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

Episode 33 - On A Storyteller's Night (ft. Helloween, Warfare & Fear Factory)

So, for this episode the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out Concept Albums, which gave the boys a very large playing field to go at.

A night, surely, for the big hitters to make an appearance ... who would choose Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway? Who would earmark Thick As A Brick to represent Tull's third visit to the pod? And surely to God Richard couldn't resist the temptation to slide Operation: Mindcrime into the mix, could he?

The reality, as it turned out, was very different.

Richard turned up with Helloween's Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part I which certainly tells a story - but would the l;ads be able to work out what it was?

Then Mark threw the curve ball from left field as he rocked up with Warfare's tribute to the UK's best-loved horror studio, 1990's Hammer Horror. We're still not sure if Steve and Rich have forgiven him for that.

Although arguably Steve had bigger questions to face as he delved into the box marked 'Noise' for Fear Factory's Demanufacture, an album which by his own admission met the brief in only the most gossamer-thin sense.

Episode 32 - Shot Down In Flames (ft. Grand Prix, Fastway & Vain)

In the latest episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast, Steve, Mark and Rich get to grips with three albums from bands they believe should have been a much bigger deal than they ultimately were.

First up is British NWOBHM/AOR outfit (if one band can be both) Grand Prix with their second release There For None To See from 1982. They'd release one final album - Samurai - in '84 before finally calling it a day. Singer Robin McAuley went on to work with Michael Schenker as the McAuley Schenker Group, whilst keyboard player Phil lanzon and original singer Bernie Shaw would briefly join Brit-proggers Uriah Heep.

Next in line for the boys was Fastway - the short-lived collaboration between former Motorheads guitarist 'Fast' Eddie Clarke and ex-UFO bass player Pete Way. Way would ultimately play no part in the project due to contractual issues, but his name was retained in band's moniker and, with a line-up completed by Northern Irish singer Dave King, the first iteration of Fastway would go on to record six albums. In this episode, the boys appraise album #3 - 1986's Waiting For The Roar.

Making up this show's trio are California rockers Vain with their debut (or was it?) No Respect from 1989. According to Mark, this was a band that transcended the lazy 'sleaze' tag that dogged them from the start and hit a winning formula of superior songs that belied the hair metal image that was de rigeur at the time. But would Steve and Rich agree?

Episode 31 - Leaders Of The Pack (ft. Queen, Jethro Tull & Krokus)

For the latest episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out Leaders of the Pack, which meant the boys had to choose three albums that had some kind of link to a deck of playing cards.

When they returned from their record collections and a deep dive into Google they discovered that Episode 31 would start in 1973 and end in 1988. The albums reflecting those 15 golden years and looking for a place in the top 100 of the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Hall of Fame couldn't be more eclectic if you tried:

The 1973 debut album that brought a little know rock band called Queen to public attention, a newly rocked up Jethro Tull with their controversially Grammy-winning 1987 opus Crest Of A Knave (look away now, Metallica purists!) and Swiss veterans Krokus with Heart Attack.

Enter Sadmen meet ... Doro Pesch

In the latest special edition of the show, the Sadmen sit down for an intimate chat - if being separated by hundreds of miles can be described as intimate - with the Queen of Metal, Doro Pesch.

Over the course of a candid hour, Doro discusses the re-release of her 1998 Love Me In Black album, befriending Motorhead's Lemmy, the break-up of Warlock and the 1986 Donington Monsters of Rock slot that brought her properly to public consciousness and affection (though how anyone could have missed her up to that point given the press she was getting at the time is mind-boggling in itself.

And just what was in the strange package that arrived in the post at her mother's Dusseldorf home?

Episode 30 - Fight For Your Reich (ft. Scorpions, Grave Digger & Warlock)

We may still be in lockdown - just (hopefully) - but it's time for the Sadmen to spread their wings and flit beyond the shores of old Blighty and shine the torch of enlightenment into a land far, far away. Well, a hop and a skip beyond Belgium, at any rate.

This episode sees Mark, Richard and Steve taking a close look at three bands from the heart of the European rock and metal landscape: Germany.

The Scorpions make their first appearance in the podcast as Richard blows the cobwebs off the band's third album, 1975's In Trance.

Mark ignores the obvious choices and picks a band with a big reputation for cranking out big riffs - but a band that passed him by when they first came to prominence in the mid 80s: Grave Digger with their '86 effort War Games.

And Steve takes the opportunity to spend a little time snuggled up with Warlock, led by his the Metal Queen, Doro Pesch, and their 1985 commercial breakthrough record True As Steel.

Enjoy - and look out for our special epsiode featuring an extended interview with Doro which will be out in the next few days!

 

 

Episode 29 - Four Play (ft. Faster Pussycat, Britny Fox & Jackyl)

The latest adventure with the Sadmen takes us into the animal world and, more specifically, to albums that are linked in some way - tenuous or otherwise - with four-legged creatures.

For this episode the boys welcomed a cat, a fox and, spelling aside, a jackal. They also welcomed an ozone layer's worth of hairspray and a hat trick of self-titled albums.

All the Enter Sadmen reviews are done in the chronological order of the albums' release dates, which means this episode kicks off with Faster Pussycat from 1987, pauses long enough for the boys to check the bouffant level of their hair before cracking on with the following year's Britny Fox and then fires up the chainsaw from hell to run the rule over Jackyl from 1992.

When the dust had settled, we discovered where in the growing Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Hall of Fame the three albums fell.

Episode 28 - For Those About To Shock (ft. Judas Priest, Suicidal Tendencies & Rammstein)

The latest edition of the Enter Sadmen podcast sees the lads getting to grips with three bands that found their way into rock and metal's Big Book of Notoriety.

In the spirit of avoiding the bleeding obvious, they completely ignored the PMRC's 'Filthy 15' - largely on the grounds that the bands on that infamous Washington Wives hit list were so tame they barely qualified as rock and roll ne'er-do-wells, never mind bad boys.

No, this episode needed behaviour and notoriety of scale - and the boys found it in plentiful supply.

Coming to the naughty table for this episode, then, are:

Judas Priest with Stained Class from 1978 - an album that landed them in the US courts accused of a song from the album triggering the suicides of two teenage friends;

Suicidal Tendencies, a band so notorious that they only had to suggest they were going to play a live show to start a riot, with 1988's How Can I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can't Even Smile Today;

And Germany's groundbreaking industro-electonic tanzmetallers, Rammstein, with their 1995 debut Herzeleid, the US tour for which saw them up on charges for a whole litany of onstage sexual shenanagins.

If you like your metal badass, then this is the baddest episode yet.

Episode 27 - Wherever You May Roam (ft. Nazareth, Marseille & Babylon A.D.)

The boys get all geographical for the latest edition of the Enter Sadmen podcast as they put another three albums under the microscope in their bid to build the definitive hard rock and heavy metal Hall of Fame.

The brief? The name of the band or the title of the album had to relate to a location - ideally real (either now or once upon a time) or one that would be reasonably accepted to be a well known fiction, such as Xanadu - though if you've suddenly started panicking, relax ... no Olivia Newton John of ELO is to be found herein).

So the boys packed their bags, pocketed their spending money and headed off for a change of scene.

Richard went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands (well, either that or a small Belgian town to the south west of Ghent) where he discovered not Jesus but Scottish rockers Nazareth and their 1975 album Hair Of The Dog.

Mark took the M6 northwest to Liverpool and reacquainted himself with one of his favourite bands from the Second Wave of British Heavy Metal bands, Marseille, and their 1984 release Touch The Night.

Steve took the brief to a new level by travelling back in time to the capital of the ancient Babylonian empire, where he and the natives were surprised to find long-haired San Francisco titans Babylon A.D. and their self-titled 1989 debut.

As usual, they hadn't arrived back long before they got down to some serious squabbling.

Episode 26 - Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter (ft. Van Halen, Def Leppard & KISS)

Good parenting requires that learning doesn't just take place in the classroom. To really give your kids a rounded view of the world, any self-respecting parent should ensure they take a hands-on roll in continuing their children's education out of school.

 

The Sadmen are united by their love of rock and metal, but another thing they have in common is that they each also have one daughter, and one day they discovered those daughters have all been subjected to many attempts at rock and roll conversion therapy in the car.

 

So, for this episode the boys decided to let their daughters choose the albums that would be reviewed. Steve's daughter, Sian, picked Van Halen's 1984. Richard's daughter, Alice, picked Def Leppard's 1987 commercial behemoth Hysteria. And Mark's daughter, Holly, chose KISS' Crazy Nights, also released in 1987.

 

Prepare for an episode so 80s you can almost smell the hairspray ...

Enter Sadmen meet ... Crofty

Petrolhead, metalhead, talking head ... who knows, maybe even Motorhead. 

In this special edition of the Enter Sadmen podcast, the boys sit down for a cosy fireside chat with the voice of Formula 1, Crofty. Or David Croft, to give him his birth name.

From his earliest brushes with Deep Purple at the mudbath that was Knebworth 1985 to his all consuming love of Bruce Springsteen and penchant for Metallica, Maiden and Parkway Drive, Crofty gives the lads the lowdown on his 'other' life as an unashamed hard rock and heavy metal fan. 

In this episode we discover fellow Stevenage lad Lewis Hamilton's go-to karaoke tune, get the lowdown on Crofty's beer-soaked Bon Jovi duet with Nico Rosberg at a Mercedes Petronas Christmas bash, talk rock radio and the sad death of the independent record shop - and find out which albums make his top ten records of all time.

Ladies and gentlemen ... start your engines.