466. Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden

I feel it is important to admit, before I review this album, that I was quite a big metal head during my teenage years. However, I never really got into Iron Maiden, other than the big singles that everyone knows. I have their greatest hits, and never found them interesting or varied enought to really invest in the way I did with Metallica, for example. Well, until St Anger came out. So I thought that this album would be slightly generic metal, and whilst more accessible than Sepultura, not particularly engaging.

I hadn't realised that Iron Maiden actually existed sans Bruce Dickinson, and I was even more surprised to find that they were really quite good without him. This, their debut album, featured Paul Di'Anno (his stage name - he's actually from East London) on lead vocals and Dennis Stratton on guitar. Di'Anno lasted two albums with the band, before he was removed due to issues with drugs and an inability to cope with the grinding tour lifestyle. Stratton managed only one album before leaving due to 'musical differences'. His career has faded out since, which is a real shame as he is obviously a hugely accomplished guitarist. Iron Maiden recruited their replacements from rival bands (Urchin and Sansom) to secure a consistency to their sound.

Prowler kicks things off with a melt-your-face good riff, and the start-stop half way through really kicks things up a notch. Sanctuary is a bit of a miss for me, with a fairly generic metal structure and sound that could be Def Leppard or some other, slightly lesser, band. It does have a very realistic police siren complete with stereo panning that was slightly disconcerting when driving. Remember Tomorrow is a pretty epic song, with that classic acoustic-y intro and gentle singing that builds into something much brasher, complete with outrageous fretwork on the solo, but that never loses the driving intensity of the rhythm section. It reminds me a lot of Something Wicked era Iced Earth, which is high praise indeed. Running Free I thought would annoy me, as it is so repetitive, but it actually grew on me as the week went on. It does manage to capture the arrogance of youth pretty well, and is a great driving track, with some powerful percussion-led sections. Phantom of the Opera is pretty overblown, but just about manages to pull it off. The machine-gun-quick guitar actually makes it hard to hear the lyrics properly, but in a way that adds to the intensity of the recording. Di'anno's natural tone is much deeper than his replacement's, and I can imagine Dickinson's voice soaring over the top of the melody, which would be an interesting alternative. Translyvania was originally only on the US recording, and having an instrumental of this quality really allows the band to shine. Strange World is a bit of a miss for me, and doesn't really do much - it just drifts a bit, lacking direction, sounding like a studio jam that shouldn't have made the cut. Charlotte the Harlot certainly has drive, and is pretty catchy, but I'm not sure about the message - it's pretty demeaning. The album closer, also called Iron Maiden, is full of contrasting tones and rhythms, and wraps things up in an enjoyably succinct manner, clocking in at 4 minutes and change. It was the track that Chloe most enjoyed, and part of me thinks that may be because it means she can soon listen to something else.

I enjoyed this album a lot more than I had anticipated. It is much more varied even within each song than I would have thought, with the contrasting rhythms and melodies in particular driven by the outstanding guitar solos. It reminded me of being 15 again and just starting to enjoy the complexity of the Metal scene, which is what led me to get into bands like Tool and Nine Inch Nails. Anything that reminds you of your youth that vividly, particularly when you've just hit 31, is worthy of a high score.

Chloe's rating: 5

Chloe's favourite track: 9

Olly's rating: 8

Olly's favourite track: 3

Next week is 519. Hearts and Bones by Paul Simon, the one before Graceland. Not familiar at all with this album, but I do enjoy a bit of Paul Simon, so hopefully it's a previously unheard gem.

503. Pornography - The Cure

Other than their singles, the only music of The Cure's that I know well is their 2004 eponymous release, recorded and produced by Rick Rubin. That is actually much closer thematically and in sound to this album than their poppier singles in-between would suggest. Poppier singles I love, it must be said. However, I was looking forward to fully throwing myself into the band's darkest recording to see what they sounded like at their rawest, thinking that it might be a bit Joy Division-esque.

Pornography was the band's fourth album, and nearly led to their demise. Heavy drug use fuelled the recordings, with in-fighting between the group an almost daily occurence. The desire for intensity, and a lack of funds, led to the band staying for long hours in the study, supplied by their local off-licence. The album was commercially their most successful, reaching number 8 in the UK charts. Simon Gallup, the bassist, let the group after the album was finished, and Robert Smith, the vocalist, believed it would be the band's final recording before their seemingly inevitable collapse. 32 years, Nine albums, and twenty million record sales later, they are still going strong.

One Hundred Years could only every have come from the post-punk era of almost anti musicality. Waves of fuzzy, distorted guitar rush over the listener, with Robert Smith's clear voice the only salvation. It is a very strong opener, and led me to feel quite excited about the rest of the album when I first heard it. Short Term Effect works well too, a claustrophobic style of reverb adding the recording a real intensity, although the rhythm is slightly too pedestrian to carry it off for the duration. Hanging Garden is much more percussion-led, and desperate rather than the despair of the opening two tracks, and this change in speed helps give the album some variety. Siamese twins slows things back down, and the bassline is a close sibling to anything off Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, although slightly fuzzier and drudgier. The song could be a couple of minutes shorter, as it grinds you first into submission to its repetitive nature, and then out the other side into mild irritation. The Figurehead continues this alightly annoying theme, with the only changes being that the bass is quieter, and the guitar louder. A Strange Day has some brilliant moments in it, where the guitar riff seems to cut through the dirge, and you can almost picture the band looking skywards at the shock of sunlight as it does. This juxtaposition really helps break up the song, and wouldn't have gone amiss elsewhere. Cold makes interesting use of an organ playing over what sounds like a drumset made of wet cardboard. The title track and album closer, is even more dischordant and complete with sample statements, it really does sound like Milton's Paradise Lost performed by three British lads on a substatnital quantity of LSD.

The album shows glimpses of great things, but struggles to sustain it for the duration. It's all terrily depressing, which is all fine to a point, but depressing records need a touch of relentless intensity to them, I feel, and this is a bit moany and navel-gazing to really get away with it. Smith's vocal performance is good, but almost identical on every song, which means that it can become somewhat irksome. This album would make a great soundtrack to a computer game set in hell, the point being that it would add to the experience of other stimuli, rather than being the sole focus. It is an interesting contrast to later belters like Boys Don't Cry and Lovecats, but it isn't a record I will spend much time coming back to. 

Chloe's rating: 5
Chloe's favourite track: 1. One Hundred Years
Olly's rating: 6
Olly's favourite track: 6. A Strange Day

Next week we have 466. Iron Maiden with their self-titled debut from 1980; not the musical respite Chloe was hoping for.

217. IV - Led Zeppelin

Led Zep have always been a band that I've felt I should enjoy more than I have. Whilst a few songs stand up with the best, Achilles' Last Stand being one, I've just found them less than the sum of their impressive parts. Page is a great guitarist, and Bonham a outstanding drummer. Robert Plant's voice can be irritating at times, but his recent album with Alison Krauss sounds so good that it can't be the whole story. It may be that I learned to enjoy 70s rock moving back from contemporary times, and so I don't understand the way that the band's sound grew from old blues numbers.

Led Zeppelin IV, as I shall call it, is technically untitled, and the sleeve features no mention of the band's name, members or song titles. It was a bold strategy upon release in 1971, but the cover image is so famous that it's a safe bet to say that the gamble paid off. The painting was purchased by Plant in an antique shop in Reading, and then placed on the wall of a run-down house that was about to be demolished for the final cover photo. It is the third highest selling album of all time in the US, with over 23 million copies sold in that country alone.

Black Dog kicks things off with a ripping blues-y riff and some staccato percussion. The stop-start structure of the song makes me think of Oh Well by Fleetwood Mac, which sounds remarkably similar. The Fleetwood Mac track was released two years before this album, and has even more swagger about it. Jimmy Page and John Bonham vie for dominance, and it is no doubt due to the fact that Page produced the record that he arguably wins it. Rock And Roll follows in an even more helter-skelter manner, with driving bass and keys punctuating Plant's wails and moans. It's a song that would probably work better live, but carries enough energy about it to work in the studio. The Battle for Evermore is a slightly budget Stairway to Heaven, all folklore and medieval sounding instrumentation, but without the good bit at the end. Stairway to Heaven, in contrast, is a much better Battle for Evermore. Whilst the lyrics are slightly nonsense, they create an evocative set of images, bustling hedgerows and all. It is when the drums kick in that the song really comes into its own, with the sharp snare and cymbals helping it to gather momentum. Page's guitar solo, so oft-parodied, is great, as are Plant's vocals after the final chorus, all wailing and emotion. It's a song that stands up there with the very best, and people who claim that they're not that keen should probably give it another listen. Misty Mountain Hop is ok, but just doesn't grab me - I just find it all a bit syncopated. If I really knew what that word meant, I may even find it very syncopated. Four Sticks is powerfully rhythmic, showcasing John Bonham at his very best, but doesn't quite do enough with its foundations for me. Going to California is a pleasant enough folk song, but it's a bit on the fey side, and seems to stick out a bit against the density of sound on the rest of the album, which is perhaps the point of it. When the Levee Breaks was the (re)discovery of this particular set of listens - it is a great track, that builds from that funky opening into a veritable flood of musical brutality. A cover of a 1927 blues song by the husband and wife pair Memphis Minnie, the riff is almost Kashmir good, and there's a hypnotic use of a harmonica too, complete with backward echo recording technique. It's a great closer to the album, sending it out on a high.

I've found this album really hard to judge, and put a number on. I know that it is seminal and important, and was familiar with it before this week. At the same time, I don't love it, and listening to it for a week has not changed my views on Led Zeppelin. I have enjoyed it slightly more than I had feared I would, but it hasn't been revelatory either. The good songs are incredible, primarily Stairway and Levee, but there is also quite a bit of meh for an album of eight tracks.

Chloe's rating: 7

Chloe's favourite track: 8. When the Levee Breaks

Olly's rating: 7

Olly's favourite track: 4. Stairway to Heaven

Our album for next week is 503. Pornography by the Cure. Also a British band, made up of eight tracks and 43 minutes long - I think that's probably where the similarities end.

603. Shaka Zulu - Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Like most people (philistines?) I mainly knew about this group from the Heinz advert that they famously provided the music for. Whilst this piece is catchy and powerful, I was unsure what i would make of an entire album's worth of this type of music. I've normally avoided world music simply from the snobbery somewhat aligned with Rob Gordon in High Fidelity.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo are an acapella group from South Africa, who rose to fame following their backing contribution to Paul Simon's Graceland album. They toured with him around the world, and so their fanbase grew from their impressive live displays. This album went on to win the 1988 Grammy for best traditional folk recording.

Unomathemba is a delicate opener, which captures the depth and richness of this acapella group's voices. The rhythm is very pedestrian, but in a positive, calming sense, and the chorus elements of this song really do capture the imagination. Hello my Baby follows very much in this vein, with plenty of harmonies and ebbing chanting. Golgotha makes greater use of more percussive elements of the vocalists' sounds. The back and forth of the chorus is precise yet organic, and quietly joyful. King of Kings is basically as the same, and The Earth never gets Fat is the same but not as good. How Long has a delightfully rhythmic section where the vocalists offer themselves up as ready, which probably stayed with me more than any other moment on the album. Alas, the song's response to its own title is 'too long'. Home of the Heroes I barely noticed, and Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain is great until the Larry the Lamb impression that shows that tremulation works better on guitars than vocal cords.

I really enjoyed this album the first couple of times through, but then started to lose interest. My main issues with this album were two-fold. Firstly, there is a lack of variety when compared to a more conventional, multi instrumental album. Whilst the voices and tones are no doubt impressive, they are still more limited in terms of pitch and percussion than a range of instruments. Secondly, and relatedly, this makes it a hard album to focus on. It works in the background, and indeed is the first album we've used to help us get to sleep. Whilst there is a role for such music, for example as assistance to the wakeful, I certainly prefer albums that grab my attention and leave me trying to understand and analyse them fully. This week I've found myself interspersing listening to the assigned album with others a lot more than usual, not because I don't enjoy Shaka Zulu, but it is the equivalent of a nice warming bowl of soup - pleasant, but not enough to sustain oneself.

Chloe's rating: 7

Chloe's favourite track: 2. Hello my Baby

Olly's rating: 6

Olly's favourite track: 1. Unomathemba

Next week is 217. Led Zeppelin - Four. I've heard of that one, it's fair to say.

860. Apocalypse Dudes - Turbonegro

A band I had always believed were probably somewhere between rap and death metal given the name and album art, I was not expecting a pop-punk-glam ensemble. Whilst that description over-simplifies the group's sound, it covers the key elements of short, loud, simple songs. The lead guitarist Knut Schreiner (Euroboy) is a class apart however, and it is his noodling that really stands out even from the first listen.

Turbonegro formed in Norway in the late 1980s, and went through various different sounds before finding real success as a punk/glam-rock act. Euroboy joined in 1996, and added a layer of musicality to the band. Their new drummer, Christer Engen, apparently added some urgency, which the first album of their Apocalypse trio certainly demonstrates. The success of this album led to the band's four year hiatus, with Hank von Helvete's drug addiction coming to the fore on a sold-out European tour. The band reformed in 2002 following a successful one-off show at the Bizarre festival. Whilst they haven't hit the musical heights of this album, they have a cult following across the globe.

The opener, The Age of Pamparius, kicks things off with an epic, prog-esque, intro before descending into fast, distorted guitars and snarling lyrics about the quality of pizza and heavily reverbed backing vocals. The shredding is impressive, with solos straight out of the Van Halen book of velocity. Selfdestructo bust is a sped up and toned down piece of classic Oi punk, and is one of the few misses on the album. By just being flat out the entire time, it comes across as a wall of noise, with little to separate any part of it. Get it on could have been written and performed by the Hives, and has a truly anthemic, if simple, chorus. Rock against Ass successfully continues in this manner, with its tongue somewhere between being firmly in cheek and stuck out ala Gene Simmons. Zillion Dollar Sadist is a perfect example of a three minute pop-punk song. Whilst lyrically coming up a bit short, the rest of the sound is absolutely spot on. Prince of the Rodeo was released as a single, but I can't quite work out why, as its drumming led-rhythm aside it is one of the weaker dongs here. Are you ready (for some Darkness) sounds like a band parodying AFI, but doing it well enough to sound utterly convincing. Humiliation Street is somewhere between Bon Jovi and Lenny Kravitz, with a Metallica-esque intro and a really impressive musical outro that allows all members of the band to really show what they can do.

I can't work out if this band are really as straightforward as this record implies, or if they are actually just calculatingly creating a sound and image that captures attention. This album reminds me of the Dictators, and therein lies most of its strength, but also its weakness. It is simple, unashamedly fun, with songs good and catchy enough to not be embarrassed against some of the 1970's best punk and glam rock. However, it is also a slight indictment that in 25 years music had moved on so little; simply adding shredding and heavily distorting the rhythm section. Still, i guess Turbonegro were having too much of a good time to worry about such matters, or at least appear to be, and that deserves some credit either way.

Chloe's rating: 5

Chloe's favourite track: 4. Rock against Ass

Olly's rating: 7

Olly's favourite track: 12. Humiliation Street

Next week's album is 603. Shaka Zulu by Ladysmith Black Mambazo - a definite break from the guitar driven rock we've had in the last few weeks.