soldiers of metal fight to the death!

Posted in Music by Ashley : September 24, 2007

…or so I thought until 1986 when Judas Priest dropped that lump of coal turkey, Turbo, and I ran screaming away from their Twinkie and multi-colored leather infested comedy sketch for Turbo Lover. Ok, so that was just the last straw, the Rock first started to fail me with the faltering of Hard rock, such as in 1983 when Leppard followed up their brilliant High ‘n Dry with that Pyromania album and then in 1984 when VH had the gall to follow up their comedy oldies album Diver Down with, ugh, 1984. But the Metal thing stayed intact. In fact, by 1984 I had just started getting into better and more extreme (for the time) metal such as Anthrax and Mercyful Fate, but I abandoned any future metal releases once “Turbo” came out… For a decade. If only Judas Priest would have released Rob’s later redemption, Fight’s classic LP War of Words, instead of “Turbo”… Many years of musical wanderings could have been improved. What brings this on? Well, I finally digitized Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal, one of my top ten metal albums of the 80’s…

Top Ten 1980’s Metal Albums (ok, maybe one could argue the “metal” mettle of Leppard and Motorhead, so I’ll just add them to the 10) :

Accept “Restless and Wild”
Anthrax “Fistful of Metal”
Def Leppard “High ‘n Dry”
Iron Maiden “The Number of the Beast”
Judas Priest “British Steel”
Judas Priest “Point of Entry”
Judas Priest “Defenders of the Faith”
Mercyful Fate “Don’t Break the Oath”
Motörhead “Ace of Spades”
Mötley Cruë “Shout at the Devil”
Raven “All for One”
Scorpions “Blackout”

Of the music left from that era which followed me into the 1980’s, Fistful of Metal was about the metallist of them all, and it continues to remind me of its greatness. But it did seem to be Anthrax’s first and only metal success (as far as I know) . And I have no idea how they descended from such great heights as “Deathrider” and “Death from Above” to the pitiful depths of “I’m the Man” (and surfer clothes) a mere three years later.

Plus it has one of the best cheesey album covers of its day…

Fistful of Metal

more like a mouthful of metal…

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