And that band was called Hiroshima.

I suspect the majority of Priest fans worked backwards to the Rocka Rolla era from whatever their JP initiation was.  Anachronistically, I started with it, as "Dying to Meet You" was the first track on The Best of Judas Priest with their Gull material.  It was the first time I had ever really sat down and seriously listened to metal, let alone Priest.  My young self had a very nebulous idea of metal based almost solely on aesthetics and mid '80s pop culture portrayals, and of course, like a dork, I had christened myself a fan before I had even really heard any actual music.

Initially, I found "Dying to Meet You" very disappointing--it lacked the sizzle, the power, and the excitement I was expecting.  It was very morose and lethargic compared to my preconceptions. I recall making some vague associations with whatever mental concept I had of old progressive rock at the time, but I'm sure that I had such limited grasp of genres and musical styles, the term really wouldn't have meant much to me. Were someone to tell me that's what heavy metal was, I would have moved on to something else.  Then the galloping "hero, hero" part kicked in, everything clicked, and my destiny was set. And while I won't claim to have taken any particular notice of the drumming back then, John Hinch was still involved, in some small way, in things that set my life trajectory.

The post title and audio clip* come from the John Hinch interview responses from the "Insight Series" versions of The Best of Judas Priest.**   They're available to hear on YouTube.  While Mr. Tipton is sadly not a fan, anyone interested in Gull-era Priest or the state of pre-NWOBHM British hard rock should give them a listen.

*UPDATE: Apparently it doesn't work, and I have even less interest in fixing technical issues with this blog than I do in technical death metal.  Listen to the interview stuff and you'll figure out the clip.

**The expanded edition of the CD with the Hinch tracks holds the distinction of being one of only two CDs I've ever bought at a Wal-Mart (and which are the only times I've ever gotten music at a regular department store, in fact).  Wondering what the other was, aren't you?  The Eternal Masters Black Sabbath tribute with Cadaver and Cannibal Corpse.

Warfare, Noise

I recently came across this:

The visuals are obviously entertaining, but the music, not so much.  This could use some overdubbing with something more thematically appropriate like Holocausto (speaking of which, I have yet to hear Diário de Guerra yet and don't have very high hopes for it, but the artwork is FUCKING KILLER.  Reminds me of a Ghanaian movie poster version of the Persecution Mania cover).

In fact, there are a slew of high budget vids (I'm not going to bother linking them all):

The corpsepainted Tommy Wiseau/Pete Sandoval hybrid is the father of the younger fellow, which makes total sense in context.  Offhand I can't think of any examples of metal nepotism resulting in anything great, only things like a garbage Omen album.  In addition to this, there are also vids for the duo's punk project and some extremely cheap looking short film stuff, which all seemingly exist to showcase the son's production, edting, and CG, uh, skills.

While I wholeheartedly support the impalement of Fenriz, of course the great irony here is that pointlessly generic lo-fi black metal and dorky corpsepaint are themselves metal fads that desperately need to be summarily executed.  This almost reminds me of how Beelzeebubth from Mystifier seemed staunchly traditionalist and against stereotypical Norwegian BM trends--very sensibly so--in past interviews, but rather than the nighttime Christ-abusing maniacs of the debut, his current bandmates look like a laughable appropriation of '90s Scandinavian BM aesthetics by middle-aged men.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of the older songs posted on YouTube are more listenable, with less ridiculous vocals and the semblance of something like actual drums.  Sadly, the associated videos are far less visually exciting.

There's also a track which Metal-Archives claims is from 1991, long before the son was involved:

I don't think they should have expected a phone call from Cogumelo based on this, but as dismal black/death (with that endearingly sloppy soloing), it sounds right in line with the old Brazilian demo scene and is fairly enjoyable.