I think Dave was the first person I know to discover the genre of pirate metal – pirate as in “arrrrr matey”, not pirate as in illegally downloaded, that is.

The concept sounds weird until you hear it, but the combination of blistering metal riffs and the lore of the high seas actually go together really well. Pirates are back in vogue thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and what group of musicians are more like lawless outlaws than metalheads?

The first band Dave discovered was Verbal Deception, a Canadian band. Here’s a live clip:

YouTube – Verbal Deception – Pirate Attack

We are of course going to Wacken this year and one of the bands on the bill is Alestorm – Scottish pirate metal, of all things. Metal Sucks recently posted about them. Here’s a live clip:

YouTube – Alestorm – Captain Morgan’s Revenge (Live)

While Verbal Deception are awesome metal first and pirate second, I think that Alestorm are less metal and more pirate/folk. I recently found a third band which takes the cake as far as I’m concerned – Swashbuckle. They are very metal and very, very pirate. Carn, the dude plays with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder. And check out the background of their MySpace page = that’s my new PC wallpaper. Live clip:

YouTube – Swashbuckle – “Crewed by the Damned” Live

Apparently pirate metal is not a new thing – there was a German band called Running Wild in the 80′s. I haven’t tracked any of their stuff down though.

So there you have it, ye scurvy dogs…

Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. Most old-school metal fans prefer one or the other. Occasionally people will claim to like both equally, but just between you and me, they’re lying.

Up front disclosure: I fall on the Judas Priest side of the argument. I mean, the classic image of 80′s Iron Maiden that I always think of has Bruce Dickinson running around in bright patterned spandex pants and huge white sneakers:

Contrast that fashion disaster to Judas Priest front man Rob Halford:

Sure, he’s gay. But he’s also tough. And cool. (And spiky). And that always appealed to me far more than Bruce’s sneakers, personally. I was first introduced to Priest through my best mate Gossy, who was in turn influenced by her older brother, who was somewhat of an early metal fan.

It cannot be denied that both bands have contributed an enormous amount to the history of metal. Going back to our big-arse genre diagram, Sam Dunn (remember him? check the first installment if you don’t) has grouped Iron Maiden into the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” (1979-1983) group (affectionately known as NWOBHM by historians – and I’m serious) whereas Judas Priest have been put into “Power Metal” (1976-present). I’m a bit surprised by that – I usually think of Priest as being very much British New Wave – and although they are mentioned on both the NWOBHM Wikipedia entry and in the NWOBHM Encyclopedia (yes, of course there is one) they do not have a dedicated entry themselves, so I guess I stand corrected.

Anyhoo… while both bands have had on-again off-again careers, Judas Priest have been around the longest, so we’ll start with them. Judas Priest start to get interesting, in my opinion, with Killing Machine (released as Hell Bent For Leather in the US). This is when they got properly heavy and started the leather and studs thing. I had this on tape when I was younger and listened to it in my walkman (remember them?) constantly. Here’s Hell Bent For Leather, live, complete with onstage motorbike:

YouTube – Judas Priest – Hell Bent For Leather

That album was followed up by British Steel in 1980, which is often considered their best work. Here’s Breaking The Law, which has a rather hilarious film clip:

YouTube – Judas Priest Breaking The Law

I wouldn’t recommend holding up a bank using only guitars, even if you do have KK Downing and/or Glen Tipton with you.

From Screaming For Vengeance, Priest’s 8th studio album released in 1982, check out You Got Another Thing Coming:

YouTube – Judas Priest – You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’

Looking through YouTube, there’s so much I’d like to link to here, but I will try and limit myself. To wrap up the Judas Priest segment, I will include Turbo Lover from 1986′s Turbo, which is one of Gossy’s fave songs. There are some people who consider Turbo to be low point in Priest’s career, as it features synthesizers and is much more mainstream than their previous work. I dunno though – it’s Priest, isn’t it? You decide for yourself:

YouTube – Judas Priest

If you’re interested in Judas Priest, there’s two other episodes in the band’s history that you may want to read up about. Firstly there was the “subliminal messages” trial, where the parents of two boys who committed suicide sued Judas Priest in 1990, claiming the album Stained Class contained the subliminal message “do it”. The law suit was eventually dismissed, although not before causing a considerable financial burden to the band. As Rob Halford pointed out during the trial, commanding fans to commit suicide would be counter-productive; if such a thing were possible, bands would be more likely to instruct listeners to “buy more records”.

Secondly, the era involving Tim “Ripper” Owens, who joined the band in 1996 after Halford left, is quite interesting. Owens was the singer in a Judas Priest tribute band called British Steel – and his transition to the “real thing” was the inspiration for the film Rock Star, although the details differed quite a bit in the final version of the movie. It’s not a bad flick, either.

Judas Priest have continued to release good albums since the “classic period” that I’ve outlined here – for example, 1990′s Painkiller was particularly well received. A new Priest album is set for release in 2008: titled Nostradamus, it is apparently a concept album based around the prophet of the same name

Onto Iron Maiden. Their early history is confusing – they went through a number of singers and guitarists (I think) before settling on a mostly stable lineup (I think). You’re free to try to untangle the Wikipedia entry yourselves.

1982′s Number of the Beast, their third album and first international success, was the first to feature current vocalist Bruce Dickinson. From that release, here’s the title track:

YouTube – Iron Maiden – Number of the beast

Another classic is Run to the Hills. I dunno about the video clip for this one:

YouTube – Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills

Here’s a live clip for Flight of Icarus, from their next release, Piece of Mind from 1983:

YouTube – 4 – Iron Maiden – Flight Of Icarus

Their later albums – which were plentiful – get a bit weird, and to be honest I don’t know many fans who don’t prefer early 80′s Maiden to later Maiden. So I’ll leave you with one last clip, Aces High, from Powerslave:

YouTube – Iron Maiden – Aces High

So… Priest… Maiden… it’s up to you. As I mentioned at the beginning, you can claim to like both. But deep down you know you have a favourite: so let’s hear it in the comments. When MTV’s Headbanger’s Blog asked Who Rocks Harder?: Judas Priest or Iron Maiden? it was definitely Priest that got more comments. I know that’s who I picked.

I can’t finish without some more Priest, so how about this: Parental Guidance, the anthem of the 80′s. Sing it with me kids:

We don’t need no
no no no
parental guidance here

YouTube – Judas Priest – Parental Guidance

Oh, and if you’re reading this and don’t agree with my choices, tough. But feel free to leave a comment anyway

Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey is a fantastic starting point. I saw it at the movies – I think I scored some free tickets from Triple J – and have the DVD and the soundtrack. For the uninitiated, it’s a documentary by Canadian Anthropologist Sam Dunn that seeks to uncover what metal really is and why it’s loved by so many millions of people worldwide. It includes lots of history and Sam created some pretty comprehensive charts of the various sub-genres and how they kinda fit together. I’m gonna use his chart – a version is available on Wikipedia – as a starting point. First up: Early Metal.

In the beginning there was Black Sabbath. Sam Dunn’s chart lists Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, MC5, Mountain, and The Stooges – but let’s face it: Cream, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin conjure up images of 70′s stadium rock. Jimi Hendrix was for the free-love hippies. MC5 and the Stooges were early punk more than metal. Blue Cheer and Mountain are all but lost to history. But Black Sabbath – they were the first real heavy metal band. That was where it started: in the dingy back streets of Birmingham (I’ve been there and let me tell you, it’s not pretty).

The original “classic” Black Sabbath lineup includes Ozzy Osbourne on vocals. Paranoid is the classic song from their second, and probably best-known album, of the same name. I read/heard that this was one of the first music videos ever produced, if not the very first, although Wikipedia doesn’t back me up on that one. So let’s just say it might be.

YouTube – Black Sabbath Paranoid

Ozzy looks remarkably young and together, doesn’t he?

Black Sabbath has an interesting history which you can read about on Wikipedia if you’re feeling adventurous. If you’d like the short version, after Ozzy quit the band (after 10 odd years) in 1979, Ronnie James Dio got the job. Ronnie had been fronting Ritchie Blackmore’s (ex Deep Purple) Rainbow, an interesting band in itself – check out Man on a Silver Mountain.

YouTube – Rainbow Man On The Silver Mountain

The so-called “Dio Years” were chronicled in Black Sabbath’s 2007 release (called, funnily enough, “The Dio Years”) and that lineup toured the world under the name Heaven and Hell, the classic album from that era. I saw them in Perth, and had crappy seats (yes, as in sitting down seats) which was a real shame as the extremely awesome Down were playing support and I would have loved to be right down the front for that too (Down will be covered in a future installment, don’t panic).

Black Sabbath with Dio was very different from Black Sabbath with Ozzy, but both are awesome. Ronnie has a very distinctive vocal style – were he not so demonic and utterly, utterly metal, I’m sure he would have been an opera singer, cos he’s a little guy (as you’ll see from the documentary) but he has some enormous lungs. He also basically invented the horns. Neon Knights is representative of the Black Sabbath of that time.

YouTube – Black Sabbath – Neon Knights (Dio)

After that, Sabbath got weird and went through so many lineup changes that there’s a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to the various band members. I’ll ignore all that and focus instead on what Ozzy and Dio did after they left – because both are noteworthy.

Ozzy had quite a solo career in the 80′s – before he started Ozzfest and became a reality TV icon (and by “he”, I mean Sharon did it in his name, cos he’s a legend but like her or hate her, she’s the marketing brains of that family). Here’s two of my faves, Shot in the Dark and The Ultimate Sin from the album The Ultimate Sin. The 80′s hair and fashion is particularly hot.

YouTube – Ozzy Osbourne. Shot in the Dark and Ultimate Sin LIVE

Ronnie James Dio also has a successful solo career – here’s the classic Holy Diver. It DOES NOT GET any more medieval than that. Ride the tiger, baby.

YouTube – dio – holy diver

But in fact, one of my favourite Dio songs and one that is definitely underrated is Stand Up and Shout. Check it out.

YouTube – Dio Stand up and Shout live 1986

So that’s it for installment one. Next up will be, I think, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest: Choose your side. Stay tuned. \m/