The Metal Project: 2005

  2005 is the year Rob Halford rejoined Judas Priest and released the rather spiffing "Angel of Retribution" album.  It was a year of mixed fortunes for Iron Maiden, however. They headlined the Reading Festival for the first time since 1982 but a stint on the Ozzfest tour ended in an ugly incident when Sharon Osbourne took exception to comments by Bruce Dickinson. As well as cutting the power at awkward moments, Ozzy's fearsome wife arranged for Maiden to be pelted with eggs.
 Eyewitness accounts report that Maiden retaliated by playing an absolute blinder. 
 The Download Festival attempted to broaden their appeal by adding the likes of Garbage, Feeder and Dinosaur Jr. to the Friday lineup. Since the experiment was never repeated, one can assume the result was not a happy one. Incidentally if you'd told me in 2003 that Nightwish would one day be playing a major UK outdoor festival I'd have assumed you were mental. And yet there they were on the main stage  at Download.
  For those who thought Download was too mainstream, there was the newly created Bloodstock Outdoor Festival (Headlined by Sebastian Bach and Children of Bodom)
   Sam Dunn's excellent documentary "Metal - A Headbanger's Journey" came out this year and picked up quite a few good reviews. It would have been nice if it had been screened anywhere besides London...

     This post is dedicated to the memory of Tommy Vance who passed away in 2005. 

Thanks to his Friday Rock Show I discovered a lot of good music. 

RIP Tommy. 

Let's start with some chestbeating Estonians

Herald - Heavy Metal Wakes The Beast (Estonia)

Honour to: Rott215

Have some full-throttle - yet curiously catchy - Power Metal

Cannon - Metal Thunder (Germany)

Honour to: xBulletRider502x

 

If Venom were Japanese they might have sounded like this. 

Abigail - Metal Got Sick (Japan)

Honour to: CBPOWERTRIP

Next, something equally rapid but a tad more singalong.

Bloden-Wedd - Power Metal Pride (Chile)

Honour to: AztecaBlade

Manowar clearly inspire a lot of bands, stylistically if not necessarily musically.

Goddess of Desire - Scream For Metal True (Netherlands)

(Not female vocals, by the way)

Honour to: TheSadistikBastard



More minimalist Black Metal stuff

Power From Hell - The True Metal (Brazil)

Honour to: BlackThrashAttack666 

Weirdly enough, there's a keyboard solo in this next one despite the rest of the
 song having no audible keyboards whatsoever.

Katarsis - Herederos De Metal (Colombia)

Honour to: ManuWar696

We move on to a band that give us one of the all-time great  song titles

Nocturnal Depression - F*** Off Parisian Black Metal Scene (France)

Honour to: DeathlySilence19

Anybody else in the mood for something a bit more cheerful? 
The vocalist is definitely an acquired taste though. 

Burning Black - Heavy Metal Is My Law  (Italy)

Honour to: Maduqueg

And to finish, a song that includes the wonderful lyrics
" We'll hang you live on stage, with a rusty string
Get ready to f***ing mosh, cause metal is king
A giant f***ing frying pan will smash you to the floor
Promqueens dipped in gasoline will be burnings to the core"

  Terror 2000 - Metal Mosh Massacre (Sweden)

Honour to: MyRobocock

I'm surprised more metal bands don't sing about frying pans. Frying things is totally Metal. 

Frying things while drunk and stark bollock naked is very, very Metal but likely 

to lead to awkward questions in Casualty later on.

That's it for now. See you next time.