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

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.

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!

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 ...

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 ... !

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.

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.   

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 ....    

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 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).

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.

Sometimes artists feel the need to escape the confines of the environment in which they made their name and give voice to the individuality of their art. Or some such bollocks. In any event, whether going solo or, in the case of Doro Pesch, being forced by a legal ruling to cease and desist using the name of the band which made her famous, rock and roll's highways and byways are crisscrossed by the tracks of musicians who have wandered off the well-beaten track. We meet three of them in this edition of Enter Sadmen - an episode in which the lads were sent off to find famous rock musos who, for whatever reason, decided to ply their trade under their own name. They don't come much bigger than Percy Plant, of course. The erstwhile golden-maned lead singer of demigods Led Zeppelin first tasted artistic life outside that particular juggernaut in 1982 with Pictures At Eleven - and a very successful sojourn it turned out to be. But it is 1990's Manic Nirvana that commands our attention for part of the next 80 minutes. Doro, still smarting from losing control of the Warlock brand in the courts, was canny enough to know that sentiment aside, she was Warlock and that her fanbase would hang on her every note, regardless of the collective name she and her musicians gave themselves. And no one would be hanging on those words more fervently than Steve. What wasn't quite so clear, when she released her first 'solo' album - the presumably self-referencing Force Majeure - was why she chose a decidedly iffy cover as the calling card. Luckily, things got rapidly better thereafter. But first of all we encounter a man who could make girls swoon at the mere suggestion he might be on Top Of The Pops on a Thursday night with the other guys in Duran Duran. Yes, you read that right. Mark turned up to this party with the other Taylor in the Durannies - Andy - and his 1987 solo debut, Thunder. Now go and look up the word 'eclectic' and see if that don't just sum up Episode 72 ...

So, a question. How maqny albums can you name where the title track is worthy of its status? And of those, how many eclipse even that honour to be classed asd truly epic? That was also the question that was asked of our hardy rock and roll adventurers by the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes for this, the latest leg of the marathon attempt to review the greatest hard rock, heavy metal, prog (etcetera, etcetera) albums of all time (well, of 1970 to 1995, at least). It's worth saying from the outset that Steve managed to misinterpret the brief as incorporating title tracks that he simply liked, which is how Exodus's 1985 debut Bonded By Blood managed to find its way into proceedings. But, y'know, hey ho. Rich and Mark, on the other hand, rocked up - literally and metaphorically - with two bonafide essentials. First on the turntable for this episode is the first vinyl offering from Deep Purple MKIII, complete with Coverdale and Hughes on shared voal duty -1974's Burn. As with all three albums, the track opens the album's account. But would it be the best of the collection? That was definitely up for debate. So, too, the question of the title cut from Motӧrhead's 1979 offering, Overkill. Mark unapologetically claims this to be not just streets ahead of the following year's chart-bothering Ace Of Spades, but entire cities ahead. You can judge for yourselves, and see if Steve (a self-confesed Lemmy-sceptic) and Richard agree. And then there's Bonded By Blood. A criminal omission from what should be termed the Big 5, or just a lot of noise and little substance? Steve dons his gown and wig and presents the case for the defence.  

And on we go to Episode 70, in which the lads work to a brief that shouldn't have been too challenging to meet, even for men of singular taste and discernment. Yes, in this run through another three albums from hard rock and heavy metal's golden era (that's 1970 to 1995, for the uninitiated) the boys were tasked by the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes to find examples of 'Power'. Whether electrical, nuclear, steam, wind, strength or gas was up to them to decide. And so we end up slap bang in the middle of the 1980s with a trio of offerings spanning six years between 1983 and 1989. First up come our old friends AC/DC - and yet again it's not the band's uber fan Mark bringing their 8th studio album Flick Of The Switch to the party (go with us, here - it's listed in Wiki as their 10th, but Wiki has counted High Voltage and its derivative and territory-specific alternate versions as three different albums). An unloved misstep rightly cast into the depths fans' memories? Or a much-maligned and under-appreciated neo classic? You'll get both ends of that spectrum in this episode. Next up, Rush uber fan Richard doesn't disappoint - although he ducks the obvious Power Windows and instead opts for 1984's Grace Under Pressure, the band's 10th studio release and the first of a quartet of albums that were, to varying degrees, considered disappointing by fans when compared to Rush's earlier canon. That doesn't mean the Sadmen will also conform to mass opinion, of course. If nothing else they are rarely inclined to toe the party line. And bringing up the rear - and what a glorious rear it is - Mark pops up with the second offering from Tesla (and we mean that both in terms of their discography and their pod appearances) The Great Radio Controversy from 1989. Hair metal with a gritty edge? Or inhabitants of a genre of one? The boys answer that question, too.  

For their latest journey down hard rock and heavy metal's many-faceted highway, the Sadmen's destination was that utopian land of pianos, synthesisers, Moogs and mellotrons. Yes, friends, having done vocalists, singers and bass players, it was time to pay tribute to some of the ivory tinklers who help to make up rock's great tapestry. But if you thought we were going all Tony Banks, Jon Lord, Rick Wakeman or Richard Wright on you, think again, fans. Yes, in this episode we do touch on some obvious waypoints, but of Genesis, Purple/Whitesnake, Yes and Floyd there is no sign (or is there?) And though Mark and Rich go fully prog rock (or 'prock' as no-one ever calls it), Steve manages to keep it real with a big slice of late-70s hard rock. With three albums released over a period of just seven years, we start back in 1972 with Uriah Heep who, at this point were shelling albums like peas, yet still managed to trump early successes like Look At Yourself and Salisbury, with the huge cornucopia of Ken Hensley-inspired sound that was Demons And Wizards (their 4th album in just 23 months - and release #5 would follow just 6 short months later). We follow that another fourth release, this time from Kansas, and an album full of material that, staggeringly, wasn't deemed good enough for the band's previous two issues. Yes, folks, the clue is in the name - 1976's Leftoverture (though the 'after the mayor's ball' nature of the track listing didn't stop it becoming widely recognised as Kansas' seminal release) features the sloppy seconds from Song For America and Masque. Enter, then, one Kerry Livgren (among many others) on keyboard duty. And you know we said there wasn't a sign of Deep Purple in this show? Well of course, there is, as Steve rolls up with Ian Gillan, now fronting his own eponymously titled band and their second release, Mr Universe, from 1979. On keyboards, and widely appreciated as the man who steered his honey-larynxed boss off a jazz-fusion march into oblivion, one Colin Towns - a man so mercurial that he counts the theme tune to Angelina Ballerina among his many TV theme credits. So ... it's fair to say an eclectic show lay ahead ...    

And so following the previous episode, which - according to Rich - featured Diet Cult and Diet Marillion, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes rumbled ever on  and this time spat out a topic which challenged the boys to find albums that had a 'white' theme. After they all studiously avoided the apparently 'obvious' Whitesnake, they each entered the Sadmen Sound Studio with more white stuff than you'd find at a mid-Eighties Motley Crue after show party. First up for discussion was Steve's personal comfort blanket - the 1984 debut effort from the crown princes of melodic hard rock, White Sister. After coming through the shock of realising this would be the last time they'd feature in the pod (Episode 39 had already dispensed with the band's sophomore and final effort), Steve rallied gamely to prosecute the case for the eponymously titled debut to be admitted to the highest echelons of the Hall of Fame. The same year also gave us White Lion's debut, Fight To Survive, Richard swerving the opportunity to deliver the band's career-altering Pride or Big Game to the party. So, would this be a saccharine-laden amuse bouche for those two titans of commercial melodic metal, or would the original lion's roar have a harder edge to it? And after all of that harmonising, what were the lads to make of the career changing (at least with regard to the direction of travel) of Anthrax's 1993 issue The Sound Of White Noise, their first without Joey Belladonna at the mic? Would the fact it's their biggest-selling album of their career (yes, really) also mean it was their best? We were about to find out...

And so to an episode in which Richard, Steve and Mark were tasked with marking important life moments. Mark and Steve opted for a broadly similar seam to mine - that of parenthood. Rich, on the other hand, eschewed the opportunity to reflect on bringing new life into the world, or discovering love for the first time. He spat in the face of death and pooh-poohed the notions of age, friends and work. No, it seems that Richard's most notable moment in life is, in fact, stowing a lilo under his arm and heading off to the Mediterranean. And so it came to be that the lads ended up spending a week or so in the company of Alice Cooper, Mother Love Bone and Marillion. Steve kicks off the show with a look back at Alice Cooper (the band, not the man - he was just common-or-garden Vince Furnier at the time of this particular release) and their much-admired Billion Dollar Babies from 1973. Over 30 minutes or so the Sadmen try to come to a definitive answer to a simple question: Is it really that good? Next up is Mother Love Bone, a one-album sensation (thanks to yet another rock and roll overdose that robbed the world of a young talent) that ultimately gave us the behemoth that is Pearl Jam, and their sole 1991 release Apple. Meanwhile, over in Ibiza, Richard was whacking up the volume on the Steve Hogarth version of Marillion, who were vacationing in paradise in 1992 with Holidays In Eden. As the show rolls past album 200 in the big list, would these three manage to elbow their way into its upper echelons?

The lads were having such a good time, dipping a gnarly toe into the cool waters of the late 70s and early 80s, when Steve decided to spoil the party with a dirty protest in the form of a thrash album that burned through 14 songs in fewer than short - albeit painful - minutes. Luckily, you, dear listener, have dodged the bullet that Mark and Richard took on your behalf, and you'll only have to endure about 2 minutes of Nuclear Assault's live offering, Live At The Hammersmith Odeon. Before that, though, the boys consider the altogether more sophisticated (by comparison, at least) 1978 commercial behemoth At Budokan from Cheap Trick and every NWOBHM aficionado's favourite live offering, The Eagle Has Landed from Yorkshire's finest, Saxon.  

A landmark moment for the Sadmen as listener Tony, from Australia, picks three albums for the boys to cast their ears over - and what an eclectic three they turned out to be. First up, novelty sensation Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction with their debut, Tattooed Beat Messiah. With their 'out there' look, hilarious alter ego names and chart-bothering single Prime Mover, was this British oddity just a very clever joke - or is there more to it than that? Following hot on the heels of Zodiac comes the pod's second encounter with The Cult who in 1989 executed a smart right turn away from their Gothy native American roots and headed off down the metal highway with Sonic Temple. And the show closes out, fittingly, with an old-fashioned, heads down rock and roll band. Proving there's more to Oz than the Young brothers (or is there?), we say hello for the first time to The Angels and their breakthrough album Beyond Salvation. It's no spoiler alert to say the boys enjoyed Tony's selections very much - so cheers mate!  If you've got 3 albums you'd like the lads to review, just find us on Facebook, on Twitter or at www.entersadmen.co.uk and let us know!    

In their latest journey down hard rock and heavy metal's Memory Lane, the boys are checking out supergroups - those bands formed by musos who made their names in other bands. There were some obvious ones to choose from - Bad Company, Audioslave and, erm, Revolting Cocks, for example - but the boys dived deep and came up with three outfits that were all new to at least one of them. Anything involving Sammy Hagar and Neil Schon was probably dependably good (or was it?) so they all felt comfortable with Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve's Through The Fire from 1983.   But then Mark rocked up with Dennis Stratton side project Lionheart and their eponymous 1984 debut, and Steve went full toto and picked a band that, in a different genre, might have had a lot in common with One Direction (insofar as they were manufactured for the purpose of achieving commercial success). It was promising to be an interesting chat ... www.entersadmen.co.uk

After a short hiatus, the Sadmen are back with the latest instalment of the Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Hall of Fame - an ongoing mission to create the definitive best-to-worst list of hard rock, heavy metal and prog released between 1970(ish) and 1995(ish). The Hall of Fame unique's selling point is the fact that each and every track on each and every album is marked individually, with the averages of those scores calculated to give the album as a whole an overall score - often to 5 decimal places. And because the boys each have different tastes - Steve likes his metal delivered at pace, Richard is the professorial wise head with a penchant for prog, and Mark is a simple man who's happy with a big fat riff and a glorious hookline - each is a check and balance to the others' hyperbole.  For this edition of the show the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes threw out the year 1989, setting the lads the task of finding three albums released during that year worthy of being pulled apart. Welcome, then, W.A.S.P.'s The Headless Children, Bang Tango's Psycho Cafe, and Faith No More's genre defining The Real Thing. Let the arguments commence.