Five Star Metal Classics (The Music I Grew Up On)

I started listening to music at a very, very young age.

For some reason or another, I gravitated to the harder rocking stuff and by the time I was 10 years old in the mid to late seventies, I was already a die-hard KISS fan before most people even knew squat about them.

By the late seventies, I adored the Hard Rock stylings from the USA. Having a cousin come to Australia from the US and bringing with him a slab of vinyl and 8-track cartridges(!!!) – just whetted the appetite even more. Van Halen, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick – I lapped it all up.

At this point in my life, I lived about a block away from an import record store which also had weekly shipments of the finest classic rock albums money could buy. The imports were always more expensive, but the production quality on the vinyl and the covers was so vastly superior to the flimsy and paltry Australian pressings.

Every week, there was something new in the Rock category and as the Eighties approached and my heroes KISS began to falter musically, I began looking for new music to sink my teeth into.

This was an incredible time for Hard Rock and Metal. The NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) was in full swing, finally sending the pseudo Punks back to the cliche they spawned from. Gone were the Rock dinosaurs and in their place were young upstarts such a Priest, Maiden and Leppard making headway and amazing albums.

These are albums that have stood the test of time. Some thirty years later, I still listen to these records. I still love and enjoy these records and sometimes… just sometimes, I can still see a short, pre-teen brat bashing the shit out his parent’s living room couch with a pair of drumsticks, perfectly drumming along to these tunes. Or, when I was feeling more daring, air-guitaring to these gems in precision like maneuvers.

Def Leppard – High And Dry

It was back in 1981 and as a bored kid who had a penchant for plastering his walls with posters of KISS – I was looking for some new music to quench the thirst. KISS had been and gone in Australia. Flicking through the radio dial, I stopped at 3RRR when I heard this amazing song. It kinda reminded me of AC/DC – only better. The song was ‘Let It Go’ by a teenage band (at the time!) – called Def Leppard.

I taped the song onto cassette and proceeded to play it to death until I could save up the $6.99 to buy the vinyl.

High ‘N’ Dry is Def Leppard’s finest moment. Forget the teeny bopper pop-metal band they evolved to from 1983 onwards. Not that the music they were churning out during that period wasn’t worthy. It was. But this slab of hard-rocking goodness, is a bonafide classic album. It was the beginning of the Mutt Lange production run for Def Leppard. Lange had literally just finished helming AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ album a year earlier and this was his next project.

Iron Maiden – Killers

Iron Maiden were making massive headways in the early 80′s. Before Bruce Dickinson joined the band and the band broke it big with the ‘Number of the Beast’ album, Iron Maiden released the seminal ‘Killers’ album in 1981. This was the first album to feature new guitarist Adrian Smith, and the final album to feature vocalist Paul Di’Anno.

This as close to masterful metal as you can get. Produced by Martin Birch (who then went on to produce the band’s next 8 albums – so strong was the bond between band and producer!)

There are no dull moments on this classic and it features the amazing drumming of Clive Burr – one of the finest drummers in the genre who unfortunately, has been stricken by multiple sclerosis of late. Each and every track is meticulously structured and crafted and features some of Maiden’s finest songs. ‘Wrathchild’, ‘Murders In The Rue Morgue’, ‘Killers’. ‘The Ides Of March’ etc etc. Brilliant!

Judas Priest – British Steel

Looking back, Judas Priest’s ‘British Steel’ was probably the first true Metal album I ever bought.

And back in the day, this was as heavy as it got!

I distinctly remember holding this sucker in my hands and just marveling at the sinister cover. It just screamed power and metal and so perfectly matched the music on offer. This was an album that defined the Metal sound as we know it today.

Even back in the day, in my formative years – this album just stood out and was so distinctly different from the hard rock stuff I had in my collection. This was Metal. Pure and simple.

Black Sabbath = Heaven & Hell

Ozzy was gone and it was going to take a monumental effort for Sabbath to rid themselves of the dinosaur tag and, for want of a better term, rise from the ashes.

Let’s face it. The last few Ozzy led Sabbath albums were a disaster and slowly, the band was sinking.

Enter the diminutive Ronnie James Dio.

Result?

One of the genre’s all-time superb classics.

How could a band as legendary as Black Sabbath get even better? Surely it just couldn’t be possible? But it was possible. Grandly so.