"...in about 500 years." Damn right, Slippers. I've been replenishing the Diamond Head tanks all week and like the very finest wines (not that I'd know a Bordeaux from a Claret) it's a modest volume of work that's matured beautifully with age. The iconic, original 'White Album,' though, that I've just spun up - 'The Prince,' 'It's Electric' and 'Helpless' - are genuinely seminal and if you crank it up sufficiently, is truly uplifting material with breaks and drives that command The Creed right from the front. It's little wonder the Arthur Conan Ulrich Clan fancies 'em so much.
Another track from an album I've often been minorly indifferent towards, partly becuase of production that's always seemed too fuggy and yet... Some minor system tweaks, a room relocation and the adoption of a studioesque, 'nearfield monitor' type listening situation et voila! Suddenly, it all comes together, I'm reaching for the expletives dictionary and by around 5.50mins - Glenn's blood curdling screamtro - wow! Yes, also more of The Master's electrifying, unique riffolowerk and as some of us suggested in the 'Sabbath 'ABA' thread, old Tone was arguably augmenting his incendiary techniques well beyond the very early 80s. Explosive, true Metal and an exposition of life-immersive music that can only be descibed as sublime. 11/10.
I like both of the Iommi-Hughes releases (Fused and The 1996 DEP Sessions) but like one of them more than the other. Right now I am struggling to remember which one though, but am thinking it is DEP. Nether of them are as good as 7th Star though IMO. I love that album. All are essential for me since I am a big fan of both these guys though.
Seventh Star is to me a bit of a limber up for The Etrenal Idol, both invoking some waton, down-the-line kreiging. That one song I've referered to is a stand out from the album in question.
They do work well together; a shame they haven't released more collaborative material. Metal irrigation.
OK, can we not blatantly overrated Diamond Head's later work on the basis of Lightning to the Nations? Especially when bands like Satan, Holocaust, Saxon, Angel Witch, Cloven Hoof, etc. had more consistent and quality discographies.
No overrating based on past albums for me. The last Diamond Head album is unbelievably the best metal album I've heard in like forever. I did not even like them b4 I heard that album (I have since acquired everything they've done though). I like their early stuff but in what is probably sacrilege to most DH fans I think the last one blows away anything they've ever done times 1 million....
Listened to Seventh Star for the first time. I dig it! Nice melodic rock album that is unfairly shackled by the Sabbarh brand.
Overrated? Surely one band whose output is the emodiment of a canon largely bypassed: yes, thanks to the 'Metallica effect,' rather than the original material itself, it has gained a degree of revisionist traction in Metal circles but at the time(s) and on balance, I'd say broadly, woefully underrated. Then again, I do agree that some of the other bands you cite have been generally/totally ignored/forgotten, although I'm not sure for reasons of consistently great recordings, e.g. see Saxon's shocking mid-late 80s slip ups.
I'm hardly doing this on the basis of revisionism. Cloven Hoof had a pretty great '80s discography that stretched beyond their debut, Holocaust went from awesome NWOBHM to an extraordinarily eclectic brand of progressive metal in ''89 and succeeded in that shift, Angel Witch had a worthwhile '80s discography that had quality beyond their debut and Satan has a surprisingly excellent discography stretching all the way to this decade with the members even making incredible releases in different bands under the NWOBHM banner in Blitzkrieg and Blind Fury while also making seminal releases in power/thrash in Pariah. Meanwhile, Diamond Head released a seminal debut and then proceeded to release a somewhat middling release with Borrowed Time, the festering pile of garbage that was Canterbury, a string of limpwristed and often downright terrible "comeback" releases stretching from '93 to '07 and finally made a somewhat decent album with with their self-titled. It doesn't take much to see how Diamond Head is a comparatively inferior band overall.
Talking about blatantly overrated, those bands aren't on the same level as Saxon. Cloven Hoof, Holocaust, Angel Witch, and Satan each had a string of albums that no one ever heard. It was the height of the NWOBHM and they couldn't get arrested.
I am literally the world's biggest fan of the original line-up, saw them live 4 times blah blah blah...but I totally agree with all of this
An extremely large majority of those NWOBHM bands suffered from absolutely **** management and Diamond Head was right up at the top of that list. They should have been huge but when your managed essentially by the singer’s mom and sit on your toes while bands like Maiden and Def Leppard take off with excellent management and great label support, you fail. MCA was a bit of a disaster for them. Anyways, I’ll take that S/T Diamond Head album over anything any of these other bands have released in recent years.
If their music was that good, why weren't they embraced by British rock fans the same way that Saxon was?
