Commercial Metal, Vol. 1

Let's take a look at some heavy metal TV commercials of yesteryear via the magic of YouTube! 

Despite the legendary title track, the classic video of said track, and the infamous cover artwork with all its implications, I personally think Balls to the Wall is the weakest of the Accept albums from their golden period--Breaker through Metal Heart.  Not that it's a dud, but that title track overshadows everything else, and though a consistent album, it seems to have less standout tracks than the others.  I never really got into it much beyond "Balls to the Wall" and "Head Over Heels."  I don't have any anecdotes about the album itself, so I'll just resort to rambling about Accept in general.

Accept were one of the earliest genre-significant heavy metal bands I was exposed to (probably the third one, actually, after Priest and Motörhead).  I (vaguely) remember the first time I heard "Fast as a Shark;" my reaction was typical, from what I've heard--amused bewilderment at the crackly "Ein Heller und ein Batzen" intro, then another kind of bewilderment entirely as the guitars kicked in, things went nuts, AND YOU WERE STEAMROLLED BY A SPEED METAL CLASSIC.  I recall playing the song for a guy I went to high school with who liked a couple of metal bands.  And by playing, I mean over the phone, by holding the receiver up to my Sanyo boombox.  He didn't seem very impressed, and thus I had one of my earliest lessons about the general futility of trying to socialize with music.

The band were also the basis for an improptu metal litmus test, which I still occasionally use.  It works as follows:  "Too High to Get It Right" is played so that the intended target/victim will hear it.  The majority of the time this will result in a comment about AC/DC, at which point a barrage of verbal and physical abuse ensues.

The Saxon side of the commercial is a bit depressing.  "Saxon's hard rock crusade destroys America."  SURE, SURE.  MORE LIKE DESTROYS THEIR CREDIBILITY, MR. ANNOUNCER.  Wheels.../Strong Arm.../Denim... is, to me, the greatest three-album stand in heavy music.  Exceedingly hard to pick a clear favorite among them.  Still lots of good stuff on Power & the Glory.  But Crusader just confirmed the descent into ham-fisted commerciality from which Saxon would not recover for about a decade.

I did not hear the album until long after it was released, so it wasn't as much of a letdown, but it was clearly a big step in the wrong direction.  Yeah, the title track has an epic quality, and it's possibly the first (only?) hard/heavy album to have a song about the pilgrims on it, but the song I've always enjoyed most was the "Set Me Free" cover.  Great cover, but very telling that it's not as heavy and mean as Sweet's original...