Enter Sadmen: The Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Hall of Fame

Episode 82 - Scene Of The Crime (ft. ZZ Top, Mortal Sin & Malice)

In this episode the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes set the lads the task of finding three albums or bands that were in some way linked to criminal acts. And not just misdemeanours, thank you very much - these had to be crimes for which jail time would not only be inevitable, but also very lengthy.

So, enter stage left Richard, clutching a copy of ZZ Top's Deguello (you'll have to listen to the episode to discover how it meets the brief). It marks a change of direction for the Texas boogie crew as they shifted away from their early blues and bluegrass brand of rock and roll to a more mainstream sound. 1981's El Loco would open the band up to mass awareness, and two years later the singles-packed Eliminator would become both golden goose and millstone. Welcome then to one of rock music's most significant commercial stepping stones.

Next up, Mark. 1986's Mayhemic Destruction, from Aussie thrash merchants Mortal Sin was their recording debut after solid work on the local gig circuits around Sydney and the wider locale. It also contains two absolute nailed-on thrash gems. Prepare for Steve to go into an advanced state of priapism.

Finally, Steve brought something as familiar and much loved as an old winter comforter, walking through the studio door with License To Kill, the 1987 sophomore effort from Amercian power rockers Malice. With a clutch of songs that could strip paint from the wall, this episode would get both loud ... and weird.

Episode 81 - Have A Drink On Me (ft. April Wine, King Kobra & Thunderhead)

For this edition of the podcast the lads are being driven to drink. Not literally, because that would be irresponsible. No, this time the Sadmen had to find an album each that had a link to alcohol.

Richard travelled back to Canada to pick up Nature Of The Beast, an album thought by many to be the finest hour of April Wine.

Steve opted for the comfort of 1986 and the rock-lite Thrill Of A Lifetime by Carmine Appice vehicle King Kobra.

 

Mark, ever the adventurer, went a little off-piste and turned up with Behind The Eight Ball (an Eight Ball being both a whisket cocktail and a drug cocktaIl. Apparently) from German power metal band Thunderhead.

Let battle commence!

Episode 80 - School's Out (ft. Metallica, Triumph & Dare)

The Tico Torres Tombola of Topics & Themes handed out a banger for this episode, with Mark, Steve and Richard tasked with finding three albums released between 1970 and 1995 that had a tangible link to the subject of 'school'. 

Steve went all Billy Bunter and drew inspiration from the1950s when teachers in English schools were still known as 'masters'. Any excuse to get messers Hetfield, Ulrich, Newstead and Hammett back on the show, right? And so the Bay Area gods' 1986 MASTERclass - and the penultimate 'Metallica album that will feature on the show - duly made its entrance.

Mark opted for something a little on the nose and mined his old timetable for some clues. After rejecting Bad English. and with the well of ideas running dry, he opted for something that was about as polar in its oppositeness to Master Of Puppets as it was possible to get. Welcome, then, Sport Of Kings from Canadian rockers Triumph - also released in 1986.

And so, to Richard, who has always had an incidental relationship with the spirit of the few rules that exist on the show. Which is why we'll leave him to explain the ludicrously tenuous link to 'school' that he managed to contrive as justification for turning up to the recording session with Dare's 1988 offering, Out Of The Silence, under his arm ...

Episode 79 - Coq Roq (ft. Trust, Blaspheme & Vulcain)

The boys didn't have to venture too far for the latest episode of the podcast - in fact, just a short hop and skip on Eurostar across La Manche and straight on to Paris.

 

Because this time the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes had tasked Richard, Steve and Mark to find something distinctly French to c state with each other. 

 

Paris wasn't a prerequisite for the show, but nevertheless that's where our plucky trio ended up. Not only that, but they all ended up with a band formed at the arse end of 1979.

 

Steve and Richard went on a voyage of discovery, while Mark mined a familiar dream at the coalface of rock. 

 

The result? Nicko McBrain's old mob, Trust, with Represssion from 1981 (Mark), and a deuce from 1985 in Desir De Vampyr by Blaspheme (Steve) and Desperados from Vulcain (Richard).

 

Mon Dieu! What a show ... !

Episode 78 - 1972 (ft. Jethro Tull, A Foot In Cold Water, & Dark)

In the latest episode of the Sadmen's journey down a rock and roll highway that starts in 1970(ish) and ends in 1995(ish), the lads pull out the corduroys and the paisley shirts and head for the warm bath of psychedelic bewilderment that was 1972.

Having encountered Jethro Tull's Aqualung some 68 episodes previously, and hashed out the whole 'is it a concept album, isn't it a concept album' debate, it was time to make the acquaintance of its successor - Thick As A Brick. There were many questions to be answered, but none of them was 'Is this a concept album?' because of that, friends, there is no doubt.

The problem with the Enter Sadmen podcast is that when one of the boys goes a bit weird, the other two follow suit. It's like Pavolv's dogs. Or something. 

Anyway, it doesn't matter. All you need to know is that getting on board with the 'out there' vibe were two more releases that are as curious as they are obscure.

From Richard, a trip back to Canada to root out the self-titled debut by A Foot In Cold Water. From Steve, a slightly less arduous journey up the M1 to Northamptonfor Dark Round The Edges, the only release by a band called Dark, and one that will set you back a cool £35,000 to buy on vinyl today. We shit you not.

Episode 77 - The Letter H (ft. Pink Floyd, Headpins & Hurricane)

So, in this episode the lads were eached tasked to find an album with a tangible (this word is important) link to the letter H.

Yes, we know. You're squinting at the episode title and the featured bands and wracking your brain to think of a Pink Floyd album beginning with H. Let us help you out: there isn't one. A, O, U, S, P, D, W, M and F, all present and correct. H? Not so much. Anyway, we'll let Richard explain his bizarre rationale for bringing 1975's Wish You Were Here to the table.

Back in the real world, Mark managed to unearth an old gem from 1982 with the long-since forgotten (at least, outside Canada) Turn It Loud from Headpins, while Steve grazed on the lush hinterland of late-80s hair metal with Hurricane's 1988 eponymous debut offering.

  

Episode 76 - You’ve Got Another Think Coming (ft. Black Sabbath, Ratt & Van Halen)

So this episode is all about the albums you bought and lisened to and thought, fuck me that's a great album! Or possibly, fuck me, that's terrible! And then, 30 years later, you discovered your opinion had done a 180 degree turn.

 

In this episode, Mark revisits the much maligned Black Sabbath experiment that saw Ian Gillan step up to the mic, Steve discovers that Ratt's Detonator tickles his ears a little differently to he way it did in 1990, and Richard recalls he moment Van Hagar suddenly made sense ....

 

 

Episode 75 - Drummers (ft. Genesis, Y&T & Toto)

Yes, Sadfans, we're giving over our 75th episode to the unsung heroes of every band that ever set foot in a recording studio or onto a stage - those apparently indefatigable timekeepers without whom there would be little or no momentum.

Stuck behind the kit at the back of the stage, these are the artisans of the hard rock and heavy metal engine room.

Whether it's a sense of rhythm combined with a diver's boot (h/t to Gillan's Mick Underwood), the professorial science of Neil Peart, or the tour de force blunt trauma approach of Bonzo, these are the men and women who provide the metronome when you're standing with your feet apart and headbanging your way to an early aneurysm.

Naturally, the list of noteworthy sticksmen is ineffably long, so consider this part one of a theme the Sadmen will undoubtedly return to in episodes to come.

But for this episode the lads have picked three drummers who have, to some extent, shaped the technical art of hitting the skins with a lump of wood.

First up, Phil Collins in his second outing with Genesis for 1972's Foxtrot. Having already helped to shape the Charterhouse proggers' sound on his debut release, Nursery Cryme the year before, Collins, Banks, Gabriel and Rutherford return a year later with a release that would achieve immortality in the genre.

The boys' next stop was six years later, as Y&T - then known still as Yesterday and Today - drop their sophomore 1978 release Struck Down. Though three years away from the standard-bearing  Earthshaker, this is the album that perhaps best showcases the undeniable talent of their man on the kit, Leonard Haze.

And the lads round off proceedings with Jeff Pocaro and TOTO's commercial juggernaut IV, which boasts the ghost notes on album opener Rosanna that to this day separate the men from the boys when it comes to high drumming art.

Enjoy!

 

Episode 74 - Making Magic (ft. Dokken, Survivor & Piledriver

Episode 74 sees the lads tackling the subject of inventions. If ever there was scope to push the envelope on a theme this, surely, is it. And so it proved, as Mark fishes out a set of what can only be described as 15th Century blueprints to qualify Dokken's 1981 debut, Breakin' The Chains.

(Don't get antsy, America - we know the better known version of the album was released in Amercia in 1983 with a title tweak - Breaking The Chains rather than Breakin' The Chains - and a very different running order, but where there's a reissue the Sadmen always take the original release for the review - and, besides, in this case it has a better back story!)

Not for the first time on the podcast, Rich went soft, opting for a post-Balboa and post-Dave Bickler Survivor and their 1984 album Vital Signs (the invention? An oscilloscope ... yeah, yeah ... they're all tenuous on this show, friends).

And (also not for the first time) Steve went hard, opting for a band that has never actually existed with Piledriver's Stay Ugly from 1986. And if you don't know the PIledriver back story, that's worth this episode's admission price alone. (The admission is free, by the way. You know ... just in case that's a dealbreaker).

Episode 73 - Creeping Death (ft. Witchfinder General, Candlemass & Entombed)

The latest episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast finds the boys in more familiar territory as the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes serves up 'Death' as the theme for Episode 73.

End of life certainly offers up a wealth of stuff to go at in the world of hard rock and heavy metal, which makes it even more bewildering that Steve and Rich didn't follow Mark's lead and go with something completly literal.

As it was, Mark arrived at the Sadmen party with an album in another one of those covers that, much like the Scorpions Lovedrive, had post-pubescent teenagers nursing a boner in the record shop.

Witchfinder General's 1982 debut Death Penalty, was a marketing man's dream, yet the band still managed to evade mainstream celebrity. The songs on offer may provide good clues as to why, but Mark argues that there's lots of fun to be had ... if, in 2023, you can get beyond the gratuitous presence of female breasts on the cover.

And so to Steve and Richard,m who could have gone with pretty much anything buit instead chose to plough a furrow in Scandinavia's death metal scene.

First up, Richard with the npw-legendary Epicus Doomicus Metallicus from Candlemass - a 1986 release that was determinedly ignored by the record-buying public until after the band was dropped by its record company - at which point they went out and bought it by the truckload.

And finally, in this episode, Steve puts forward the case for Entombed's Wolverine Blues, now a neo-classic, but then, in 1993, another radar-avoiding old skool throwback.

Prepare for laughter in the face of Death Metal.