By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

WARLOCK – HELLBOUND (1985)

The second studio album from Warlock, following their debut release Burning the Witches, raises a question right from the first time you see the cover art.

And that question is…who thought it was a good idea to release an album with a cover art photo of the band that looked like a smoke machine had run amuck?

Seriously, you can barely make out two of the guys in the photo and the smoke pervades the entire picture.

Granted, everyone knows that everything about Warlock came down to powerhouse vocalist Doro Pesch but even she is at least partially obscured by the smoke. And while she’s never been one to trade on her looks to get ahead in music, who wants to cover up the fact that besides being a great singer, she’s a smoking hot blonde German goddess?

Maybe nowadays, that’s the less politically correct thing to think, but in 1985? Come on now!

Looking up the credits online, I noticed that besides the band getting writing credits on every song, album co-producer Henry Staroste was credited as a co-writer as well. Rene Maue got three co-writing credits. The liner notes aren’t specific as to who did what, but I looked forward to the band’s True As Steel album and saw that Maue was credited as co-writing lyrics so perhaps that was their role here as well.

Anyway, that’s a look at the behind the scenes credits. Let’s turn our focus to the music now. I’m a HUGE fan of Doro Pesch and Warlock. I have been since the Warlock album Triumph and Agony. I loved seeing her perform that whole album when I FINALLY saw her live for the first time in 2017. And seeing her again a couple years later where I got to meet her (my pic with her is my profile pic on my Facebook page). But when I first discovered the band and learned about their earlier albums, I was able to track down copies of them on cassette and here we are forty years later and I am going to write about this particular release.

The album opens with the title track and I’m not sure if the live crowd that you can hear in the opening part of the track is real or an addition in the studio. But you can’t deny the fast and furious nature of the song and how it carries you along through the length of the song.

I should point out that while I do love the production sound of the album, you can clearly see how the much rawer sound of these early days would later give way to the more polished sound you get as the band’s career would progress, then end and would continue on with Doro’s solo career.

With Doro’s vocals exploding forth from your speakers and the drums from Michael Eurich forming a pounding foundation that allows Rudy Graf and Peter Szigeti to perform a solid six string duo attack over the rest of the soundtrack, “Hellbound” gets the album off to a pretty solid start.

The song “All Night” follows next and it is a track that has a different tone and tempo to it. There’s a much more mid-tempo design to the music, so you get a slow ride across the musical landscape as compared to “Hellbound”. I like the slightly more dramatic tone that the music invokes in the song.

One of the things I like to hear when I go back and listen to these earlier Warlock albums is how I can hear the way Doro’s voice started and progressed to the point where she is now after a successful four decade career that is still going on. She has an incredible scream ability here but it always is done in an under control way, if that makes sense.

The faster pace returns on “Earthshaker Rock”, which features the title words in the chorus giving the song an anthemic feel that also comes through in the full song lyrics. This is a song that you have to pump your fists into the air if you hear it.

For “Wrathchild” (not the Iron Maiden song), you get a pretty cool sounding guitar line in the song’s intro and then a full uptempo (although not as blazingly fast at the start as other songs on the album) kicks in. As the song hits the midpoint, the pacing kicks up as it heads into the guitar solo and then is pretty much a full on explosive rocker until the song ends with a brief reprise of the same guitar line that was in the intro.

The first side of the album closes out with the song “Down and Out”, which briefly features Michael Eurich behind the drum kit before the guitars come in and you get a solid thumping intro before the song settles into more of a groove rocker. But what makes this song pretty cool is how you can hear the progression from that groove in the very early going to it blooming into a far faster rocker for the chorus. Doro’s vocals are intense here. The tempo alternates back and forth from main lyrical passages to the chorus and that makes the overall listening experience pretty cool.

Side Two of Hellbound opens with the song “Out of Control”. Which is a bit funny considering the rather, dare I say, gentle way that the song opens. That brief intro almost immediately gives way to a furious sonic attack that better resembles the song’s title. And man, I love this freaking song! I can’t say for sure but “Out of Control” might just be the song that sounds most like how Warlock would sound on the Triumph and Agony album.

There’s no soft-pedalling going on for “Time To Die”. Right from the first notes, Warlock is on fire throughout the track. Eurich’s drumming plays a huge role on this song and I love the way Doro is just attacking the vocals here. There’s the rapid fire delivery of the main lyrics and then she adds in some kind of unearthly scream at points in the song for added emphasis. It all works so well. The frantic and frenzied delivery of the solo in this song catches your ear as well.

I love the riff that kicks off “Shout It Out”. It sets the tone with a sense of urgency before a small scream from Doro and the full musical score kicks in fully. It’s an uptempo number but like “Wrathchild” isn’t quite as blitzing as other songs on the album at the start. It sure as hell gets much faster over the course of most of the latter half of the song though.

The last track on Hellbound is the song “Catch My Heart” and it is the song that would qualify as the “ballad” track. What I found most interesting at the start is how the guitar line that fuels the intro is really cool. If you’ve followed Doro’s career for any length of time, you know that despite her ability to just rock out like a BOSS, she always has at least one song that shows off the “softer” side of her vocal abilities. Of course, even here there’s little that would really make you think, “UGH! Not a damn ballad.” While the music is slow and deliberate, Doro’s performance of the song lyrics doesn’t make her sound like she’s trying to be anyone but herself. Her vocals are readily identifiable and despite the overall feel of the song, Doro still brings plenty of vocal fire as the song rambles along. And like a lot of ballads, that depth of feeling later combines with a more intense musical score over the song’s latter half, combining for quite the powerful track as the song and album fades out to its end. I will say the final strains of how the album ends is a bit weird but one small “defect” isn’t enough to ruin the track or the album for me.

I know that this early Warlock stuff was a lot rawer than what people might remember given everything that came later but I know I still enjoy a lot of what is going on with the album and as someone who is a devoted Doro Pesch fan, any material that she’s a part of is always going to hold a strong place in my music-loving heart. So while Hellbound may not be an album that will be the first one you think of when it comes to Warlock and/or Doro, it is certainly a strong release that deserves a much wider audience.

NOTE OF INTEREST: The 2011 reissue of the album contains two bonus tracks. One is a studio track from a different time period than the Hellbound album. The other is a live version of the album’s title track. The album peaked at #53 on the German album charts.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

W.A.S.P. – W.A.S.P. (1984)

If you had told me when this series started that I’d write more than two hundred seventy-five articles and had still not written about a W.A.S.P. album, I would’ve called you a liar.

As it turns out, you would’ve been more prophet than liar. Because it is true, I have never covered a W.A.S.P. album until now. I had to go and check my master list and then much like Ol’ Saint Nick himself, I had to check it twice. I was floored!

That cinched the decision about what album to write about for this week’s installment of The Cassette Chronicles and it’s a good thing because I’m not sure how often I’ve listened to the debut album in full lately.

The first side of the cassette opens up with the song “I Wanna Be Somebody”. It is the first official single from the album and it retains its incredible ability to grab you even more than four decades later. The pacing is hard-driving and Blackie Lawless instantly draws you in with his memorable vocal style. While he may not be the greatest vocalist of all-time, once you hear him you will always know his voice. I love the song in this form and it has made for some great live recordings across the band’s career as it has been used as the crowd sing-along track in various shows. 

The funny thing about this song for me as I listened to it for this piece, I looked up details on the song. The chart position stuff was kind of bland, but learning that the title was taken from a line of dialogue in the Barney Miller TV show from the 1970s (according to the album’s Wikipedia page anyway) was extremely fun to discover. The dialogue was spoken by the character “Detective Ron Harris”. The reason I’m including this is because the actor Ron Glass, who portrayed Harris would go on to play the character of “Shepherd Book” on one of my all-time favorite TV shows Firefly. I’m a devoted fan of that franchise and any new tidbit of info that ties to the show is always great.

For “L.O.V.E. Machine”, there’s a mix of both uptempo pacing and a heavier feel to the music as well. The chorus is pretty simple in that you can pretty much sing along immediately after hearing it the first time in the song or at least after you hear the song in full for the first time.

While I didn’t discover W.A.S.P. for myself until I saw a rock magazine ad for their album “Live..In The Raw”, Blackie Lawless instantly ingratiated himself with me both with his vocal style, lyrics that could be both pointed and just a blast that will always remind you of the “80s Metal Years”. On the song “The Flame”, the music is fast paced but it is the way his vocals come off just a bit more strident than usual that kicks the song up a notch for me. Some of the line run-throughs you think he just might blow his voice out.

Oh, I should mention that besides singing and playing bass on the album,  Lawless co-produced the release and wrote most of the songs by himself. He co-wrote “The Flame” with guitarist Chris Holmes and J. Marquez. And he co-wrote the Side Two track “Tormentor” with Holmes.

The song “B.A.D.” is a bit of a weird track for me. I like the song but it is probably the song that would rank the lowest of the ten original tracks. The thing is, I can’t explain exactly why I feel this way. It’s got a decent vocal, and good music with a solo that at the very least grabs your attention. But the song just doesn’t quite get my juices flowing as much as other material on the album.

The closing track of Side One is the song “School Daze”. The first time I heard the song the intro cracked me up. It uses a group of children saying the Pledge of Allegiance and when they are done, the music cranks up and Blackie Lawless explodes at the school system. Given that I was about thirteen-years-old when the song came out and pretty much hated school, you can imagine how strongly lyrics like “A juvenile’s jail and I’m here locked up in their cage” or “A homework hell-house screams at me “Make The Grade” resonated with me back in the day. And wouldn’t you know it, the song still gets me fired up even now. There’s mid-tempo feel in the early part of the song but it quickly gets far more of a lively rocking beat.

The second side of the W.A.S.P. album opens with the song “Hellion”. As with the rest of the material, the pacing is an electrically charged explosion of metallic riffs. I love the mid-song lyrical bridge a lot but what really got me going for this one is the way the song’s title gets sung in the chorus. It starts off a tad lighter and then grows as the word is stretched out. I like the way that comes through as I listened to the song in the here and now.

I mentioned before that while Blackie Lawless may not be the most technically gifted singer but I still have loved his vocals all these years. So when the band’s power ballad track “Sleeping (In The Fire)” kicks off you might think it would be a mismatch of vocals versus material. But you know what? This ballad actually ages a LOT better than many ballads of the 80s era. It’s not overly sappy, or at least it isn’t delivered that way. Hell, most of the song is more power than ballad so it might be a mistake even including the word ballad in the description of the song. But I love the music of the song and the guitar solo is fantastic!

“On Your Knees” is pretty much a sex-soaked rocker but weirdly it’s less of a erotic romp and more of a dark side of a life gone way off track. Or I could be reading way too much into the song as I read the lyrics while listening to the track this time around. Fast paced, it catches your ear but it’s definitely not one you would play for your grandma. 

I mentioned “Tormentor” earlier in the piece because of the writing credits but as the song plays out, it has a mixture in the music. There’s a definite uptempo style to the music but at the same time there’s a stomping thump to the score as well. It makes the song that much more interesting to me. And the sound effects used at the start definitely sets the mood to match the song title as Lawless proclaims, “I′m a liar and I’m a cheat / I have no morals and I′m a thief / Pillage and plunder, curse those who enter /I am a killer and tormentor” as the opening verse.

When I was in the 10th grade, I managed to BS my way into convincing my English teacher into letting me write a term paper on W.A.S.P. though I’m not sure how I managed to pull that off. Thing is, she was an ardent feminist (and there’s nothing wrong with that) and given some of the lyrics I quoted in the paper, I was sure I was going to get a failing grade. Either she was grading easy or I wrote a pretty damn good paper because I got one of the highest grades in the class. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t include any lines from “Tormentor” but I am reasonably sure I had stuff from “I Wanna Be Somebody”. Of course, the most red mark comments I had were about other sex-drenched lyrical passages from songs on other W.A.S.P. albums I quoted in the paper. But hey, she liked my writing so who am I to look askance at a rare good grade, right?

The closing song on the original album is called “The Torture Never Stops”. Right from the start, there’s a sense of musical adventure to the music. At times it feels like I’m on a wild ride on a horse gone loco. Much like “The Flame”, the vocals from Lawless get a bit more strident than usual but it still works. And I love the line “And hope’s the rope that keeps you tied in knots”, but in the here and now that line takes on a different meaning to me than was likely intended when Lawless wrote the song. 

In the interest of giving the fullest picture of the album, I also checked out the extra three songs they put on the reissued version of the album. The song “Show No Mercy” was the B-side to “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)”. It’s fast paced and I think it is even more raw sounding than the music on the original album. Though that could just be my ears playing tricks on me.

I have a friend that LOVES The Rolling Stones. They might just be her favorite band. So I’ve got to ask her if she’s ever heard the W.A.S.P. cover of the song “Paint It Black”. But I’m also wondering if she’ll like it or be horrified. W.A.S.P. definitely gives it a far more metal feel. The thing is, while the song is “fine”, I just don’t know that covering the song was necessary. 

And of course, we can’t have a complete picture of the W.A.S.P. album without acknowledging the grand grimy majesty of “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast). If I’m being honest, I can at least acknowledge the WHY of this song giving  so many of the so-called “Washington Wives” the vapors. I mean, you kind of know where this song is going when the opening two verses are as follows:

“I got pictures of naked ladies 

Lyin’ on their beds

I whiff that smell and sweet convulsion

Starts a swellin’ inside my head

I’m makin’ artificial lovers for free

I start to howl, I’m in heat

I moan and growl, and the hunt drives me crazy

I fuck like a beast”

But as a thirteen-year-old who hadn’t quite matured into the semi-responsible person I am now (I think), this was a song that said the “F-word” a few times in the lyrics and pissed off a lot of people. It was practically guaranteed I would love it. And it still doesn’t give them the right to censor or label music they didn’t like.

And there you have it. Revisiting the self-titled debut album from W.A.S.P. in full was a freaking thrill-ride for me. There’s so many great songs on the album that I still see people proclaiming that this is their favorite album from the band. I wouldn’t go quite that far because I have other albums that I like more, but damn if this one doesn’t have everything going for it now that it did back in the day.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The song “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)” was originally supposed to be on the debut album. But after it was designated one of the “Filthy Fifteen” by the handwringing crybaby political group the PMRC, the record label pulled it from the release. It got released as a single in the UK, making it an automatic collector’s item. I have a cassette edition of that single. The song was restored to the album when it was reissued in 1998 with two more songs added as well. However, that reissue put the “Animal” song as the lead track changing the track listing from how it came out originally.

The debut album (which achieved GOLD status in sales in the US) may most often be considered a self-titled release but according to what I read online, there are two other album titles that were printed on various editions including ‘Winged Assassins’ and ‘I Wanna Be Somebody’ (which as you read in the main part of the article is a song on the album). 

At least 14 different bands have covered various songs from the W.A.S.P. album over the years.

Drummer Tony Richards left W.A.S.P shortly after the release of the band’s debut album. Prior to joining the band, he was a member of Dante Fox, the forerunner band to Great White.