Cheapo DVD Review: Thor - The Hammer Of The Gods (2009)

A film in no way intended to cash in on the success of the other Thor movie. No way. Nu-uh.

Starring

Zachery Bryan

Alexis Peters

Mac Brandt

Daz Crawford

Melissa Osborne

Nicole Ennemoser

And anybody I haven't mentioned so far 

is played by a Russian

  Viking brothers Baldur, Thor and Ulfrich have brought their followers (and their girlfriends...) to an island on the edge of the known world, hoping to win glory.  

  Instead they find themselves facing murderous beasts who are as cunning as they are fierce. With their numbers dwindling and no way to escape, the Vikings can only hope that Thor's visions of a mighty, hammer-wielding warrior will lead them to a weapon that can stop the beasts once and for all.

  Basically this film can be summed up as "Vikings V Werewolves." which is potentially a great idea.

 I say potentially because the film-makers have neither the resources not the craft to make it work.

 Thor:THOTG is particularly badly let down by the creature FX. (Spraypainted blokes in obvious rubber masks or dodgy CGI) In a bid to disguise this, the fight choreographer has the cast mostly hacking away at something just out of shot. However, this approach is not used for the Boss Fight at the end. We get to see the Big bad in all his crap, computer generated glory and dear gods does this battle look silly.

  There are other problems. At the risk of sounding shallow, it took me a while to realise that the pudgy guy I thought was the sidekick was really the hero. Zachery Bryan just does not convince as a Viking warrior. Sorry mate.

 I suppose I'm also being harsh when I point out that while the central characters speak US English, their supporting cast have a variety of heavy European accents. It's a wee bit jarring.

 By the way,  the cast would have got thinned out a lot less quickly if they'd refrained from being dumb. (Example: Two characters manage to end up facing away from their opponent in the middle of a fight and promptly get hacked up.)

 And if you can't spot the guy who's going to go rogue within about a minute then you must be an Amish who quit the farm last week to see what this whole "Modern life" thing is all about and haven't got used to the idea of moving pictures yet. 

(Stick with it. Most films are better than this.)

 

 So, a good idea hampered by being on a shoestring budget with all that entails. 

How much did I pay for this: £5

Was it worth it: Well it's watchable I suppose but the it's the sort of thing SyFy put on at 2am to pad out the schedule. Approach with caution and low expectations.

Terrible Metal Album Covers - Chapter 14

Since I'm feeling prolific, why not put up another fistful of Heavy Metal album covers that should be a source of shame for everybody involved.
 Remember that while the art team may have been utter muppets, it doesn't necessarily mean the band are crap too.

Sigma - S/T (Italy 2000)

Fat men in thongs with ridiculous shoulder pads.

Man-Ass.  Quite high on the list of "things I never need to see again."

Unicorn - The Legend Returns EP (Germany 1987)

Man with curiously large head is...

Err...

What's going on here, exactly?

Is he transforming into a unicorn?

Is he being attacked by a ghost unicorn?

Why has he got a sword glued to his bollocks?

Enquiring minds need to know.

Malibu Barbi  - Rude Girls Single (USA 1987)

There may be a hidden meaning here.

Good luck trying to work it out.

Note that the artist managed to come up with a whole new fetish

Sadly, "Mermaids in stockings" never caught on. 

Savage - Sons Of Malice (UK 2012)

The NWOBHM  crew that were a huge influence on Metallica.

Clearly the artist still thinks it's 1982

Here's what they sound like these days.

The Sterling Cooke Force - Full Force (USA 1984)

In all fairness this does look like some kid drew a picture for the class project
"What do you want to be when you grow up"  Answer - Eddie Van Halen
Who seems to be in mid-air for some reason. 
He's going to bugger his knees right properly when he lands.

Mace - Process Of Elimination (USA 1985)

Mace - The Evil in Good (USA 1987)

Well the logo is better on the second one but that's about the only improvement.

Witchunter - Crystal Demons (Italy 2010)

A cover that screams 

"Hey I just got this free photo-editing software. Look at what I can do with it." 

Take the badly-shopped pics off the top layer and this cover would look at lot better. 

Just a suggestion.

Raw Energy - White Stallion EP (USA 1988)

The one thing you can't help noticing if you've been following the blog so far is this:

A lot of these artists are not short on creativity..Just not quite adept enough to pull it off.

There's clearly a tale to be told here? 

It might have something to do with what horses are famous for doing in great 

quantity and all over the place. Even flying horses. 

Sadly, our red-skinned angrypants lives right under the main flightpath.

And those aren't hills...

Prih Lop - Puppet Of The Faith (Russia 2009)

 Back in the 80s you got a lot of hand-drawn horrors.

These days you get photoshopped ghastliness like this.

It's like somebody covered a piece of paper in glue and lobbed a fistful of clippings at it.

No. Cease and desist this shit.  

That's all for now folks. 

Believe me, I've got plenty more where these came from. 

Pasta Al Psychotica - A cautionary tale.

If you look up at the header you'll see a quick list of subjects I intended to touch upon in this blog.
Cooking is not one of them.
 As we shall see, there is a very good reason for that.

  Pasta Al Psychotica - A nourishing dish for one hard-up, single male.

You will need:

 Two/three slack handfuls of pasta. Doesn't matter what kind. It won't help.

Two tins of economy chopped tomatoes. You can use plum tomatoes if you like, you just have to hit them with a spoon a few times to break the buggers up a bit.

A generous pinch of oregano. 

A good dollop of  West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce.

Four or five sausages.

An unwarranted confidence in your own cooking abilities.

Tastebuds that know no fear.

To be skint enough that you can't afford the kebab you'd rather be eating.

Prepare as follows:

1. Throw the sausages on a baking tray and lob them into the oven. Go read or something for 25 minutes until they're well-cooked. Remember to turn the oven off at this point.

2. Put a big pan of water on the stove. When it comes to the boil add pasta. 

3. Add some more pasta until it looks about right. Maybe a bit more just for luck. Stir, cover and ignore for twenty minutes or so. Personally I like to hit Youtube at this stage. Other cooks might prefer Reddit but it's your call.

4. Pasta's cooked. Maybe a bit overcooked. Ah what the hell. Makes it easier to eat. Turn it down and move on to the sauce .

5. Hack sausages into  bits. Make "Weep.Weep. Weep" Psycho shower-scene stabby noises as you do this.

5. Throw tomatoes, sausages and oregano into another pan and put on a moderate heat.

6. Add Pepper sauce.

7. Add more you wuss. 

8. More! For you are a MAN and fear not spicy things.

9. Go back to book on Spitfires while sauce cooks. Realise you should have been paying attention when the sauce starts spitting all over the cooker top. Presumably that means it's cooked.

10. Stir sauce. Glumly contemplate the fun you will have cleaning this pan. And the cooker. And the worktop. And the wall. 

 How the hell did the exploding sauce get on the fridge? That's five feet away?  

11. Drain pasta. Drop some of it in the sink and scald hand. Deploy extensive vocabulary of rude words.

12. Dump sauce in on top of pasta and return to the heat. Stir inelegantly until it all looks mixed up or you lose interest. 

13. Realise you once again forgot how much pasta swells up when cooked. There does seem to be a lot of stuff in that saucepan. It's coming out over the top, in fact. Oops.

14. Serve with bread that's significantly past the sell-by date.

15. Realise you may, just may, have overdone it with the pepper sauce as you take your first mouthful and your tongue shrivels up.

16. Eat with tears streaming down your face. Once your tastebuds shut down in self-defence it's not that bad. And you've got plenty left over for tomorrow, after all.  

Edit: For those that wanted  visual proof, I went and took a photo of the abomination as it brooded in the saucepan, plotting ruination to the world of man. Here. Behold my shame.

Those dark lumps are overcooked chips. I thought they might add an interesting contrast in texture.
Nope.

The Metal Project: 2013 - The Story So Far

Heavy Metal songs with "Metal" in the title, harvested from Youtube and presented for your entertainment.

 It suddenly occurred to me this afternoon that I haven't done a post for The Project lately. Oops.
So, here we go with a brief selection of songs, all released into the wild this year. Enjoy.

  Leather Synn - (Heavy Metal) A Nossa Bandeira (Portugal)

(Galloping trad metal)

Honour to: carlosmiguelfaria

Gama Bomb - Metal Idiot (Northern Ireland) 

(Thrash Metal - headbanging to this is probably a bad idea unless you want 
to really do your neck a mischief )

Honour to: TheBurekUSvemiru

Lightning - Heavy Metal Power (Peru)

(A band that clearly likes their cult 80's Trad. bands)

Honour to: fedenwobhm

This next song comes with a fanvid - basically someone took the track

 and dropped it on top of a clip from something medieval.

I'd be curious to see if they've just got the one vocalist as if they 

have, he does a hell of a job switching from shrieks to melodic. 

Ravenlord - Metal Knights (Multinational)

Embedding disabled so here's the link instead.

Honour to: LordKnightofNight

And finally.

Axecutor - No God No Devil (Worship Metal!) Brazil

(Unrepentant Old-School Metal)

Honour to: axecutermetal

  That's all folks.

Book Review: Guy Gavriel Kay - Under Heaven (2010)

  Shen Tai, second son of a famous general, has been in self-imposed exile for two years.By day he digs graves for the thousands of unburied Kitan and Taguran dead who lay across the battlefield of Kuala Nor. By night he lies in his cabin, listening to their screaming ghosts. 

 Then one day he receives astonishing news. His labours are to be rewarded by a gift from the Taguran Queen - 250 of the legendary Heavenly Horses of Sardia. A gift that might very well get him killed.

 As Shen Tai makes his way home he is pulled into the confusing, lethal currents of Kitan court politics. He has drawn the attention of some very important people indeed and if they can't make use of him, they will ensure that nobody else can either.

 

Most writers have their particular strengths -  things you know they are going to do well. Bernard Cornwell and John Ringo, in their different ways, throw you into the heart of battle. Matthew Reilly specialises in bonkers action sequences. David Gemmell (RIP) wrote some of the most heartbreaking death scenes in fantasy. 

 Guy Gavriel Kay does "Regret" better than almost any writer I know. All his books that I've read so far are set in the days when something is drawing to an end.  And his characters can feel the world about to change around them.   

 A lot of authors race from one point to the next, hoping you won't notice the gaps in the story. Kay does it differently. He invites you to take your time, take in the mood and the moment and almost signposts the holes "Here is something I am not telling you. What do you think it might be?"
 When it comes right down to it Guy Gavriel Kay is closer to Historical Fiction than he is to Fantasy. "Under Heaven" is set in somewhere that is obviously Ancient China rebranded, albeit with a light sheen of magic that's most obvious in the sequences set on the Northern steppes. He's good enough that he manages to make it work.  Normally a group of people trading philosophy and poetry would  make me skip ahead to the next punchup but somehow Kay makes that work too.
Again, it's all about the things hanging in the air. The words that have not been said but everybody understands.
  I will mention in passing that Kay's cast are a fascinating lot - poets, and generals and forward-thinking concubines - and while Tai-Shen is obviously of a heroic bent, you get the impression the "villains" are only occupying the role because the currents of the Imperial court  pushed them that way.

So, to sum up, if you like your Fantasy characters to fence with words rather than broadswords then you may very well enjoy this book. 

Womens Wrestling Comics - More Lucha Doll Mai

 Posts about women's wrestling are consistently my biggest source of  pageviews so I thought I'd do something I've been meaning to do for a while: Put up some more scans from Yumiki Asuka's wrestling manga "Lucha Doll Mai" (Part one : HERE )

 The girls in exuberant mood. 

Story: The Tournament

(This is another fiction piece I had lying about and thought I'd inflict on the world.)

Granmak killed the Orcish chieftain with his Sword of Rubies and then turned to face the others with his eyes aflame and his teeth bared in a savage grin. As he had expected, they hung back , reluctant to face one who had bested their leader inside two heartbeats.  “I am in a hurry.” he told them through gritted teeth. “Stand aside or by all the gods in the heavens your dying shall be hard and slow.”
  The loathsome grey skinned creatures exchanged glances that were brief but full of meaning. Then as one, they put up their swords and melted back into the forest.
  Granmak used the dead orc’s tunic to cleanse his blade and slid it back into it’s jewelled sheath with a muttered curse. “I grow old.” He said to no one in particular. “To let a full score of orcs come upon me unawares. “
 He was distracted, he knew, by thoughts and dreams newly arisen. One thought in particular: The Tournament. How ironic it would be if he had been slain on  a muddy forest trail before he could claim his rightful, everlasting glory. Still more ironic if daydreaming of said glory got him killed.
  He let his mind calm and then, when he was once more in harmony with himself and his surroundings, Granmak resumed his interrupted journey.

 There is a longer and greater tale here if I chose to tell it. Of how Granmak first heard of the tournament in a squalid dungeon and his escape. Of the long journey by sea and mountain trail and (briefly) dragon. There are fights won and the strange hazards of the Forest of Twilight bested. Old friends turned enemies and bitter enemies become reluctant travelling companion and tales aplenty born upon every step of the quest.
  That is not the tale I can tell. Not here and not now.
   Suffice it to say that Granmak proved his worth to enter the Tournament simply by arriving at the Citadel of Chains, where it was to be held.
  He strode in through the gate with his head high and his muscles aching from the climb up the White Mountain. A masked servitor asked his name and, satisfied with the answer, led him through to a great chamber at the heart of the Citadel.
  A hundred seats had been set here, and in each one was a hero of great renown. Set before each man or woman was a mirror of silver set in a curious frame of dark wood and steel.
The Master of the Citadel bade Granmak take a seat. “When the gong rings for the second time the Tournament shall begin.  You shall travel to a strange and perilous world and there your wits and skill shall be tested as never before and all your prior feats shall be as nothing.”
  “It is why I am here.” Granmak replied simply.
“Then good luck”

 The gong rang once and the champions ceased to chatter amongst themselves and began to gaze into the mirrors before them. The air was still, expectant, taut with barely repressed excitement.
Once more the gong crashed and as it’s echoes died away Granmak watched the mirror before him swirl with colour then clear into a view of another world.
 The world fell away into darkness...

  He opened his eyes and stared about him in wonder. The room he was in was like nothing he had seen before, all bright colours and strange shapes and the faintest scent of pine. Light streamed in through a gaping hole in the wall but somehow the wind was kept outside. Suddenly a small black gewgaw came to life on the stool beside the bed and chirruped incessantly until he punched it into oblivion. Rising, he threw aside his blanket (thick yet so light) and clumsily donned the clothing he found in a cupboard. It felt strange, but not uncomfortable and it certainly smelt better than his old leathers.
  After a moment of panic when he realised he was weaponless for the first time in almost thirty years, Granmak went to find food. He found it in another cupboard, white as ice and as cold …but how to cook it?
  After all these years of laughing at death, Granmak began to comprehend that in this strange place he found himself, not a single one of his hard won skills would be of use.
He grinned at the empty air. “A challenge at last.” he cried. And then he began slowly, clumsily, to make his breakfast.

The Master of the Citadel sat atop his throne, contemplating the rows of transfixed men and women before him, a small smile flickering across his lips .
  There was a sudden  explosion of movement as one of the heroes convulsed, screamed and was still. Yal the Archer had come to the end of his road at last.
The Master sat back and closed his eyes.
“I suppose I should have warned them not to step out in front of cars.”

Book Review: Lee Collins - The Dead Of Winter (2012)

I promised myself that this year I'd try to do more book  pieces. So here you go.

 Image courtesy of http://angryrobotbooks.com/

 "Cora Oglesby and her husband, Ben, hunt things  - Things that shouldn't exist.

 When the marshall of Leadville, Colorado, comes across a pair of mysterious, bloody deaths out in the badlands, he turns to Cora to find the creature responsible. But if she is to overcome the unnatural tide threatening to consume the small town, Cora must first confront her own tragic past."

The Metal Project: Ride the Metal Highway

The Metal Project is my personal quest to find every song on Youtube with "Metal" in the title and gather them in one place. Dear gods , there's lots of them.

 The theme of today's selection is that there is no theme. None. Nil. Nada.  Just ten songs from here there and everywhere.  Hope you enjoy them.

Reznikoff - Heavy Metal Highway (USA 2008 - I think)

Party Hard Rock rather than Metal

 Honour to: krameribanez

   

Bulldozing Bastard - Bastard Metal (Germany 2012)

(Filthy punk/metal that owes a lot to a certain trio of  Geordies.)

Honour to: HeavyMetalSturmtrupp

Next, 9 minutes of ...strangeness.

Slauter Xstroyes - Metal's No Sin (USA 1998)

(Trad Metal Epic from US Cult Faves)

Honour to: deadhorse99

And by way of contrast:

2 minutes and a bit that owe a lot to Maiden

Overdose - God Save the Metal (Brazil 1987-Instrumental)

 

Honour to:  fonte9933

Hellhound - Metal Attack (Japan 2006)

(Fast Power Metal with shrieked vocals. I quite like it)

Honour to: Kristoss666
 

Saratoga - Heavy Metal (con letra) Spain 1999

(One from the crunchier end of Power Metal)

Honour to: werisneiles

  Bestial Mockery - Black Metal Slaughter (Sweden 2006)

(BM with definite Thrash touches)

Honour to: MofHAce

Heavy Metal Perse - Heavy Metal Perse (Finland 2008)

(Chunky Trad/Power Metal sung in Finnish)

Honour to: vihtorik

Atenas - Luchando Por El Metal (Argentina 1997)

(Unpretentious Trad Metal)

Honour to: cymlaf

And finally, one of those "Rock History" songs 

Big Rat - Heavy Metal Dynamite (Germany 1988)

(Singalong Melodic Metal)

 

Honour to: ilovedapeepee

That's all folks. See ya next time.

Heavy Metal Cover Girls: Swords and Crossbows and...Bears?

If you've been following the blog then you've probably guessed that I rather like A) Heavy Metal and B) Warrior Women. So let's have another post that combines both.

Descendant - Pass The Ammunition (Canada 2011)

 Isn't it weird how after the fall of civilisation everybody promptly

ditches their hardwearing denim in favour of leather chaps?

(Not just the women either - have you seen Mad Max 2?)

http://www.myspace.com/descendantband

V/A -Heavy Metal OST (1981)

I own this one.

Of course I didn't buy it just for the cover ...

(The Sabbath and Cheap Trick tracks are bloody brilliant)

Cain's Dinasty - Madmen Witches And Vampires (Spain 2010)

 That's what you get for buying cheap knockoff chainmail

Look at the state of it!

And you're supposed to wear something underneath it.

If you're chafed to buggery then it's all your own fault.

Morning Starlett -S/T (USA 2012)

There's nothing like the satisfaction of a good day's work.

She gets to go home thinking "I did some quality violence today"

The band aren't bad actually.

And finally...

The greatest album cover in Metal History. 

Gloryful - The Warrior's Code (Germany 2013)

A woman wearing a bikini. 

With a sword. 

On a Polar bear.
Fighting a Zombie-Squid thing in the snow.

 The sheer levels of awesome are off the scale.

That's all folks. 

(Ps. I found an most of these here: http://www.metalargentum.com/index.php )

CD Review: Rio - Borderland (1985)

Tracklisting:

I don't wanna be the fool

Straight to the heart

Tommy can't help it

Better this time

State Of Emergency

Shy Girl

She's a virgin

Close to you

Borderland

Personnel:

Jon Neil: Vocals/guitar

Steve Rodford - Drums/bass/keyboards

 Some bands really don't do themselves any favours. AOR hopefuls Rio regularly show up in lists of Crap Album Covers, thanks to the spectacularly tacky cover for second LP "Sex Crimes", and having a song on this album  entitled "She's a virgin" is bad enough until you hear it and realise the general gist is "She's a virgin...and I'm going to be first!" Even in the 80s that was just a wee bit wrong.

  There were a few other things working against them. Being British for starters. There were plenty of UK contenders that were producing the sort of radio-friendly, perfect-for-film-soundtracks, AOR that was all over the 80s but who never got beyond "Cult favourite" Why? No idea. It certainly wasn't for lack of talent...

 This particular LP I originally picked in 1989ish, doggedly hung onto it through several moves and then  finally got round to getting on CD this week.   I think you can take it as read that I quite like it.

 The Rio sound is on the poppier side of AOR - relatively restrained guitars, big choruses and lots of keyboards - and both chaps clearly know what they are doing with their instruments. Jon Neil isn't really in the same class as Lou Gramm or Steve Perry but he gets the job done more than adequately.

 The two strongest tracks on the CD are the opening duo of "I don't wanna be the fool" and "Straight to the heart" but listening to the album again, I'm pleasantly reminded of how good the rest of the songs are. Certainly a lot rockier than memory would have it.  I have "State of emergency" playing as I write this and the solo is pretty tasty. 

 Seriously, these guys should have been on at least one Teen comedy soundtrack. 

 There is one glaring fault with this Krescendo Records reissue though. Thanks to somebody inadvertantly adding "Casualty"(B-side to the "I don't wanna be the fool" single) in the wrong place the tracklisting is all to cock from #6 onwards. ("Shy girl" is really "Casualty", "She's a virgin" is really "Shy girl" and so on down, meaning the title track gets left off entirely!) Good job guys. You might want to get the Retrospect Records reissue instead. 

 Anyway, here's "Straight to the heart". See what you think. 

Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012)

 It's the 4th of July weekend and the New Jersey town of Seaside Heights is getting ready to party, none more so than local Guidos  Donnie, Balzac and The Complication (TC).
  Meanwhile a building project up the coast has bent more than a few rules and in the process attracted the attention of  several rare and particularly vicious sharks. 
  Now people are getting eaten and the authorities don't want to know. Can TC and his bros stop the sharks from turning Seaside Heights into their own all-you-can-chomp buffet?

 I blame my brother for this one. I was chatting to him the other day and when the subject drifted onto "Crap films"  a few titles came up.
 "Hang on a minute" I told him. "What was that last one again?"
"Jersey Shore Shark Attack?
"That's the one. You realise I now have to see this, don't you."
"You know it's going to be shite, don't you."
"I know." I said wearily. I seem to remember him calling me a pillock and the conversation sort of petered out.

 If I were to describe this film in one sentence it would be: "Orange people versus Sharks", the idea being to make a shark movie that also spoofed MTV's "Jersey Shore" (Which, incidentally I've never watched because watching obnoxious morons shout at each other doesn't entertain me.)

  And they're not exactly subtle about it either:

 

 

 

   At this point, I have two questions: Are people supposed to be that colour 

and what are those girls doing with their lips, exactly?

Does it surprise anybody to know that this is a SyFy original?  Any doubt is erased once the sharks appear on screen.

  We've had Super Sharks, Sand Sharks and Two-headed Sharks. 

Albino sharks are a bit boring, really.

  Thing is, the films being lampooned are already ludicrous and usually tongue in cheek anyway so there's not much you can do to add comedy. The writers didn't exactly go out of their way to add gags either. Possibly they were thinking the concept of  Guidos vs Sharks would be funny enough.
 However, if you treat this as just another Stupid Shark Movie then there's all the usual fun to be had;

Mocking the effects for starters

Donnie is about to give a foam rubber shark a right shoeing.

  Then there's mocking the bits blatantly nicked from Jaws ("Hey, let's not bother telling anybody about the sharks. Don't want to scare the tourists." and yet another variant on "Smile, you son of a bitch.") and pointing out the frequent moments of utter stupidity. (New Jersey Police Stations apparently leave their armoury unlocked so anybody can wander in and help themselves.)

  Weirdly enough, I actually found myself warming to TC and his crew as the film went on. They might be dumb as wildebeest and unnatural in colour but they do sort of come across as OK people.

 To sum up, this is not a good film but if you get a kick out of watching stupid people get eaten by bad CGI sharks then Jersey Shore Shark Attack might entertain you for an hour or so.

 Now for some screencaps;

 Wet t-shirt contest. Just because.

 Nooki expresses her disapproval of such antics.

Dear gods, you could use her earrings to moor boats. 

Some rich WASPs show up to mock the locals.

A fat man has a bit of a fishing mishap.

Rich preppie wonders how Nooki fits into those trousers without 

a shoehorn and a good fistful of vaseline.

 Preppie chick wonders who the orange girl in the spandex pants is

 

"You need to stay out o the water 'cos of all the sharks. Hey. nice boobs." 

Strangely, this warning is ignored. It's like she couldn't take him seriously for some reason. 

Here's the trailer if you're interested. 

That's all folks. 

The Metal Project: The 1980s were awesome and you know it.

The Metal Project: An attempt to collect and share every single Heavy Metal song  that actually has "Metal" in the title. All the ones on Youtube anyway.

 Today I'm going to bring you 8 songs from the most Metal decade in history. The 1980s. 
  These bands never got to play Live Aid, never got on MTV and probably spent more time in fart-stinking vans than any sane man should have to endure. And for that I salute them all.

 (And while I'm at it - To all those fans who have dug out obscurities and shared them with the world,  I can do this only because of you. Respect is due.)

Riff - Ruedas De Metal (Argentina 1981)

(More Bachman-Turner Overdrive than Black Sabbath but

you know what, I'm cool with that.)

Honour to: JoChoLP123

Future Tense -Battle Of Metal (NLD 1983) Demo

(Big fans of the faster NWOBHM bands, clearly)

Honour to: omgw00

Vaughn - Holy Metal (USA 1984)

(Christian Metal, obviously, but not too preachy)

Honour to:  NWOBHM87

Vice Human - Metal Wars (Greece 1985)

(No nonsense chuggachug - Vocals do take a bit of getting used to, mind)

Honour to: PanosDrama92

Attaxe - Petal To The Metal (USA 1985)

(Leather 'n' studs US Metal - Reminds me a wee bit of somebody... The Rods, maybe?) 

  Honour to: Windrider1986

Formel1 -Heavy Metal (East Germany 1986)  

(Heavy Metal leans heavily towards nonconfomity and individualism.

 The Eastern Bloc nations - not so much.

I suspect there was a certain amount of friction)

   

Honour to: zeob100

Crypt - Metalust Forever (Canada 1987)

(Slots into the gap between HM and Thrash with a definite nod to Maiden in places )

Honour to: CultopaidoGR

Galactika - Metall (Russia 1988)

(Another one from behind the Iron Curtain. You can't help feeling

they deserved a bigger recording budget)

Honour to: rumblephist

That's it to be getting on with.

I have no idea what the theme for the next Metal project entry will be.

"Blatant stalling while I try and collect enough songs to justify

an entry for 2013" would probably be accurate. 

See you next time.