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

Episode 52 - Chris Tsangarides (ft. Quartz, Tygers Of Pan Tang & Anvil)

The albums reviewed each week on the Enter Sadmen podcast have to meet a theme. These are often tenuous and the lads aren't averse to stretching the elastic quite a long way when it comes to interpreting the episode themes that the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics & Themes spews out. Especially is it means Rich can choose a Rush album.

But among their favourite themes are those that require them to each choose and album relating to a specific producer. The third knob-twiddler to come under the scrutiny of the pod, after Max Norman and Bruce Fairbairn, was Chris Tsangarides - a producer whose work with Y&T and Thin Lizzy already occupied places in the Hall of Fame's top 10 albums.

Lining up for this episode were the Tony Iommi-produced and Tsangarides-engineered 1977 self-titled debut from Quartz, 1981's Spellbound, the second album from North-East band Tygers of Pan Tang, and Canadian rockers Anvil with their third effort from 1983, Forged In Fire.

Tune in and find out where the riff to the title track from Sabbath's Heaven And Hell album really came from...

Episode 51 - Night Crawlers (ft. Uriah Heep, Praying Mantis & Spider)

The next category to come out of the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes was 'insects', which the boys immediately changed to Night Crawler in homage to Judas Priest. The usual rules applied - a tangible link to entymology either in the band name, album title or album artwork.

The natural choice would obviously have been the Scorpions, the obviousness itself being reason enough for the boys to neatly sidestep it in favour of something else.

Which is how the lads came to spend a week in the company of Uriah Heep's Firefly from 1977 - the Brit-proggers' first album without the eccentric and erratic David Byron and with the excellent ex-Lucifers Friend and Les Humphries singers (yes, really) John Lawton.

Joining the Heep for episode 51 were NWOBHM's blink-and-you-missed-them Praying Mantis and their one and only (for ten years and with this line up) album from 1981, Time Tells No Lies.

Also along for the ride were Merseyside rockers Spider and their 1982 outing, Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies. We're not going to call them Quo soundalikes, but that doesn't mean no-one else did.

Episode 50 - Freebirds (ft. Atomic Rooster, Budgie & Europe)

The Hall of Fame hits 150 albums with this latest episode from the Sadmen, who were each tasked with finding an album with an avian theme after the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out Birds as the subject matter for the pod's half century.

The lure of the most obvious choice also giving him the opportunity to head back to the early 1970s was too much for Mark to resist and so he rocked up with a copy of Budgie's 1973 album Never Turn Your Back On A Friend under his arm.

Steve, a self-appointed child of 80s glam and thrash rock, surprised even himself as he dredged up memories of anaglypta wallpaper, orange and tan soft furnishings, avocado bathroom suites and, crucially in this context, his old man's copy of Atomic Rooster self-titled 1971 debut.

Richard bowled into the mid-Eighties and the 1984 album that proved what its successor - The Final Countdown - belied. Namely that beneath the saccharine MTV-chasing veneer of Carrie Europe were an honest-to-goodness hard rock band at heart. 

Episode 49 - Precious Metal (ft. Led Zeppelin, Foreigner & Meat Loaf)

And so the Sadmen turn their attention to three albums that sit among the most commercially successful of all time. Passing on the chance - again - to put AC/DC's Back In Black into the Hall of Fame, they instead went with three records that ticked the brief in their own way, notable for not only the sheer volume of sales achieved, but also taking into account the relative stages each artist was at on the albums' release.

Two of the discs are debuts. Both were released in 1977 and 45 years later one of them is still the fouth best-selling record of all time. 

Foreigner's self-titled debut marked the start of a 4-album hot streak of million sellers. A few months later, and after being rejected by eight record companies before a small independent took a chance on it, Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell set off on a march to 35 million sales and a reimagining of how we define the word 'ambitious'.

But the episode starts seven years earlier, in 1970, as a young British band stopped to draw breath following an epic and gruelling US tour that had seen them conquer America on a scale that no other band aside from The Beatles had managed to achieve.

Led Zeppelin's third release may have been predictably titled - simply III, to follow II - but predictability ended there, with a soundscape so rich and so eclectic that it polarised critical opinion at the time, yet has come to be regarded as a pioneering classic.

Episode 48 - Doro’s Homework (ft. Saxon, Dio & W.A.S.P.)

Following their fireside chat with the Queen of Metal, Doro Pesch set the boys some homework, choosing the next three albums that would be up for review on the next episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast.

Once Steve had got over the shock of actually talking to Doro rather than just watching her from afar on a stage, the lads divvied up the albums she'd chosen and got down to business. It wasn't exactly a chore.

 

First up, Saxon's fourth album (the fourth in two short years, as it happened) Denim And Leather. Two hot singles, 9 fabulous tracks. Its place in the Hall of Fame was guaranteed. The only unknown was exacxtly where it would land.

Next came Dio's sophomore solo album, The Last In Line. Often overlooked, the boys discovered, upon revisiting it, that time had been kinder to it rthan they perhaps expected. But kindlesws can also be cruel, so where would it end up in relation to its predecessor, Holy Diver?

Finally, the concept album that should have been a solo album. 1992's The Crimson Idol from W.A.S.P. The mutual respect that Doro and Blackie had for one another is largely unchronicled - and you'll have to listen to the interview to understand why - but listening to Blackie's concept album it's not difficult to understand why the Metal Queen and the King of Sleaze found a (platonic) connection.

Episode 47 - The Four Elements (ft. Rainbow, FireHouse & The Wildhearts)

At the end of Episode 46, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out 'Four Elements', meaning our trio of trusty adventurers each had to find an album that had a clear and non-tenuous link to one or more of the four elements of life.

Yeah, we had to look them up, too. But at least we can save you the bother of also heading to Google or Wiki. Fire, Earth, Air and Water.

After a false start which saw Steve and Richard sniggering at the lack of creativity evident in Mark's original choice (Y&T's Earthshaker) the lads reconvened for a chinwag over three albums that had a claim to fame without actually being all that famous in their own right.

First up, Down To Earth - Rainbow's 4th album, and their first without the Little Wizard's disproportionately enormous voice. Though it escaped broad critical acclaim at the time it did spawn arguably one of the all time great pop rock songs in Since You've Been Gone. The big question was whether the rest of the album could keep pace with its signature song.

Next came the eponymous 1990 debut from FireHouse (yes, that incongruous capital in the middle of their name is deliberate, thank you) - an album that bagged the band the 'Favorite New Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Artist' award at the 1992 American Music Awards. But while their star burned bright in their native America, the UK and pretty much the whole of the rest of Planet Earth passed them by without so much as a sideways glance.

And bringing up the rear was the some-might-say-cheeky-others-like-Mark-might-say-twattish Ginger and his post-Punk band The Wildhearts with their world-hating wink-and-a-smile 1993 effort Earth vs. The Wildhearts.

Episode 46 - 1987 (ft. Whitesnake, Mötley Crüe & Rush)

Big production. Big hair. Big names. Big albums. In Episode 46 the boys turn the Enter Sadmen spotlight on the year that marked the commercial peak of hard rock and heavy metal. Following the path forged for them the previous year by the likes of Slippery When Wet, 5150 and Eat 'Em And Smile, the big guns rolled themselves into the fray in 1987.

The podcast has already reviewed, rated and ranked some of the year's other big hitters - most notably Hysteria, Crazy Nights and Appetite For Destruction (coincidentally, in consecutive episodes - #25 and #26) - but two of the three selected by the lads for this show perhaps define where rock and metal had landed as the decade neared its close.

But where Whitesnake's 1987 and Mötley Crüe's Girls Girls Girls epitomised the decadence of the era, the album that closes this show - Rush's Hold Your Fire - shows that some bands didn't need media fireworks and furore to keep pace with the times.

Episode 45 - In Your Direction (ft. Axis, .38 Special & Threshold)

So here we go again, thrill-seekers, with another three albums looking for admittance to the Enter Sadmen Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Hall of Fame - an always evolving homage to the great and the good of that broad church we all worship in.

This week, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out Points of the Compass as the theme against which the boys' album choices needed to be made. But since they'd already reviewed South Of Heaven in Episode 34, the lads got a bit stuck.

After rejecting some obvious choices, Steve and Richard turned up with a couple of corkers. Mark's, on the other hand, choice set him and Steve on a collision course that no-one foresaw.

Welcome, then, Axis and It's A Circus World, .38 Special and Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, and Threshold's Psychedelicatessen. All three albums were previously unknown to at least two of our tres hombres, and one that at least one of our merry band wished one of them had remained unknown. 

Episode 44 - Fast As A Shark (ft. REO Speedwagon, Manowar & Flotsam and Jetsam)

n the latest edition of the Enter Sadmen podcast the boys are challenged to find three albums oin the theme of Things That Swim. 

Rich managed to hit the brief with You Can Tune A Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish, REO Speedwagon's forerunner to their commercial smash hit Hi Infidelity (which the boys reviewed way back in Episode 7). 

Unfortunately, Mark and Steve stretched the elastic a bit too far by choosing things that float rather than things that swim.

So, making up the trio of albums aiming for a place in the Top 100 of the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Hall of Fame are Kings Of Metal by Manowar - not, as Mark thought, a ray but instead a jellyfish-like organism totally incapable of self-propulsion; and, washing up on rock's shoreline, No Place For Disgrace by Flotsam And Jetsam (see what we did there?)

Episode 43 - Round And Round (ft. ZZ Top, Warrior & Accept)

For the latest leg of their journey through the history of hard rock and heavy metal from 1970 to 1995, the boys were each tasked with finding an album that broadly met the theme of 'things that spin'.

That made for an episode that began in 1973 with the album that most afdicionado's widely regard as ZZ (spinning) Top's finest - the raucous Tres Hombres.

From there it was a 12 year sprint to the mid-Eighties and Fighting For The Earth, the 1985 debut effort from ahead-of-their-time Los Angeles environmentalists Warrior, ahead of a final stop at 1986 where German rockers launched album #6 on an expectant world.

Would any of these high rollers garner enough critical acclaim to gain a coveted spot in the top 100 of the lads' increasingly competitive Hall of Fame?