writing the song were simple enough: she had always liked composer Benjamin Britten’s setting of William Blake’s poem Jerusalem (‘And did those feet, in ancient times/Walk upon England’s mountains green’), and thought a contemporary song proclaiming the romantic beauty of England should be written.

“A lot of people could easily say that the song is soppy,” she said of Oh England, My Lionheart in the aftermath of it receiving some severe criticism. “It’s very classically done. It’s only got acoustic instruments on it and it’s done… almost madrigally, you know? I dare say a lot of people will think that it’s just a load of old slush, but it’s just an area that I think it’s good to cover. Everything I do is very English, and I think that’s one reason I’ve broken through to a lot of countries. The English vibe is very appealing.”

Later she’d go on to embrace the Irish heritage that runs through her family on her mother’s side, and which further enriched her music.

Kate was astonished from an early stage that her record company first of all allowed her to have such a say over her music, and, ultimately, control over her career. Then again, she was very insistent that she should be involved in every facet of her career, to the point where from the very start, at the age of just 17, she had almost been self-managed, with help from friends and family.

“I’ve always had an attitude about managers,” she confessed. “Unless they’re really needed, they just confuse matters. I often think that generally they’re more of a hindrance than a help.”

Strangely, especially for someone so young, the pressure and intimidating newness of the music business hadn’t upset her at all, and she revealed shyly that she somehow felt she had been through it all before: “I wonder if it has to do with the concept of time in some way, in that everything you do you’ve done before.”

If anyone wanted or needed confirmation that the Kate Bush bandwagon had a unique engine, revolutionary design and wheels to last, they need not have looked any further than 1980’s Never For Ever, an album brimming with musical inventiveness and provocative lyrics.

By then Kate was sitting comfortably and firmly in the driving seat. The three singles from that record, Breathing, Babooshka and Army Dreamers that confirmed her ear for the commercial without compromising her art. The entire album was a joy.

Kate Bush might have been enigmatic, but she was also desperate to share her music with just about anyone willing to listen without prejudice. “I’m reaching people that have maybe had a totally different life from me and are well ahead of me in many standards, but yet they’re accepting me,” she told me around that time. “A lot of older people won’t listen to pop music because they have a biased idea of what it is. And that’s wrong, because a lot of them would really get into some of the music that’s around; it’s not all punk. And if you can get music to them that they like, then you’re achieving something. You’re getting into people’s homes who have been shut off from that sort of music for years. They’re into their Bach: ‘Bach is wonderful, but I don’t like that pop music.’ Maybe they do, but they’re never given the option. They’re always given the music that people think they like.

“I’d really like to think that there is no age barrier, because that’s a shame. I’d like to think that there’s a message in my music for everyone. That’s the greatest reward I could get – to get different people getting into different tracks. It really means a lot to think that I’m not just hitting on an area that may be just identified with me; that people are actually identifying with what the songs are about.”

She needed to be good in the studio, because by the time Never For Ever was released she had made a subconscious decision to quit touring. It was almost unheard of that an artist just three albums into their career should dismiss what was seen as a vital marketing tool. Only The Beatles had done it successfully before.

“I don’t know how I’ll cope with touring,” she said shortly before she was due to go on the road. The only tour she had done Kate Bush ever did was the 24-date Lionheart tour – aka The Tour Of Life – in 1979.

It was a stupendous effort, with Kate determined to take her whole repertoire to the boards – not just the music, but also dance and theatrics. Such was the scope of the elaborate and highly ambitious production that, almost inevitably, it wasn’t without fault, and was decidedly patchy in places. As an event, however, those rare live performances still stand as some of the highlights in the history of live contemporary music.

Despite that, Kate felt and looked vulnerable performing live. It wouldn’t take much, one felt, to put her off performing live altogether. She was devastated when her lighting director, Bill Duffield, tragically died after falling through a trapdoor at the Palladium. After that tour it seemed that she had made an unspoken decision never to repeat the experience.

It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that her decision to cease touring was concluded with the knowledge that the scale of the production she would have demanded would have taken an important part of her plan out of her control. Kate thrives in a family environment, and touring would have meant adopting an extended family, which she was not prepared to do.

Which could explain why, since then, she has thrown herself into working in the studio, and maintained an intensely private life. Ultimately, as she has always done, Kate Bush answers to no one but herself.

“There was only a struggle within myself,” she said in one of our interviews. “But even if your work is so important to you, it’s not actually your life, it’s only part of your life. So if your work goes, you’re still a human being, you’re still living; you can always get a job in Woolworth’s or something.

“I suppose I would find it very hard to let go, because for me it’s the only thing that I’m here to do. I don’t really know what else I could do that I would be particularly good at. I think you can kid yourself into destiny. I have never done another job. It’s a little frightening, because it’s the only thing I’ve really explored, but then again, so many things are similar; they all tie in. I really feel that what I’m doing is what everyone else is doing in their jobs. It’s really sad that pressures are put on some musicians. It’s essential for them to be human beings, because that’s where all the creativity comes from, and if it’s taken away from them and everybody starts kneeling and kissing their feet and that, they’re gonna grow in the wrong areas.”

I put it to her that the majority of people associate being a star with material gains. “But it’s wrong,” she countered. “The only reason that you get such material gains from it is because it’s so media-oriented. If it wasn’t, you’d get the same as a plumber.”

In one of our earlier meetings she’d laid out a worldview that, in hindsight, went some way to unlocking the career that followed.

“I worry that it’s going to burn out, because I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” she had said. “For me it’s just the beginning. I’m on a completely different learning process now. I’ve climbed one wall, and now I’ve got another 15 to climb. And to keep going while you’re in such demand is very hard. It would be different if I had stayed unknown, because then it would be progressing.”

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 87

Harry Doherty began his career at the Derry Journal in Ireland before moving to London in the mid-1970s, relaunching his career as a music journalist and writing extensively for the Melody Maker. Later he became editor of Metal Hammer and founded the video magazine, Hard’n’Heavy. He also wrote the official Queen biography 40 Years Of Queen, published in 2011 to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary. He died in 2014.

Is it summer yet? A quick glance outside certainly suggests to the contrary, but we can’t help but pine for sunny days as this summer stacks up with massive gigs from Black Sabbath, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins, Cradle Of Filth and maybe even Slayer, not to mention the usual hectic schedule of summer festivals.

Festivals that will offer us a chance to discover brilliant new music, of course! Much as we did last month, we’ve got you covered when it comes to discovering new music, this month bringing you twinkling prog metal from Denmark’s Danefae, crushing deathcore from Paleface Swiss, concept-driven metalcore from Texans Cantervice and rising UK alt metal stars Vower.

In our massive playlist below, you can listen to the latest releases from all of these bands and learn a little bit more about them by scrolling down. Happy listening – and have an excellent month!

Danefae

Danefae formed in 2019 at the Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium, a Danish music conservatory. But unlike their peers, who were inclined towards jazz and pop, they united over a love for prog metal and experimental sounds, drawing on the likes of Haken, Dream Theater and Tool.

Vocalist Anne Olesen’s Kate Bush/Björk sylph-like voice perfectly underpins the band’s blend of pastoral and ominous guitarwork, ethereal melody and disconcerting piano to create a dynamic, unsettling atmosphere. “I played a lot of classical piano as a kid,” Anne says. “It’s a way to keep my origin.”

Danefae’s 2022 debut album, Tro, blended folkish elements with prog to create compositions that were gorgeous and immersive, if only metal-adjacent at times. Their second album, Trøst (Danish for ‘comfort’), delves into prog metal in haunting, distinctly Scandinavian fashion.

“We composed a lot of the songs in a summer house deep in the woods in Jutland listening to Opeth’s Blackwater Park,” explains guitarist Anders Mogensen. “That very dark, Nordic vibe resonated.”

Although the band can speak English, they sing in Danish, Anne joking that early attempts at writing in English were “so bad I’ve been forbidden!” That doesn’t stop their music being devastating at times. Trøst centrepiece P.S. Far er død – translated as ‘P.S. Dad is dead’ – is a vivid, 12-minute journey through grief, written about the passing of Anne’s grandfather. ‘Men ingen krop kan vare evigt ved / Tynde arme slipper over tid,’ she sings. Translated into English, that’s ‘But no body can last forever / Thin arms let go over time.’

“The more ill you get and the less you eat, the weaker you get,” Anne recalls sadly. “The thin arms gave me a very bleak feeling.”

“The music gets sonically heavy, but also it’s meant to convey heavy feelings,” Anders says. “It really perpetuates that terrible feeling of not knowing your place in the world.” Brian Aberback

Trøst is out now.

Sounds Like: An otherworldly, prog-metal planet with ominous sonic vibrations
For Fans Of: Opeth, Haken, Myrkur
Listen To: P.S. Far er død

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Cantervice

Part nu metal fantasy, part steely-eyed social commentary, Zero Hour is a warning, according to Cantervice’s Robert Matlock. The debut album from the Dallas, Texas band takes inspiration from dystopian cinema like Blade Runner, cutting it with the industrial might of Rammstein and the raw emotion of Linkin Park, all to explore a concept where the media is used to spread hate, divide and control. Sound familiar?

It’s a reflection of the world around us, but the project’s been a long time coming. Robert first began toying with the idea of Cantervice in 2015, after stints in local metalcore bands. It’s only when he met a producer who understood his vision (Evan McKeever) that things began falling into place. The creeping, menacing The Machine was released in 2022, with the crunching Void following shortly afterwards. “I didn’t think any of this stuff would actually resonate, it was just an outlet for how frustrated I was feeling,” Robert admits.

But both tracks racked up hundreds of thousands of streams, and Robert knew he had to finish the story with an album. The end result is a modern twist on 00s aggression, with moments of serenity, hope and beauty designed to offer a light in the dark. “With everything going on in the world right now, I wanted to put out some positivity,” he says.

Zero Hour’s sci-fi story is grounded in humanity, and there’s already talk of a second album that’ll delve deeper into the personal cost of dystopian living. “It’s nostalgic, because of who we’re inspired by, but people are turning to aggressive music and really starting to resonate with the themes we’re talking about,” says Robert of their success. “It’s all about making a difference. We want to weaponise curiosity.” Ali Shutler

Zero Hour is out now via Fixt.

Sounds Like: Dystopian cinema raging against the machine
For Fans Of: Bring Me The Horizon, Linkin Park, Spiritbox
Listen To: The Masquerade

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Paleface Swiss

Paleface Swiss had one hell of a 2024. The band, who formed in Zurich, Switzerland in 2017, had already built a loyal following with two EPs (2018’s Chapter 1: From The Gallows and 2019’s Chapter 2: Witch King) and two albums (2020’s Chapter 3: The Last Selection and 2022’s Fear & Dagger), but things kicked off dramatically last year. Not only did they earn a rep for almost comically heavy breakdowns, but their chaotic, corrosive blend of deathcore, hardcore, nu metal and thrash, with maniacal vocals from Marc ‘Zelli’ Zellweger, won them comparisons to early Slipknot.

“It’s a huge honour, honestly,” says Marc. “We don’t want to copycat everything they’re doing, but if 30- to 40-year-old people are saying, ‘When I was young, the fucking Slipknot self-titled came out and now I feel the same [listening to Paleface Swiss] as I did back then’, that’s unbelievable.”

The band only started playing gigs in 2022, but are already known for their out-of-control performances. Since they announced their UK tour for February/March, all of the venues have been upgraded due to demand, and it’s not hard to see why. Just check out a video of them orchestrating an obscene wall of death at last year’s Resurrection Festival, or whipping up crowds at Sick New World in Las Vegas. On their US headlining tour last year, there was no support band, just an extreme wrestling match… with Marc as referee.

“They slammed each other through the table, and I took away the shirt from the referee and pinned them down,” he says with glee. “The crowd went nuts.”

2025 is already shaping up to be another big one. The band just released their killer third album, Cursed, and will play the main stage at Bloodstock this summer. “Every show is about pushing to the limit, as if it’s a workout,” says Marc. “I think the people can feel that.” Dannii Leivers

Cursed is out now via Blood Blast. Paleface Swiss are on tour in the UK now and return to play Bloodstock Festival in August. For the full list of dates, visit their official website.

Sounds Like: The off-the-rails energy of vintage Slipknot with a modern twist
For Fans Of: Slipknot, Thrown, Malevolence
Listen To: Hatred

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Vower

Vower’s music can’t be pigeonholed. The British five-piece – whose members formerly played in beloved cult bands Toska, Black Peaks and Palm Reader – write anthemic metal songs with an intellectual twist. Their choruses are moreish and their breakdowns beefy, yet they’re framed by intricate riffing and off-kilter drums.

“The phrase that we chucked around at the start was ‘big riffs, large hooks’,” laughs guitarist Rabea Massaad. “But also, I really, personally love pushing the boat out with instrumentation and arrangement.”

Vower started in 2021. Shortly after his prog trio Toska split, Rabea began jamming with drummer Liam Kearley, whose own band Black Peaks had just called it quits too. Guitarist Joe Gosney, also ex-Black Peaks, and bassist Rory McLean, Rabea’s friend of 15 years, soon joined. All they needed was a frontman.

“Joe was on tour with Palm Reader and mentioned in passing that we were looking for a singer,” remembers Rabea. “Josh [McKeown] raised his hand.”

It was fortuitous timing, as Palm Reader were on the cusp of breaking up as well. “From the outside, it does look like I sacked off Palm Reader for Vower,” Josh admits. “But me and my partner had just had a baby girl. That was the biggest contributor to Palm Reader ending.”

Given their pedigree, Vower’s debut single, Shroud, was met with curiosity and excitement on release in April 2024. That hype snowballed with EP Apricity’s arrival that July, alongside some summer festival slots, and the band went on to sell out their first headline shows at London’s The Dome and The Lower Third that December.

“It’s still blowing our minds, the response and the growth,” says Josh. “It doesn’t even feel like we’re at the crest of the wave! There’s still so many people discovering us on a daily basis, and it’s kind of jaw-dropping.” Matt Mills

Apricity is out now. Vower play ArcTanGent in August.

Sounds Like: Fiercely catchy metal songs, built off the back of experimental ideas
For Fans Of: Thrice, Black Peaks, Palm Reader
Listen To: Shroud

Staff writer for Metal Hammer, Rich has never met a feature he didn’t fancy, which is just as well when it comes to covering everything rock, punk and metal for both print and online, be it legendary events like Rock In Rio or Clash Of The Titans or seeking out exciting new bands like Nine Treasures, Jinjer and Sleep Token. 

Despite both sides insisting it would never happen, Judas Priest reunited with former singer Rob Halford in 2003 after 13 years apart. The following year, Classic Rock caught up with Halford, plus guitarist Glenn Tipton and KK Downing (who left in 2011) on the road in Spain to talk splits, reunions and their then-upcoming comeback album Angel Of Retribution.

Rob Halford almost died at his final gig as Judas Priest vocalist on August 19, 1991 – and not because the other four members gave him a severe kicking when they’d learned of his decision to quit after 18 years as frontman, either.

Halford’s near-death experience occurred during a show at the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada: the final stop on a tour called Operation Rock’N’Roll. Priest were sharing the bill with co-headliner Alice Cooper, and were on the promotion trail for their then-new album, Painkiller. But notwithstanding that record’s title, it was still a surprise to see Halford mainlining Nurofen after Hell Bent For Leather, the opening song of the set.

As Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton explains: “We were running late, and suddenly we heard our intro tape running while were still in the dressing-room. So we rushed out on to the stage in a bit of a panic, and loads and loads of dry ice was blowing about. The crew were supposed to have raised a stairway in front of the drum riser, to allow Rob to ride out on his Harley Davidson and start the show.”

Tipton winces as he continues: “But the timing went wrong and the stairs were only halfway up. So Rob popped the clutch and roared along, came out from underneath the riser and then collided with the bottom rung of the stairway. The stairs hit him straight on the nose and he fell backwards off his bike. He was so lucky; he could have been killed. Thank God his motorbike didn’t end up in the audience.

“The rest of us started playing the opening number, not knowing what had happened. There was so much smoke that I actually stepped on Rob while he was unconscious, and I thought: ‘What’s this in the centre of the stage, some kind of Priest prop?’ And it was Rob. He was stunned.”

Halford was out for three minutes, but the crew revived him and patched him up, and he finished the show – albeit with a plaster on the bridge of his busted hooter. He was later taken to hospital, where he was treated for concussion.

Halford officially left the band nine months later, but it’s ironic to hear Tipton say that he’d mistaken Rob’s KO’d body for a ‘Priest prop’ – because cynics might say that’s exactly what the band lumbered themselves with, when they appointed Halford’s replacement: Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, an American from Akron, Ohio. His previous experience? He sang in a Judas Priest tribute band called British Steel.

Fast-forward to 2004, and Judas Priest are still extremely accident-prone. It deep into night time in Barcelona, and, but the window of Classic Rock’s top-floor room at the city’s Hilton hotel is still hot to the touch after a scorching summer’s day. Looking out, there’s an orange haze in the air that hangs over the nearby Avinguda Diagonal highway, and extends right up to where some wooded half-mountains meet the sky several miles away. The haze is being caused by batteries of fireworks that are being detonated in celebration of an ongoing Spanish fiesta.

The explosions continue into the wee small hours, and this writer finds himself wondering idly if Judas Priest – who are in town to play a gig the following night – might just be joining in the party with a little preparatory pyrotechnic testing of their own…

It’s not far from the truth, as Halford reveals the next morning: “I let off a firework last night and it went into this homeless person’s sleeping bag. There’s this big festival going on here in Spain, you see, so we bought some fireworks ourselves and we found a little park outside our hotel where we could let them off.

“So me and Ian [Hill, Priest bassist] sat this big rocket down on the grass and lit the blue touchpaper. But unfortunately the rocket fell over and started shooting off all these fucking sparks and explosions… And then we heard this scream. The firework had gone sideways, and it hit this homeless person who was trying to have a kip on a bench – there were flames all over the place, and his sleeping bag was reduced to ashes. We went back to the hotel thinking the police would arrive…”

Classic Rock is in Spain to celebrate Halford’s reinstatement in Priest’s line-up, some 13 years after that ill-fated show in Toronto. At the time of our Iberian visit, the band are in the middle of a lightning trek through mainland Europe, dubbed the ‘Reunited’ tour. Later, they are set to decamp to the States to play the Ozzfest with Black Sabbath. Priest have only played live with the Sabs once before: way back at the very start of the 70s, at the Masonic Hall in Aberwelle Street, Walsall. The gig was so long ago that neither Rob Halford nor Glenn Tipton had yet joined the Priesthood.

“I remember that show well – it was before electricity and when Al Atkins was singing in the band. It was the first and only time that we shared a stage with Sabbath,” recalls Priest guitarist KK Downing. “And After a long period of estrangement the classic Priest line-up began re-establishing personal and professional relationships back in early 2000, along the way sparking a spate of reunion rumours. Events came to a head at a business meeting a year later, when Halford, Downing and Tipton got together to discuss the retro contents of the Electric Eye DVD and Metalogy multi-CD box set, released in November 2003 and May 2004 resoectively.

The three talked of Priest times gone by as they delved into their epic back catalogue and scanned their endearingly cheesy early videos. And, slowly but surely, old differences were put to rest. Nevertheless, by July 2003 – when it was officially announced that Halford had been reinstalled in Priest – there still appeared to be lingering resentment. As KK Downing told Classic Rock at the time: “Rob Halford is lucky we gave him another chance.”

Two years earlier, KK had been even more vehement when he told us: “Everybody in this band categorically believes that Rob Halford should never sing with us again – he doesn’t deserve it.”

So, what the hell changed?

“Well, nothing really,” shrugs Halford. “I read that story where Ken [KK] said I didn’t deserve to be in the band. And that’s great, that’s healthy emotion – Ken never holds anything back; he tells you what’s on his mind and I love him for that.”

Today, Downing prefers to make light of the situation: “Yes, I admit I said that Rob should be glad he’s back,” he smiles. “But we should be happy as well, and the fans should be ecstatic too, because it’s all about the music and the fans.

“Anyone who’s been in a serious relationship – wives, girlfriends, whatever it is… Doesn’t it always get nasty in the end? It does, doesn’t it? Unknown forces surround the individuals concerned, a few knives get stuck in here and there – and before you know it, it’s out of control.”

Halford says there wasn’t a single particular event that sparked his departure: “There were just a lot of emotions going around – plus we’d just had that horrific thing in Reno [the 1990 court case in Nevada where Priest were accused of causing two boys to commit suicide because of hidden subliminal messages in a song from their 1978 Stained Class album] which we were still getting over…”

Downing adds: “It was sad that everything came to a head on the ‘Painkiller’ tour, because the band were really doing well. We were on a high, I thought, and now Painkilller has probably become one of the most acclaimed heavy metal albums of all time. People saw us falling apart and they couldn’t quite grasp it. It was like: ‘What are these idiots doing?’ But it was out of our control.”

“A lot the best bands have a bit of niggle,” offers Tipton. “Like Townshend and Daltrey in The Who, or Jagger and Richards in The Rolling Stones, or Blackmore and Gillan in Deep Purple… Me and Rob and Ken, we’ve had our share of arguments; there’s been months when we haven’t spoken to each other. But it’s that spark, it’s that tension – you don’t want yes-men in a band, you want characters. You’ve got to have fallings out; you’ve got to have a spark of temper in there. That’s what really generates the excitement in a lot of classic bands. You’ve got to have conflict – and once you get it under control you’re up and running.”

Halford’s Priest homecoming has been welcomed unilaterally, even though doubts remain about the motivation behind the move. The band won’t be drawn on rumours that the only way to entice Rob back was to offer him a 50 per cent cut of future earnings. Glenn Tipton will only say that business matters have been worked out “satisfactorily”.

Downing elaborates: “Rob had been operating out of the States while we had maintained our business interests in the UK, so we had to amalgamate and get everything sorted out. It’s Judas Priest plc again; it’s no big deal, it’s just a formality for our accountants and managers and suchlike.”

However, Tipton is vociferous in his defence of the accusation that Halford’s return is purely a money-making exercise: “I’m sure a lot of people are thinking that – but we wouldn’t do it for that reason. We’re back out there now because we’ve got a genuine love for heavy metal and Judas Priest’s music. We love to perform, we’re having a great time, and we’ve got more energy and enthusiasm than we’ve ever had. When that dries up we’ll be the first to recognise it, and we’ll be the ones to hang up our hats.”

Glenn stresses: “There’s a lot of energy, and there’s still a lot of fantastic new songs in this band. It’s certainly not going to be a case of ‘one album, one tour, thank you very much, now we’re going off into retirement to count all our money’.”

So, what exactly does Rob Halford bring to Judas Priest that was lacking when his predecessor, Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, was around?

“Just the nostalgia of it all, really,” responds Downing. “The familiarity of it all, the voice, the presence… It all just comes flooding back. People are turning out in their droves to see us again; I’ve been truly amazed by the response. Everyone’s just so glad that Rob’s back. Fans used to talk about the beginning of the 90s, when Rob left the band, as being the demise of heavy metal as we knew it – a lot of people said that was the end of heavy metal. Mentioning no names. Well, now we’re back.”

“Rob’s unique,” proclaims Tipton. “‘Ripper’ stepped in and did an amazing job, but… It wasn’t Rob. Rob has a peerless voice and particularly as a writing team, when we get together we have something that’s quite magical. It just works. We’ve got the family back together.”

Halford himself agrees that ‘the voice’ is the main focus of attention, and the good news is that he’s still got it: “It’s a blessing, really – I can do a lot of different things with my vocals that some heavy metal singers can’t. I think I bring an interesting aspect to Judas Priest’s repertoire as a singer. I don’t sing in one key, one tone or one register; I’m able to take it up into different places.

“I believe I’ve carved out a niche for myself – especially when I see tribute bands, and I look at them and think, my God, is that supposed to be me, do I really sing like that?”

(On the subject of tribute bands, Rob was sad to hear that Nudist Priest, the band who played JP songs naked, have split up. “I never saw them live,” he complains, “but a friend of mine, my former guitarist Pat Lachman, went to see them. My only questions were: ‘What was the singer like, and how big was his unit?’”)

Halford continues: “But yes, it’s fantastic – I still can’t quite believe I’m

back in the band, to be honest. It’s as though those long years when we were actually away from each other have just vanished in time. It’s bizarre. I look to my right and I see Ken… and there’s Glenn, and there’s Ian, and there’s Scott [Travis, drummer].” Echoing Tipton’s remark, Rob smiles: “It’s like a family again.”

You won’t find Classic Rock knocking Rob Halford’s return to Judas Priest. We go back a long way: this writer first met them in spring 1976, just as they’d released their second album, Sad Wings Of Destiny, for the smalltime Gull Records label (an offshoot of Decca).

We met at the late publicist Keith Goodwin’s office in London’s Tin Pan Alley – that’s Denmark Street in the city’s West End – and conducted our interview in a mice-infested top-floor garret. The band were earnest young fellows back then. What’s more, back in mid-70s when ‘S’ and ‘M’ were just isolated letters in the alphabet, Priest’s stage gear was altogether more floaty, flimsy and flouncy…

“My mum’s got all my old poncey outfits in the attic back in Walsall,” Halford reveals. “I’ve got an apartment in Amsterdam and I’ve this crazy idea for the future of opening a little Metal God Coffee Shop, and having a few bits of Priest memorabilia on the wall. I’d sit in the corner, watching the world go by. It may or may not happen. I might even ask Ken if I can borrow that old cowboy hat of his – oh yes, Ken’s hat was legendary. But it’s nice when you look at the past you can smile about it.”

“We were just young boys then,” chuckles Downing. “We were the Def Leppard of the time. But we were very serious about what we did; we just did our best and we hoped people would like it. But, yes, it was hard to make a living – and I won’t tell you where the material came from for my blue velvet trousers. Or my gold boots, for that matter.”

Halford, Tipton and Downing (and, indeed, Ian Hill) are all in their early 50s now and, to their credit, they freely own up to their old-warhorse status: “I’m 53,” says Halford, for one. “I was born on August the 25th, 1951. But I’ve got to tell you, kid, it’s like the elixir of life what we do.”

In fact, Priest have a quietly humorous attitude to their position as the elder statesmen of heavy metal. Back at the hotel at 3am after the band’s Barcelona greatest-hits show, Downing jokingly invites “everyone back for drinks in my room” and we all raise our eyebrows in mock horror. “I would have joined you in the old days,” responds Ian Hill glumly, stumbling around on a pretend walking-stick to everyone’s amusement. Living after midnight, indeed.

The next Spanish show – a festival at the Plaza de Toros in Valencia – has Priest scheduled to go on stage in the early hours of the morning. “I might have to take some Philosan to get through it,” Hill chuckles. “Fortifies the over-40s, you know.”

Halford responds by mock-moaning about the debilitating weight of the voluminous studded leather coats he now sports on stage, and then he congratulates himself on remembering the words to all the songs after the prompter packed up halfway through the Barcelona gig. (Although try as I might, I can’t quite imagine the lyrics to ‘Painkiller’ – ‘He is the pain-KILLER! This is the pain-KILLER!’ – scrolling down an on-stage monitor screen…). In the light of all the above, it should come as no surprise to hear Downing and Tipton agree that having Rob back in the band is “like stepping into an old pair of slippers”.

Judas Priest’s reunion album with Halford, Angel Of Retribution, is scheduled for release in a couple of months. The band are being surprisingly tight-lipped about its content.

Halford: “It’s just got all the things that you want from Priest. All the screaming, full-roar racket is there, together with the light and shade, the drama and the darkness. All the attributes of heavy metal that Priest have personified are in this recording.”

Downing: “We’re aware that our fans will well and truly cut our balls off if we don’t deliver. I think it’s safe to say that there are bits on there that are very identifiable with Judas Priest; they’re typical Judas Priest.”

Tipton: “It doesn’t really matter to us what people think, as long as the end product turns out how we want it. The new album is not going to be an extension from Demolition [Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens’s second and final album with the band, released in July 2001] or even an extension from Painkiller. It’ll just be us again in 2005.”

Priest are co-producing the album with Roy Z, who collaborated with Rob Halford (both as a producer and a songwriter) during the latter’s solo years. So, is Rob exerting more influence on JP matters than he used to in the old days?

“Not at all,” Halford replies. “We all talked about who we might like work with in the studio. As you know, Priest have always co-produced their recordings, and I think Ken and Glenn in particular were impressed by Roy’s work on the two Halford [the band] things we did. For Priest, we were just looking for somebody who, like us, realises how important the new record is and who, above all, loves their heavy metal. Roy has all the right credentials and it’s worked out really well with him.”

Downing elaborates: “Rob felt comfortable with Roy producing his vocals. So rather than work with somebody new, at least we knew that Rob was going to be happy. And obviously it wasn’t long before everyone felt really comfortable with Roy; he’s a good guitar player as well as a producer, he’s got a great ear and he’s very proficient… And efficient, because that’s what we really wanted. Speaking for the musos in the band, we like to get on with it, and we don’t like to mess about.”

“If you look back to the days when we used Tom Allom or Chris Tsangarides, we’ve always been heavily involved in the sounds of our records,” says Tipton. “Not just in production – we arrange the songs ourselves; we’ve always known exactly what we want and how the tracks should be presented.”

One of the many great things about Judas Priest is the way they wholeheartedly embrace the term ‘heavy metal’. They have no inhibitions or misgivings; they don’t spit out the phrase like it’s filthy and contaminated.

Downing: “Somebody said to me the other night that Black Sabbath are heavy, but Judas Priest are metal. I kind of like that. We’re proud to be part of the heavy metal genre that is known around the world. It’s a form of music that is here to stay, always was here to stay, because whether it’s blues, jazz, fusion, classical, pop, whatever it is – heavy metal is a part of that. None of those other types of music will go away and become extinguished – and neither will heavy metal. I’m confident of that. It’s etched in stone.”

As our interview begins to wind down, Classic Rock makes a potentially fatal faux pas. Grappling with our tape machine, we attempt to extract the cassette recording of our interview with Halford. But the cassette gets jammed and we remark to no one in particular that we’re just “trying to make Rob come out”. Oops. It’s a moment of acute embarrassment, but the comment prompts a surprising response from the singer himself.

“If I hadn’t left Judas Priest, I wouldn’t have done it – I wouldn’t have said I was gay,’ he says. “It would have been wrong.”

But surely no one really cares about his sexuality

these days?

“No, and no one really cared back then – except for myself, of course. But I think it was best that I did it when I was out of the band, and put it behind me for a period, to get it all out of the way.

“When it happened there were some silly things about timing and me doing it for publicity, and that wasn’t right. It was a genuine slip of the tongue on MTV when I was talking about the Two thing [Halford’s collaboration with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame]. But I did it and it went around the world, around the wires; the dust went up in the air and then it settled. And that was that.

“But I’m glad I did it then, so that when I came back to Judas Priest it’s all, you know, water under the bridge. It’s done and dusted now. But as I say, if I’d stayed in the band I still wouldn’t have come out. Because I protect Priest with my life – I feel deeply about this band, and I put it before myself in that respect. I wouldn’t do anything to damage the Priest cause.

“I don’t like to make a fuss about the whole issue of homosexuality. I know some people do, some of the so-called activists, people who are out there with a cause and a political reason – but that’s not something that’s ever interested me. However, I do see the significance of what I do in the back of my mind. There’s an acceptance, and that’s great. It shows the intelligence and the humanity of heavy metal fans. They don’t care about me. All they really want to do is go to see Judas Priest – and have a great time.”

Amen to that.

Originally published in Classic Rock magazine issue 74, December 2004

Geoff Barton is a British journalist who founded the heavy metal magazine Kerrang! and was an editor of Sounds music magazine. He specialised in covering rock music and helped popularise the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) after using the term for the first time (after editor Alan Lewis coined it) in the May 1979 issue of Sounds.

Not for nothing is Alice Cooper called The Godfather Of Shock Rock – and his 1975 concept album Welcome To My Nightmare was the perfect fusion of rock’n’roll, horror and theatrical razzle-dazzle. In 2010, Alice looked back on the album that launched him as a solo star.

By the time Alice Cooper released Welcome To My Nightmare in February 1975, he was already one of the most famous rock celebrities on the planet. Between 1971 and 1974, the Alice Cooper band, which consisted of Cooper himself (born Vincent Furnier), guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith, had notched up an impressive run of some 10 major singles culled from five hit albums, four of which gained them platinum status.

The band had formed in 1968 out of the ashes of previous band The Nazz (previously known as The Earwigs and then The Spiders). When Todd Rundgren also appeared with a band of the same name, Vincent and pals decided on a name change, and with a press story about using a Ouija board to conjure up the name of a mythical 17th-century witch named Alice Cooper, so the young shock rockers were set in motion.

Initial success was muted – some finding the band’s outrageous approach to their trade too much to handle, others baulking at the look of the band, especially Alice himself, as the young frontman swiftly adopted the titular name himself.

“People would come and see us play and just assume that as I was the lead singer then I must be Alice Cooper,” he explains today. “But originally the band was simply called The Alice Cooper Band. But because everyone thought I was Alice I decided it would be easier and better for the band to simply start calling myself Alice. Of course, later, when I would go solo for Welcome To My Nightmare, I’d really become Alice Cooper.”

The band came to the attention of maverick LA musician Frank Zappa, who signed them to his Straight label. The guys had famously misunderstood Frank when he’d told them to come to his house for an audition at seven o’clock, meaning in the evening, only for the band to arrive ready to play at seven in the morning. Their 1969 debut Pretties For You went largely ignored, but after an appearance at Toronto’s 1969 Rock And Roll Revival the band were splashed all over the newspapers after the now-legendary ‘chicken incident’.

“Somehow a chicken got on stage,” Alice relates. “I didn’t know anything about farm animals so I assumed it could fly and threw it into the crowd. It landed in the front rows where the fans in wheelchairs were sat. You can imagine the furore.”

Newspaper allegations that Alice had, in fact, bitten the head off the bird and drunk its blood on stage were promptly denied by the band, only for mentor Zappa to inform Alice, “Well, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone you didn’t do it!” 1970’s Easy Action also went largely ignored, but a move to Alice’s hometown of Detroit (“LA just didn’t get it – they were on the wrong drugs for us”) came as the major Warner Bros corporation bought out the Straight label, and in the UK the glam rock movement was gathering apace.

Teaming up with producer Bob Ezrin gave the band their first taste of success with the single I’m Eighteen from 1971’s Love It To Death and from then on Alice and the band barely had time to breathe. Killer (1971), School’s Out (1972) and Billion Dollar Babies (1973) catapulted Alice Cooper to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and outrageous gimmickry like the decapitation of baby dolls and the introduction of a boa constrictor to the band’s live show added to the shock aspect the band, notably Alice himself, brought to the glam rock genre.

“I saw Anita Pallenberg playing The Great Tyrant in the 1968 film Barbarella wearing long black leather gloves with switchblades coming out of them and I thought, ‘Alice should look like that’,” he says. “That, and a little bit of Emma Peel in The Avengers.”

The effect worked a treat. Moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse succeeded in getting the video for School’s Out banned on the BBC and one UK MP petitioned the then-Home Secretary to ban the band from performing in the UK. However, when 1974’s Muscle Of Love failed to match the success of its illustrious predecessors, cracks began to show.

“There was some discontent about the direction we were going in, if I remember correctly,” says Alice. “Some of the band decided that they were going to go and work on their own projects so I quite naturally thought I’d do pretty much the same. At the time there was no major decision to disband the Alice Cooper band, we were just working on different things. It just happened that eventually that’s the way things turned out.”

For Alice (the man), the decision was to also record his own solo album, even if it, like the preceding seven studio albums from the band (not to mention 1974’s immensely successful Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits) also appeared under the Alice Cooper name. Once again, Alice chose to work with producer Bob Ezrin.

“Bob had worked with us on every album from Love It To Death to Billion Dollar Babies,” states Alice. “He’d been a major player in some of our biggest successes and it felt right to get him involved again. On top of that, Bob is a genius. He hears things other people don’t hear and seems to know exactly how to orchestrate things in a way you don’t get with other producers. His input was invaluable to Welcome To My Nightmare.”

Bob had been working on Lou Reed’s 1973 Berlin album, itself a rock opera of sorts concerning a doomed drug-addled couple, and with the other members of the Alice Cooper band involved in various projects of their own, a new set of musicians would be needed. Bob enlisted guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, and bassists Prakash John and Tony Levin from the Reed fold, whilst he himself would lend his considerable keyboard, synthesizer and arranging skills.

“It was very refreshing to be able to work with some new and great musicians,” explains Alice. “Dick Wagner I remember as being particularly good and I really clicked with him as a writer too. He’d already worked with us, playing My Stars on the School’s Out album and we went on to write or co-write the likes of Department Of Youth, Welcome To My Nightmare, The Black Widow, Only Women Bleed… Not a bad array of material for one album.”

Central to the theme of Welcome To My Nightmare is Alice’s basic concept that the songs relate the tale of the nightmares suffered by a young child named Steven.

“I loved horror movies,” says Alice. “Still do. And I also love theatre and musicals. And I always had the grand idea that we could take the basic album and create a stage show from it, which is what we ultimately did. I saw it as like a cross between a nasty fairy tale and something like West Side Story. If you listen to something like Gutter Cat vs. The Jets from School’s Out you can hear that anyway.

“And working with someone like Bob Ezrin really helped propel the whole thing forward. He doesn’t really hold back and is open to anything so we really just went for it. The whole view was to almost make the album sound like a soundtrack for a movie or a play. And I think we achieved that with Welcome…”

The icing on the cake, however, for the entire album, was to get renowned horror actor Vincent Price to agree to act as a narrator for the album, lending his immediately recognisable voice notably to the emphatic The Black Widow as the part of Museum Curator, uttering the memorable line, ‘And here, my prize, the Black Widow, isn’t she lovely…’

“That wasn’t planned,” Alice notes. “But as time went on we began wondering whether we might need something to add extra effect. I wrote to Vincent. I didn’t expect a reply but apparently he knew all about who I was and was only more than happy to take part. He was fantastic, he really got stuck into the role and he even took part in the TV special that followed. I think he might have even fancied doing the tour as well.”

Recorded at Toronto’s Soundstage and New York’s Electric Lady and A&R Studios between 1974 and 1975, Welcome To My Nightmare was released on the Atlantic label in February 1975 (it appeared on the Anchor label here in the UK) where it reached number five in the Billboard charts. The album spawned a massive US hit with the sensitive Only Women Bleed (a song about a woman in an abusive marriage), although somewhat typically for the over-sensitive US market it was released simply as Only Women. Both Department Of Youth and the title track were also singles.

The whole album was worked into an elaborate stage show to realise Alice’s initial dream, which cost over half a million dollars and featured filmed sections, dancers, giant spiders, dancing skeletons and a nine-foot-tall furry cyclops! Prior to this, the aforementioned hour-long TV special, Alice Cooper: The Nightmare aired on America’s ABC channel featuring Alice in the main role as Steven, unable to wake up from the night- mares torturing him, and with Vincent Price featuring as The Spirit Of The Nightmare. The film won an Emmy and was later released on both VHS and DVD.

The ensuing tour with its impressive stage show was also a success and a series of shows at London’s Wembley Arena were recorded and released theatrically (and, naturally, subsequently on VHS and DVD) in 1976 but wasn’t a massive hit. For Alice though, Welcome To My Nightmare (the album) represents a last hurrah for the 70s. His last US platinum album before his late-80s renaissance, and the start of his spiralling battle against alcohol which would almost totally derail him in 1977.

“I think we got it right with this album,” he says. “It had all the elements that I wanted on the record. And for a first solo album, it’s not a bad start!”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 207, June 2010

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.

The classic Smashing Pumpkins line-up were so dysfunctional that they couldn’t even split up properly. It was in the wake of the response to 1998’s Adore, a muted album that got a muted response, that the band’s imperious Commander-in-Chief Billy Corgan decided it was time to go out with a bang. What actually happened is that the frontman ended up with sparks flying all over the place, the odd firework landing on a house and setting it on fire. That pretty much sums up the tale of their 2000 album Machina/The Machines Of God, which turned 25 this week. Things were never straightforward with the 90s iteration of The Smashing Pumpkins.

“I finished Adore and went, ‘Right, I want off this sinking ship’,” Corgan told Uncut a few years ago. “I was determined to sink it my way.” To stage this little voyage to the bottom of the ocean, though, Corgan wanted everyone on board and that would mean the return of totemic drummer Jimmy Chamberlin.

Chamberlin had been sacked during what should’ve been the triumphant tour to support 1995’s mega-selling Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, the victory lap cut short when Chamberlin and live keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin overdose in New York resulting in the latter’s tragic death. But now Corgan wanted his dream drummer back in.

“I reached out to Jimmy, we hadn’t spoken in three years?” he explained. “I said, ‘I’d like you to return to the band for one album. Let’s get the four of us in a room, make a good album, tour, and then put it to bed.’.”

Early signs that the Pumpkins could rediscover the exhilarating alchemy that made the Chicago quartet so exciting in the first place looked promising. In April 1999, Corgan, guitarist James Iha, bassist D’Arcy Wretsky and the returning Chamberlin embarked on a short, nine-date US tour taking in some of the smallest shows they’d played in years. At venues including the 9.30 Club in Washington, New York’s 300-capacity Tramps, and LA’s Roxy, they delivered sets featuring a mix of old classics and new cuts. They were shows that reminded everyone what a fierce and thrilling rock band they were, a complete U-turn on the over-loaded, confused shows to support Adore. The Pumpkins were back!

Well, until they got home from the tour anyway. That was when D’Arcy, who might not have been musically key to the group but was a crucial member when it came to their look and feel, handed in her notice. She was off.

“D’Arcy left, so my perfect plan blew up,” recalled Corgan. “So now this album also becomes about the sorrow of who’s not there. You’ve got two albums in a row now about death, loss, the end of the band.”

That the band almost immediately installed a crack replacement in Hole’s Melissa Auf Der Maur, a figure who might have lacked D’Arcy’s icy cool but had bucketloads of rock’n’roll charisma, wasn’t enough. Corgan’s plan to get the band to the finish line now had a lot of hurdles in front of it. “I was just looking at a calendar going, ‘Can I make it nine more months?’,” he said.

Wretsky is credited as playing on the finished album, but it’s not known exactly how many of her recorded takes are featured, if any. Producer Flood has alluded to how the direction of the album changed in the wake of that upheaval. “We pretty much went back to the drawing board,” he said. “Certain songs on the record are survivors from that first period, but it meant a shift in the way the songs had to be formed.”

What is certain is that the end result was unnecessarily bloated and a little all over the place. If this was a record with an MO of reclaiming their brilliance (Corgan joked with MTV2 that he wanted it to be called Resume The Pose) then they would’ve done well to remember that in amongst the epic, multi-layered ambition of their first two records, there was something lean and finely tuned about Gish and Siamese Dream. Mellon Collie… might have sprawling – course it was sprawling, it was a double album – but the relentless quality of the songwriting on that album never made it feel like a trudge.

Machina/The Machines Of God was released on February 29, 2000. Reviews were decent if a little mixed, whilst sales were low. The idea of going out with a bang was beginning to look like one of Corgan’s more outlandish desires. Listen to Machina now, though, and you can hear a very, very good Pumpkins record in there. It’s just not one that needs to be 15 tracks long.

The Everlasting Gaze is a storming opener, armed with a riff that sounds like lightning, the yearning, avalanching Stand Inside Your Love is their last classic single, whilst Raindrops + Sunshowers melds Adore’s digi-pop experimentation to forward-facing rock grooves. There’s melancholic pop (This Time), Pumpkins do R.E.M. (Wound and Age Of Innocence) and airy, beatific balladry (With Every Light). But then there’s the rest.

The prog bombast of Glass And The Ghost Children is a better idea than it is a song, The Imploding Voice would be a decent B-side if it didn’t sound like the band were playing two streets away and The Crying Tree Of Mercury is a dirge-y mess. Planted right in the middle of the record, Heavy Metal Machine sounded like the Pumpkins trying to write the sort of song people would make up on the spot to take the piss out of the Pumpkins. A low point.

But there was lots in there that could’ve been rescued from the wreckage. That could still actually happen, too – a purported reissue has been languishing on the shelf for the past decade due to a label dispute.

But Machina… does exist, as does its sister album Machina II…, released for free in September, 2000. Again, that record contained songs that would’ve improved Machina…, but that’s a story for another day. Here’s the record that marked the beginning of the end for the Pumpkins Mark One. They had lost their way and Billy Corgan was never the sort to ask for directions.

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he’s interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.