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 under-appreciated 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.

DIAMOND HEAD – BORROWED TIME (1982)

You’d think that with my overwhelming love of heavy metal that I would’ve been way more into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands than my research for this article showed me.

In prepping to write about Diamond Head’s 2nd album Borrowed Time, I looked up a list of bands that were part of this particular brand of metal. One of the things I found is that a lot of the bands started out (and finished) well before I even got into metal.

But the list of bands I saw on Wikipedia showed me that there are only 4 bands from that time that I actually listened and/or still listen to nowadays. Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Grim Reaper and Saxon. I did hear one album from Lionheart from their recent run of releases too, but nothing else from them. And while I recognized a few other names, none of them were ones that I actually heard any material from.

And so as I set out to listen to Borrowed Time, I knew this was going to be an almost completely new experience for me. I say almost because of course I knew of the song “Am I Evil?” because of the Metallica version of the song.

Yes, Diamond Head’s best known song is also best known for the cover version of it rather than their own original recording. It seems that the band had a hex on it when it came to any hope of big commercial breakthrough. They didn’t have professional management, they never played in the States until 2002 and they were on a TERRIBLE record label for their style of music.

But what about the actual music? And that’s what I was looking forward to discovering since I can’t even be sure I’d heard Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil?” before checking it out on this cassette.

The Borrowed Time album is considered the band’s 2nd album but from what I saw online, it was originally supposed to be their first album. The band’s first release Lightning to the Nations was apparently only supposed to be a demo.

Which would explain how an album with just seven songs on it would end up having two tracks that had already been released on Diamond Head’s “first” album. Besides “Am I Evil?”, the song “Lightning to the Nations” (or “Lightning to the Nation” as it is listed on the actual cassette and insert) were released on both of the first two Diamond Head albums.

With “Am I Evil?”, it is possible that I’ve heard this original version in the past, but I just don’t remember doing so. As I listened to it here, I found that I liked it. But that enjoyment felt a bit tempered for me because I’d heard Metallica’s version first and in my head that’s the version that is THE version for me. I know that makes little sense logically but that’s just how it is I guess.

As for “Lightning for the Nation”, I definitely have no recollection of hearing this track at all. I liked the way the song opened with a big thunderous kind of ovation and then launched into a far more fiery rocking tempo for most of the rest of the song. Singer Sean Harris sounds really good on this track and the band really lays down some serious metallic chops.

Of course each of those two tracks close out each side of the cassette. What about the rest of the material?

Well, the song “Call Me” opens up the first side of the album. My initial reaction to the song was that it sounded rather commercially accessible (or at least what would be considered accessible in 1982). I’m guessing that might be something to do with what I saw online about how signing with MCA Records led to Diamond Head smoothing out their sound a lot from their first album to this 2nd one. Still, I don’t think it was all that detrimental to the overall effect the song had on me. This track seemed much more of a hard rock song than a metal one and you got that big backing vocal sound on the chorus that would become VERY prevalent throughout the 1980s metal years.

For “In The Heat of the Night”, the song is more of a midtempo slow burner, at least until the crackling good guitar solo that lends a bit more of an edge to the overall feel of the song. It took me a couple of listens to really appreciate the song but it did grow on me pretty quickly I must say.

The most surprising track for me on Borrowed Time had to be “Don’t You Ever Leave Me”. Like “Call Me”, it is definitely more of a hard rock song. But what really got me into the song was the bluesy rock sound I heard in the music at points and the fact that it is a pretty lengthy song, clocking in at just under eight minutes long. I loved the guitar playing and solo from founding guitarist Brian Tatler as well. He just wails on this song.

Before I talk about the songs on Side Two, I thought I’d go into why being on MCA was such a bad move for the band. It really kind of breaks down to the fact that MCA just didn’t seem to know how to market the band. Case in point, the cassette edition I have doesn’t have official liner notes for the album. Instead, the insert has two lists of other MCA artists “you will enjoy”. And most of them are country artists like Barbara Mandrell, the Oak Ridge Boys and Merle Haggard. Sure, there’s few listings for The Who and Lynyrd Skynyrd but then you’ve got Neil Diamond and Olivia Newton-John too. Not exactly feeling the love of metal here people!

As for Side Two, besides “Am I Evil?”, you’ve got the album’s title track which is another one that runs nearly eight minutes in length. It’s pretty interesting though not one of my personal favorites on the album.

As for “To Heaven From Hell”, I think this is the album where Diamond Head really cuts loose fully and sounds like what  you might expect from a heavy metal band considered such an early influence to metal music and to Metallica and Megadeth in particular. Start to finish, this song just rocks relentlessly. I love the guitar playing on this song a lot.

As I said at the start, I’ve never really heard much from Diamond Head in the past despite knowing who they were. The Borrowed Time album struck me as being pretty good even if it didn’t bring the band the commercial success that would’ve broadened their fan base at the time. I don’t know that I would listen to it on repeat or anything but the album does make me want to hear more of their albums which makes this foray into the Diamond Head catalog a rousing success in my book!

NOTES OF INTEREST: Besides singer Sean Harris and guitarist Brian Tatler, the Borrowed Time recording lineup included Colin Kimberley on bass and Duncan Scott on drums.

Diamond Head has recorded nine studio albums over the band’s run, though their most recent was a 2020 re-recording of their first album Lightning to the Nations. They’ve also put out six live releases and shockingly enough eleven compilations.

Guitarist Brian Tatler joined fellow NWOBHM band Saxon in 2023 and recorded the 2024 release Hell, Fire and Damnation with them.

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.

STONE FURY – LET THEM TALK (1986)

When Kingdom Come hit it big with their debut album, a lot of the talk centered around how the band sounded like Led Zeppelin. Particularly singer Lenny Wolff.

Well, it would seem that, at least in part, that was something he was doing well before Kingdom Come came around.

Stone Fury, the band Wolff co-founded with guitarist Bruce Gowdy, had a lot of that same Zeppelin vibe going for it as well. However, as I listened to their 2nd and final album Let Them Talk, I noticed that the album actually sounded like a typical 1980s rock/pop album with plenty of keyboards threaded in the mix as well.

But the album does open up with what definitely is a Led Zeppelin inspired track in “Too Late”. Lenny Wolff’s vocals are hard to miss, that’s for sure. What does give the song a bit of its own identity is how strongly those aforementioned keyboards come through. Unfortunately, like a lot of stuff from that time period, the keys actually overpower everything else going on in the song and kind of wrecked it for me as a whole.

I did actually mostly enjoy the next song “Lies on the Run”. First off, kind of cool song title. It’s a bit more of a straight on rocker from beginning to end. There is JUST a touch too much keys in this song but the song sounds more of its own thing and not a clone of Zeppelin. As I was listening to the song, I was searching my brain for another band comparison for this particular song and I kind of settled on Honeymoon Suite…except the latter wouldn’t have had quite so much in the way of keyboards in the mix. Still, I enjoyed this track.

The album’s title cut sticks mostly to a slow and midtempo groove. It’s kind of a power ballad in spots but doesn’t quite blow up to a more intensely rocking sound towards the end as most songs of its ilk would tend to do.

What can I say about the the song “Babe” (not a cover of the Styx classic)? Well, honestly, the song was just pretty freaking annoying the whole time it was playing.

I was a tiny bit surprised at how much I liked the Side One closing track “Doin’ What I Feel”. I liked the rhythm established by the music and I thought the vocal delivery was pretty good as well.

As for the 2nd side of the album, it opens with the song “Eye of the Storm”. The song really gives Stone Fury another song that sounds something original versus being a clone. Uptempo in nature, it works pretty well.

On “Let the Time Take Care”, the opening flourish is uptempo but when you hit the first main lyrical passage, the music drops into a lower intensity and Wolff’s vocals get a bit softer in delivery. The chorus ramps the music back up of course, but the switching between sonic avenues gives the listener something to swing back and forth with, rhythmically speaking.

Wolff’s vocals get a bit more strident for “I Should Have Told You”, the shriek echoing what you are probably used to from the Kingdom Come material. What I did like about this song is that it has a vibe to it that left me thinking it would be used in some kind of montage street scene for a movie or TV show. The music, in the main passages anyway, has that kind of cinematic flair going for it.

The Let Them Talk album closes out with the singularly  titled “Stay”, which is a track that starts out with a mid-tempo pace. There’s a bit too much production on the vocal track but I like the way the song’s music comes through here. And while this is hindsight nearly four decades late, I think the lyrics would’ve been better served without the Wolff shriek. Still, this was another song that kind of grew on me as I listened to it.

While I don’t know that Stone Fury’s 2nd and final album Let Them Talk will be an album I go back to continuously from here on out, I am now kind of interested to check out their first release Burns Like a Star to see and hear what the band had going for them their first time out. 

I will say that I found this album’s 2nd side a lot more to my liking, but there was a surprising amount of stuff I enjoyed hearing for the first time. This musical history lesson definitely served to inform me better about what Lenny Wolff was up to just before he hit it big. So I’d say that Let The Talk did a pretty good job of getting me interested in the band as a whole.

NOTES OF INTEREST: After Stone Fury broke up when Let The Talk didn’t break them into commercial success, singer Lenny Wolff would return to Germany. He’d be back in the US a year later with Kingdom Come’s debut album which did turn out to be a commercial hit.

Despite having only two studio albums, there was a Best of Stone Fury compilation released in 1988.

Guitarist Bruce Gowdy would go on to work with prog rock band World Trade and the band Unruly Child as well.

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.

METAL CHURCH – THE DARK (1986)

Nearly four decades ago, the Metal Church album The Dark was my initial entry point with the band. Time has faded exactly how I came to first discover the album but all those passing years has not dimmed my love of their 2nd studio album.

In fact, each time I end up listening to it, I think my love and appreciation of The Dark only grows. The powerhouse lineup of David Wayne on vocals, Kurdt Vanderhoof and Craig Wells on guitar, bassist Duke Erickson and drummer Kirk Arrington slam their way through 10 absolutely electric numbers taking no prisoners and really only slowing the pace down a bit for one song that is still one of the band’s best tracks.

The album’s opening track “Ton of Bricks” is a monster song and is credited as being written by all five members of the band. I love the fade in as the song starts and then the drum lead-in as the song then blows up in full sonic attack mode. There’s a razor sharp fast and viciously delivered vocal turn from Wayne and the guitar work here is phenomenal. As Wayne proclaims “I’ll hit you with a ton of bricks”, you can see why I think this song should always open the band’s live shows and amply demonstrates just the kind of assaulting metal sound Metal Church brings to the table.

The song “Start the Fire” is keyed off a killer guitar line that runs throughout the song. Wayne’s vocals continue to be a perfect distillation of the vicious power he had going for him during this period.

In fact, when I first discovered the album, it was Wayne’s vocals that were the first thing I focused on. I’m a vocalist and lyric guy, so I hadn’t yet matured enough in my musical appreciation to get into songs as a whole. And I just loved the slice-your-throat nature of the vocals.

“I kill for no reason, my heart too stone cold”…the song “Method to Your Madness is a killer track (no pun intended). Fast paced with a cutting vocal line and this softer brief moment in the middle of the song that serves as great counterpoint to the rest of the song while still enhancing the track as a whole.

I mentioned that Metal Church had one song where they weren’t going on a full pedal to the floor rocking style. And that’s of course the song “Watch the Children Pray”. I know it gets described as their power ballad, but that is a woefully inexact term to apply to this song. That’s because while most “power ballads” dealt with themes of love or what have you, “Watch the Children Pray” doesn’t have any of that. As the song opens, the music establishes a feel that has long made me think of it as an opening of a gothic horror movie or book. And there’s certainly no love theme in the lyrics. While the main lyrical passages are a bit slower in delivery, it’s only a matter of degree because as a whole, the song is just freaking HEAVY throughout. I like the way Wayne’s vocals switch back and forth between the more gravelly attacking keen and the cleaner vocal that comes in at certain points to give the song a bit more of a dramatic feel. But still, this is not what I would truly consider a power ballad in the least.

You want an utterly under-appreciated song from Metal Church? I think you can take the Side One closing track “Over My Dead Body”. From the first notes of the song, it is just relentless. If you stood directly in front of a speaker stack as the band played this song, you’d come away feeling like you had been hit by 1,000 fists. The music’s pace never lets up as it continues to hit you with one sonic wave after another and the almost maniacal vocal turn from Wayne only further endears the song to me.

The 2nd side of the album opens with the album’s title cut is DEFINITELY a short version of a horror movie with Wayne embodying someone trapped in a house with some kind of demon. The vocals are just spit out while the hard charging music hits you in the gut. And the lyrics sure do conjure up some scary images in your mind as you listen. I mean, this is a pretty visual set of lyrics, no? – “When I opened up the door /And snapped on the switch /The room was filled with light / Then something black and very fast / Fled upon my sight / What I feared most as a child / Was the coming of the night / Now my horrors have become quite real /My nightmares breathe new life”.

Much like “Over My Dead Body”, the song “Psycho” is just a brutally fast assault. It might even be faster than “Over My Dead Body”. The band just keeps the attack on your senses coming from all five members of the band. And the vocal track is so stunningly evil, that of course I love it. That always makes me laugh considering my relative disdain for horror movies but I just love the song.

The subject matter of the song lyrics for The Dark album ranges widely but I liked the way Metal Church took the stuff going on with the country of Libya at the time the album was recorded and gave us yet another killer track with “Line of Death”. The music is yet another exploration of just how fast the band can go, until the mid-section when it takes a breath for a minute, yet maintains an absolute grip on the heavy side of the musical ledger. And then when that breath ends, the music and throat-ripping vocals rev right back up to punch you in the face again.

The song where I think I like the story in the lyrics the most might just be “Burial at Sea”. As the slow fade in gives way to a mind-numbing scream from David Wayne and the story of a doomed ship unfurls. It’s a master class in telling a story in short order. I love the music for this song and the guitar solo is amazing. There’s even a spotlight on the drums as the track gears up for its last lyrical verse that serves the song so perfectly.

The album closes with the song “Western Alliance” and it is another over the top fast paced number that seems to just explode from your speakers. The music seems to be its own beast as it hits your eardrums and Wayne’s vocals once again capture him in peak form as he just tears out his (and yours) throat from start to finish.

It is no secret that I’m a major fan of Metal Church. And I love all the eras of the band (marked by each different singer). But it started with this album and I have never shaken just how much this smoking slab of molten metal made me feel when I first listened to it. It’s a feeling I still get as I listened again in order to write this article. For me, the Metal Church album The Dark is one of the key building blocks for me becoming a heavy metal fan. 

NOTES OF INTEREST – The Dark is dedicated to Metallica’s bassist Cliff Burton. Burton had died a few days before the album had been released.

In support of the album, Metal Church opened Metallica’s Damage, Inc. tour which also had Anthrax as an opener. They would also tour with Megadeth, King Diamond and would open for Anthrax when they did their own tour. Sadly, while I’ve seen Metal Church three times in concert, I never saw this “classic” lineup live.

“Ton of Bricks” was used in the movie No Man’s Land.

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.

D.A.D. – NO FUEL LEFT FOR THE PILGRIMS (1989)

After two albums that were only released in Denmark and not internationally, the band D.A.D. broke through with their third album No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims. Not only did it give the band a profile outside of their native country, it got them played on MTV and touring the US.

While the band was still known as Disneyland After Dark when the album was released in Denmark, the band had to change the name to avoid getting sued by the Walt Disney Company once they started getting notice here in the States. After all, there’s nothing Disney likes more than suing people who can’t possibly defend themselves against the corporate behemoth.

Setting that aside, I bought this album when it came out solely on the strength of the first of the album’s two minor hits, “Sleeping My Day Away”. But a funny thing happened when I listened to the album. I just didn’t really like it all that much. In fact, since I first listened to it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the full album in the ensuing almost 36 years since. I pretty much remembered nothing about any of the other songs on the album.

And yet, the album was considered one of the best Hair Metal albums of all time by Rolling Stone in 2019. (Not that Rolling Stone has much credibility anymore but still.) Plus, any time the album came up in conversation, Roger from Purchase Street Records would rave about just how much he loved the album. So when I saw a copy of the album on his store shelves a couple weeks back, I decided it was time to give it another shot. I had completely dismissed the album and almost totally erased it from my memory, so what would I think of it now?

Well, I have to be honest here…I’m an idiot. Well, maybe not a COMPLETE idiot but after listening to No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims in the here and now, I have shake my head and for the most part wonder what was wrong with me back in 1989.

“Sleeping My Day Away” opens up the album and it still has that great hook and catchy chorus that made it break on MTV and with listeners back in the day. I did notice that I had a bit of a hard time fully understanding singer Jesper Binzer as the album and song got underway but I think that’s basically because I hadn’t listened to D.A.D. in so long.

As I said, I don’t really remember much about the rest of the album so it was almost like a totally brand new listening experience for me. So as I listened to the gritty and fast moving “Jihad”, I was just getting more and more amped up. The music was giving me a feeling of exhilaration. By the way, the album title comes from a lyric in this song.

On the song “Point of View”, not only did I like what I was hearing in the mid-to-uptempo song, but the lyrics are amazingly on point for how things are going in modern day. I doubt the band could’ve seen that coming but it does give them a bit more standing in my mind. The line I loved most was “See, I’d like to share your point of view / As long as it’s my view too”. Tell me that doesn’t sum up the majority of discourse these days, right?

There’s a heavy and deliberate thump to the otherwise hard charging track “Rim of Hell”. The song was the other minor hit from the release. The song has a cool sounding chorus and really landed well with me this time around.

Okay, while the song “ZCMI” certainly has an abundance of explosively charged energy coursing through it, for some reason it just fell flat for me. But as the first side of the album comes to a close the rocking “True Believer” gets the album back on track.

Before I talk about the 2nd side of No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims, I should note that despite the fact that I ended up not liking the album back in the day, I did see D.A.D. live in concert. They were opening for Badlands at the Living Room in Providence, RI. Sadly, there’s very little I remember about their set. Heck, I’m not even sure who I was with at the show. But the reason I do remember seeing them was because Badlands was fantastic and I got a great shot of their singer Ray Gillen that came out better than how I took it when the developer screwed up how the final photo turned out. As for D.A.D., the one thing I do remember is that during the Badlands set, I left the main floor because it was way too packed for me and I watched about half the set from the side of the stage. It was during that time that D.A.D. drummer (at the time) Peter L. Jensen came out to watch the show and he was standing next to me for a good part of that time.

As for the second side of the album, it opens with the song “Girl Nation”. It’s got a lively uptempo style and I found that I really quite enjoyed the song’s rhythm.

I wasn’t quite as taken with “Lords of the Atlas” but I liked the guitar playing on “Overmuch”. It has a pretty kicking rhythm and vibe to it. The same can be said for “Siamese Twin”, the guitar playing from Jacob Binzer really soars on the two songs and makes it that much more appealing.

The fiery soundtrack for the track “Wild Talk” was instantly appealing and I think it does another excellent job of showcasing all of the band members at once.

The album closes out with the song “Ill Will”. While it features plenty of fast moving parts, I got the feeling this song was really going for a very heavy in-your-face vibe at the same time. The vocals seem to be more intense with a bit of a growl and musically this one is quite the ass kicker. The guitar playing that ends the song is blazing and despite the song’s short length, D.A.D. packs quite the sonic punch to finish off the album.

Once again an album that got basically deleted from my memory comes back to bite me in the butt! While there’s still a couple of songs on the release that don’t really do anything for me, it’s clear that I’ve been missing out on all the great music No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims has been waiting for me to hear (again) all these decades later. I have a feeling I’m going to end up playing this one a lot in the days and weeks to come because man did my opinion of the album do a reversal. Who knows, it may even lead me into checking out more of what D.A.D. has to offer. And isn’t that what it is all about? I just really loved what I heard this time around.

NOTES OF INTEREST: D.A.D. is still together today and other than a change of drummers from Peter L. Jensen to Laust Sonne, the lineup of Jesper (vocals) and Jacob Binzer (guitar) and bassist Stig Pedersen has remained constant.

For a band that has always struck me as relatively obscure in comparison to other bands from the 80’s Metal Years, D.A.D. has released 13 studio albums, 3 live releases, 8 compilations and an EP. Their most recent album, Speed of Darkness was released in October 2024.

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 under-appreciated 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.

SAVATAGE – STREETS: A ROCK OPERA (1991)

“As darkness falls…so hard…”

With that line, the title track to the 6th studio album from my personal favorite band Savatage, begins to spin its yarn about D.T. Jesus, a New York rock star who rises from a drug dealer to the heights of the music profession, only to then experience another fall.

Like I said, Savatage is my favorite band. The fact that I’ve written about four of their albums already in The Cassette Chronicles would lend credence to that statement. But back in 1991, my fandom was still growing. I’d seen the band on the tour they did for the Gutter Ballet album where I’d gotten to meet four of the guys from the band. Add in that the show was great and my fandom was definitely ascending when Streets: A Rock Opera came out.

While singer Jon Oliva seems to hate the fact that “A Rock Opera” was added to the album title, I’ve always appreciated the extra dose of the dramatic that term added to the release.

The album opens with the “Streets” song. Much like how the album was based on a book that producer Paul O’Neill wrote for a Broadway play, the song serves as a kind of introductory overture for the rest of the album. With Jon Oliva providing his vocals over the music from guitarist Criss Oliva, bassist Johnny Lee Middleton and drummer Steve Wacholz, the track gets you keyed up for what’s to come.

The story gets underway in full with “Jesus Saves”. It introduces you to D.T. Jesus. He’s a drug dealer but he ends up becoming a big rock star…and falls prey to all the vices that would seem to entail. By the end of the song, his star has faded and he’s lost amongst the streets of New York, addled by drugs and on a slow road to nowhere or oblivion. The solo in this song is fantastic, Criss Oliva being on fire.

And that’s just in one song! The funny thing about this song in how I related to the song as someone listening to it. Like a lot of people I would sing along with the track. One day my mother heard me singing the chorus which includes the words “Jesus Saves”. She was a bit taken aback, thinking I was somehow having a religious awakening or something. She asked me, and I laughed as I told her that this particular Jesus was a New York drug dealer. Her response? “Don’t let your grandmother hear you saying that.”

As D.T.’s addictions continue to get the better of him, the song “Tonight He Grins Again” takes you inside the monkey on his back until the next track, entitled “Strange Reality”, shows him beginning to see what’s become of him and the resulting shock to his system. The way Jon Oliva’s vocals become strident without being overbearing is a deft touch as he brings this particular chapter to life.

The piano based ballad “A Little Too Far” has always struck a chord with me. The spare opening of the song with just the piano and what I think is a marvelously beautiful vocal performance from Jon. The song would seem to be showing us D.T. has he gets his act together, getting clear headed and taking a kind of inventory of what he’s done and what he’d like to do now. I also love the way the lyrics work in John Wayne, Captain Kirk and Spock in such an organic way that you can’t imagine any other persons being mentioned in their place.

The dual track “You’re Alive” / Sammy and Tex” has D.T. returning to the stage. “You’re Alive” is about his return to the stage and how everyone reacts to it. As for “Sammy and Tex”, that song whether taken as part of this great story or as a standalone song from the band’s catalog, I think it is one of my favorite songs from the band. It’s a full-tilt metallic assault on the senses with an amazing guitar run through from start to finish, a viciously ripping vocal turn and lyrics that show D.T.’s past coming back to haunt him…and hurt those around him. Just a monster track! I’ve spent all these years listening to the track in such a way that I can actually “see” the fight that is described in the lyrics and the results of said fight. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it is the lyrics of this song that creates a picture in my mind that sticks with me every time I hear the song.

The first side of Streets: A Rock Opera comes to an end with the showstopping epic “St. Patrick’s”. As D.T. reels from what’s happened, he faces a dilemma. Will he return to the drugs to hide away from his pain…or will he carry on and reclaim his life. And in this song, I guess you could say he sort of ends of having a conversation with a deity in a rather well known church. The first half of the song is geared more towards a slower and more deliberate delivery but you can feel the intensity ramping up as the song goes on and as the second half of the song kicks off…the heavier side of Savatage takes over for a bit before you get a coda of sorts and it is just Jon and a piano as the conversation comes to an end…and I love the last line, “Or give a call, explain it all…I’ll even leave the dime”.

The second side of the album kicks off with “Can You Hear Me Now”, the brief slower opening gives way to a far more intensely driven rock beat, fed by a pretty scorching drum track from Steve Wacholz. The tempo rises and falls for the rest of the track but the two styles blend superbly for an underrated gem of a track. The guitar playing is immense here as well.

D.T. has had his rise, then his fall. Then came his, if not second rise at least a bit of a redemption and now faced with the potential of losing it all again, he’s wandering the streets and we are left to wonder what path he will choose. On “New York City Don’t Mean Nothing”, the song actually feels like the city it mentions. I am not quite sure how better to describe it but that’s the way this particular track has always struck me. There’s something just intrinsically fantastic about how this song develops. You could say the same kind of thing for “Ghost in the Ruins” which has the same kind of gritty edge to it.

The song “If I Go Away” finds D.T. questioning if he should just disappear again, what he would leave behind or if anyone would really miss him. This is more of a power ballad track as the early part of the song which is keyed by the piano gives way to a bigger rock score for a lot of the song as well. And I love the way this song shows off the different vocal styles from Jon Oliva. You get the focused clear vocals in the “ballad” portion of the song but as the song’s tempo picks up, his vocals get more intense and a bit more of an edge or perhaps a rasp comes into play as well.

I like the contrasting styles of the next two songs. On “Agony and Ecstasy”, the tempo and full throttle metal soundtrack reminds you of the way “Sammy and Tex” sounded. But what I like about this one is how the lyrics are from the point of view of D.T.’s addiction calling out to him to return to the addiction’s embrace. It’s a fascinating way of telling this part of the story and it is also a superb track at the same time. Oh, and give a good listen to that guitar solo from Criss Oliva right before the song’s end. The counterpoint to that song is the follow up “Heal My Soul”. Soft and spare with a piano once again accompanying the vocals, it is an amazing song that always gets me a little choked up for what it means to the story.

The album comes to a close with the songs “Somewhere in Time” and “Believe”. The former track starts off a tad slower in pace but it ends up becoming more of a heavy rocker as the story winds down with D.T. finding a measure of peace and redemption from the trials he’s gone through. The song “Believe” has been a rather effective song not only for this album as the exclamation point to the album and story but a line from the song has been used in other material from the band, giving it an extended life of sorts. In fact, the entire set of lyrics for the song are chock full of great lines that really stick with you.

Streets: A Rock Opera may be a fictional story of a rock star’s self-driven ups and downs but for me, it is one of the statement showpiece albums for Savatage. It’s been nearly 34 years since it was released and it still manages to thrill, chill and stun me with its rather astonishing and unequaled delivery of some of the most amazing work I’ve not only heard from Savatage, but from any musical act that I listen to. It is quite simply one of my favorite musical works of all-time!

NOTES OF INTEREST: The CD version of the album has an essay that tells the story of D.T. Jesus and the Subway Messiahs (the band he led) and of D.T.’s life before, during and after his fame, rather than just relying on my own interpretation of the story here for you. 

While the storyline of the album does bear similarity to what was going on in singer Jon Oliva’s life around the same time, it is not about his life according to everything I’ve read online.

Streets: A Rock Opera has been reissued at least four times that I can confirm. The CD edition in 2002 has one bonus track, “Desiree”. I own a copy of that edition as well as my cassette. A funny side note to that CD is that the hype sticker and the track listing on the back of the CD both manage to mistakenly spell “acoustic” as “accoustic”.  The album was reissued again in 2011 with two different bonus tracks. The next reissue came in 2013 and it is sometimes referred to as “the director’s cut” of the album because they worked in narration for the album as well as the bonus track “Larry Elbows”.

By JAY ROBERTS

As this 8th year of The Cassette Chronicles comes to a close, it is time to once again look back at ten of the albums I wrote about in the series this year.

There were 24 new articles this year and I enjoyed writing about each album that the series covered. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to anyone that has been reading the series for any length of time. Heck, even if there’s an album I don’t care for too much, I think I usually have a good time writing about the reasons why it didn’t really resonate with me.

The great news is that thanks to the continued support of Jay and Katie from Limelight Magazine. The Cassette Chronicles will be returning for a 9th year in 2025. I’m not sure exactly when the first new piece will be up but it will be either January 2nd or January 9th.

I wanted to thank everyone who has read the articles this year. Whether you’ve gone directly to the site or clicked on a specific link on whatever website or social media page I’ve posted the articles on, your support for this series is greatly appreciate.

Here’s to another great year in 2025 but until that starts here’s the ten albums I’ve chosen (in no particular order) to spotlight for 2024.
See you next year!

(Please click on the cassette title to read the article)

1 – SAVATAGE – EDGE OF THORNS

2 – THE SCREAM – LET IT SCREAM

3 – SURVIVOR – CAUGHT IN THE GAME

4 – DEF LEPPARD – ON THROUGH THE NIGHT

5 – HEART – LITTLE QUEEN

6 – MELISSA ETHERIDGE – BRAVE AND CRAZY

7 – SUICIDAL TENDENCIES – LIGHTS…CAMERA…REVOLUTION

8 – BATON ROUGE – LIGHTS OUT ON THE PLAYGROUND

9 – MR. MISTER – WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

10 – IRON MAIDEN – SEVENTH SON OF A SEVENTH SON

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 under-appreciated 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.

(WRITER’S NOTE: THIS IS THE LAST CASSETTE CHRONICLES ARTICLE OF 2024. THERE WILL BE A BEST OF 2024 PIECE COMING NEXT WEEK. I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE FOR CONTINUING TO READ THE SERIES AND I HOPE THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO BECAUSE THE SERIES WILL RETURN WITH NEW ARTICLES AT THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY 2025!)

GREAT WHITE – GREAT WHITE (1984)

I’m sure you will be shocked…shocked I say…to learn that I’ve never listened to Great White’s self-titled debut album before now. I’m a little surprised myself but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a copy of this album (in any format) out in the wild before a recent excursion.

Now, that’s not to say I’m not at least somewhat familiar with some of the music from this album. In fact, two of the songs on Side One of the album are two of their better known songs even now.

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard both “Stick It” and “On Your Knees” both on the radio back in the day and through the greatest hits compilations I have in my collection. But before I talk about those songs, let’s pull back a little and talk about the tone or rather sound of this album.

When I was looking up information about the album, the one thing I noticed is that most articles describe Great White’s sound as being a lot more metal (aka heavier) than what we generally think about the band’s music. And while I do think the music leans more heavy and rocking than pretty much the rest of their catalog, singer Jack Russell’s voice still makes the music pretty identifiable as GREAT WHITE. He just has a readily identifiable sound so whether metal or blues rock is the musical style, Jack Russell still stands out.

This is the fifth Great White album I’ve written about overall but because I haven’t listened to it in full before, there was plenty to discover.

So now we can get back to those two songs I mentioned above. In regards to “Stick It”, the music is certainly in-your-face and so is the attitude the vocals project in the song. Particulary when Russell is intoning the song’s title. Being 1984 and metal developing a certain style that prevailed in the decade, the music also had a kind of echo to the production at times.

The song “On Your Knees” was co-written with Don Dokken and it is a hard-hitting straight forward rocker. I can definitely understand why it is still a well known track from Great White’s catalog.

Oh, and it is one of three tracks that originally appeared on the Out of the Night EP, even though the versions on Great White were fully new recordings.

The song “Out of the Night” itself opens up Side One and I noted pretty early on how fast and heavy it sounded. Definitely more of a metal track. But I tell you, despite what their record label and maybe other fans themselves might think, I thought this track was fantastic! Definitely showed the earlier style the band was employing at the time but it’s a darn good song no matter what.

For me, “Bad Boys” was OK. Solid rocker but of the five songs on the album’s first side, it is the one that left the least impression on me. 

But you know what song actually really surprised me and blew me away? It was the cover of The Who song “Substitute”. HOLY CRAP!  For me, I’ve been a fan of the many and varied songs from The Who that get played on the radio over and over again. But as surprising as this may be to some readers, I don’t actually own any of their catalog. And to the best of my knowledge I’ve never heard their original version of “Substitute”.  As I was listening to Great White’s quite masterful and rocking rendition, I was really getting into the song. I love the lyrics a lot but I thought Jack Russell did a fantastic job with his vocal performance as a whole. So much so that I actually find myself a bit fearful of looking up the original song on Youtube because I don’t want to spoil my feeling and/or love of this version.

For Side Two of the album, the song “Streetkiller” sure sounds like an 80s metal song title. But the song’s intro starts out establishing a moody almost eerie vibe. But as that intro ends, the music kicks in full burst and rocking pretty fast. I found myself getting into this track a lot.

But the song “No Better Than Hell” was a song that took more work to appreciate. It’s mostly got a mid-tempo delivery but the music seems like it was hushed a little, as if it wasn’t coming through the speakers in a full throated style. Maybe that was the planned method for establishing the feel of the song or something. But while the song does come off as interesting enough that I don’t hate it, I found that it wasn’t quite as intriguing as I might’ve hoped. 

On “Hold On”, Great White started out with a more subdued delivery of the song, picking up the pace a bit for the song’s choruse but by the end, the song was fully uptempo, albeit not quite as fast as a track like “Out of the Night” or anything. Okay song overall.

But the pacing picks up in full with the song “Nightmares”. It’s got a creepy sound to the guitar solo and just one of the tracks that does lend itself to that description of this album being a completely different sound than the rest of Great White’s discography.

That fast pacing continues on the album closing “Dead End” (which is the 3rd song re-recorded from the Out of the Night EP). It’s got a thunder and lightning delivery that I really found enjoyable and the vocals are delivered with Russell sounding at times as if he’s delivering the lines in a rapid fire manner. The band goes out a very high note with this song.

While there are of course definite differences between this first full-length Great White album and the slightly softer blues rock driven sound they adopted after it, I’d be remiss not to say that the band’s talent shines through with their songwriting and performances on the Great White  album. Sure it may not be perfect considering a couple of songs gave me pause but overall, this one turned out to be a very welcome surprise as I edge closer and closer to completing my Great White studio album collection.

I love Great White the band and Great White the album is the early primer on why that came to be. Check it out for yourself and I’m sure you’ll be as pleased as I ended up being.

NOTES OF INTEREST – The Great White debut album (which peaked at #144 on the Billboard album chart) was reissued on CD in 1999 with 5 cover songs included as bonus tracks. It was done by a French record label who re-titled the album as Stick It.

The four members of the lineup (singer Jack Russell, guitarist Mark Kendall, bassist Lorne Black and drummer Gary Holland are credited with writing the 9 original tracks on Great White. They shared writing credits with producer Michael Wagener on the song “No Better Than Hell” while the band’s manager Alan Niven provided backing vocals and got co-writing credits on two songs.

Gary Holland was a member of an earlier version of Dokken and was briefly a member of the band Sister which would eventually become W.A.S.P. He is credited with appearances on 2 Ozzy Osbourne releases and worked on albums by Twisted Sister, Autograph and Don Dokken as well.

Keyboardist Michael Lardie was not yet a member of the band but he is credited on this album as an assistant engineer and provided backing vocals. 

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.

LIZZY BORDEN – TERROR RISING (1987)

While I knew that this Lizzy Borden EP existed, I didn’t realize that it came out in 1987 until I was looking up research information for this article. The reason that struck me is because 1987 was also the year that the band released what is considered their masterpiece album Visual Lies.

I would tend to agree with that assessment of that album. It was actually the first one I heard and bought from the band and it still ranks as one of my own personal favorites.

So realizing that the Terror Rising EP came out in the same year was a bit strange because the releases are so diametrically opposed. While Visual Lies has incredible songs and strong production, Terror Rising is mostly made up of cover songs, remixes and a live track. And to call the production sound rough is a bit of an understatement.

Three of the songs on this EP came from previous releases. Things get going with a remixed version of the song “Give ‘Em The Axe” from the 1984 EP of the same name (I’ve written about that one for this series by the way). This new version is fine but it isn’t like it really brings all the much in the way of “new” to the song.

What follows that track is a cover of the Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit”. Now, I’m not strictly beholden to the idea that the original of a song is always the best but I’ve heard the original version of this song a lot over the years. While I can’t claim to be a huge fan of Jefferson Airplane or anything, I can say that this particular huge hit of theirs does NOT lend itself well to being covered in a heavy metal style. So as you might imagine, I really didn’t care for this one.

The first side of the cassette closes out with a live rendition of the song “Rod of Iron”. The song comes from the 1985 album Love You To Pieces as well as the Give ‘Em The Axe EP. I wrote that I thought it was the lesser of the five songs on that EP and I can’t say that the live rendition did much to improve my assessment of the song. When and/or if I get around to writing about the Love You to Pieces album, I’ll be interested to learn if the inclusion of the song on that release is a re-record or the same version that appears on the EP.

The second side of the cassette kicks off with the song “American Metal” which appears on the Love You to Pieces album and remains a song I love no matter how rough it sounds production-wise. Definitely a memorable anthem track from the band.

As much as I wasn’t enthused about the cover of “White Rabbit”, I was actually more impressed with the cover of “Don’t Touch Me There” from The Tubes. Maybe because the lyrics referenced leather or something made this feel more like a song that would suited to be a metal cover. With singer Betsy from the band Bitch as a guest performer the track as a duet came off pretty cool sounding to me.

The closing two songs are the only original songs included on Terror Rising. They really don’t offer much in the way of a preview of what was to come later in 1987 on Visual Lies though. “Catch Your Death” was a hard driving rocker that I ended up liking well enough but the EP’s title track was a grave disappointment to me. Most of the song was more of a spoken word performance with singer Lizzy Borden having a back and forth battle of wits with a voice in “his head”. It certainly keys into the group’s sense of the theatrical but I wish it had been more of a straightforward musical performance.

Overall, while not so bad that I regret listening to it, I wasn’t totally sold on Terror Rising but I am still glad to have it in the collection as where Lizzy Borden the band was coming from with another release before they unleashed the Visual Lies album.

NOTES OF INTEREST: Joey Vera, who at the time was the bassist with Armored Saint, played on the final three tracks of the EP’s second side.

Guitarists Alex Nelson and Tony Matuzak are credited on two tracks apiece on Terror Rising. Nelson passed away in 2004 while Matuzak died in 2021.

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 under-appreciated 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.

HEART – LITTLE QUEEN (1977)

While I normally try to stick to the 80’s and 90’s when it comes to the albums I write about here in The Cassette Chronicles, I do occasionally branch out to other decades as well. 

This week’s trip to the late 1970s was inspired not by grabbing a tape out of the Big Box of Cassettes though. Instead, the choice of Heart’s 3rd album Little Queen was inspired by someone else writing about it.

In my other writing “job”, I review mystery novels. That has led to some friendships being struck up with a number of the writers whose books I read. One of them has a daughter who has surprisingly good (and old-school) taste in music. Recently she has been doing a series of posts on her own Facebook page and she did a post about Little Queen that I enjoyed. 

This led me to deciding to follow suit and write up a piece of my own. 

Fair or not, because there are a number of great songs on the album, I think the reason Little Queen is such a big cog in Heart’s success is because of the lead track “Barracuda”. Yes, I’m not exactly breaking new ground with that opinion but since it is the first track on the album, I figure I might as well get it out of the way first.

The song was written in outraged response to deceptive and disgusting marketing created by Heart’s first record label (I’ll let you look up the story for yourself). Funny how rage spurred such creativity, no? The song’s opening chugging riff is instantly identifiable, a masterpiece of what is now considered “classic rock”. Between the fiery music and Ann Wilson’s take-no-BS vocal performance, the idea that anyone could not love “Barracuda” seems just wrong to me. It is a tentpole rocker for the 1970s decade to me.

What makes the first side of Little Queen so interesting to me is the way “Barracuda” serves as an opening salvo and yet, the middle three tracks lean more towards a kind of softer rock singer-songwriter vibe for the most part.

Okay, “Love Alive” mainly gets that kind of tag for me for its intro, which is way more low-key than the intro for “Barracuda”. I like the way the guitar comes in after that intro and you can feel the build the song has going for it until it does finally burst into much more of a full on rocker type track.

“Sylvan Song” and “Dream of the Archer” are kind of a themed duology. With “Sylvan Song” you get an instrumental that starts with some ambient nature sounds before you get the guitar fading in. As the song continues the guitar work is fully at the forefront of the music and while I’m not always a fan of instrumentals myself, this one left me feeling quite entertained even with its just barely over two minute run time.

But when the song ends, it feeds directly and thematically into “Dream of the Archer”. While the song title would seem right at home as the title of a fantasy novel, I thought the music had a kind of cinematic flair to it. It’s definitely softer in both focus and delivery but when you combine the two tracks, it does make for an interesting listen.

And while those three tracks are not quite as aggressive in tone and delivery, the first side of Little Queen does have a straight up rocker in “Kick It Out” serving to close out the side and bookend it with “Barracuda”. The song’s ferocious delivery and hard driving rhythms helps the track live up to its title. And while it was wasn’t overly successful as the album’s third and final single release, the song is still a damn good slice of rock ‘n’ roll.

Before digging into the album’s 2nd side, I thought mentioning the album’s cover art was in order. Most of the time I see comments about the artwork, they are talking about how the band looks like they are at a renaissance fair or something. But for my money, I thought the art was closer to portraying the band as gyspies. I think it makes more sense given how much touring they were doing at the time. It, for lack of a better term, made them rock and roll gypsies.

The 2nd side of Little Queen opens up with the album’s title track. It has a mid-tempo pacing but thanks to the drum work of Michael DeRosier, it also has a bit of a stomp feel to it as well. While it failed to chart as a single, it is still a pretty good track that I’m always happy to hear when it occasionally pops up on the classic rock radio station I listen to.

If there’s a song that doesn’t truly catch fire for me on Little Queen, I would have to say that it is the track “Treat Me Well”. Written by guitarist Nancy Wilson, the low-key delivery might have something to do with why I don’t really find myself getting too into the song whenever I play the album.

That reticence goes away though when I get to the song “Say Hello”. It’s another mid-tempo track but this one has a nice rhythmic vibe to both the music and the way Ann Wilson delivers her vocal performance.

Meanwhile, the song “Cry To Me” has a slower and way more understated style. While it doesn’t blow me away, I do like the way this one was constructed. The album’s closing track “Go On Cry” does seem to go thematically with “Cry To Me”. It still manages to grab me though. The one thing I didn’t like was how long it seemed to take in the intro for the music to fade in and get the track fully underway.

While Little Queen may have just one stone cold classic track on it in terms of singles success, you’d be doing yourself a bit of disservice to simply dismiss the rest of the album. It’s chock full of some great songs that run the gamut of what you could expect from any rock band coming out of the 1970s. You get hard rocking tracks alongside songs that convey more of that singer-songwriter vibe to you. But what makes the album a winner in my book is how well it all works when you take in the album as a whole. Little Queen helped cement Heart’s status as rock royalty and even in the here and now of 2024, Ann and Nancy Wilson maintain that royal status.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Little Queen album has been certified triple platinum. When the album was reissued in 2004, the CD contained two bonus tracks. The first song “Too Long a Time” is actually an early version of what would become “Love Alive”. The second is a live recording of the band covering “Stairway to Heaven” from a 1978 show in Seattle, WA.

Because of various contract disputes and timing, when everything was said and done the first three Heart albums (Dreamboat Annie, Magazine and Little Queen) were all on the album chart at the same time.

What amazes me is that despite its status as one of the band’s signature songs, “Barracuda” peaked at only #11 on the singles chart when it was originally released.

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.

BATON ROUGE – LIGHTS OUT ON THE PLAYGROUND (1991)

It has been more than four years since I wrote about the Baton Rouge album Shake Your Soul so I figured it was about time that I got around to the group’s 2nd album.

Of course, I came to that realization after discovering that they had a 2nd album in the first place. Since Baton Rouge was a band that essentially slipped through the cracks for me back in the day, it should be no surprise that I really didn’t know much about their recording history even after writing about their first album. In fact, when I saw a copy of the cassette at a local record shop, I found myself wondering how I’d missed that they’d had that 2nd release. And that comes with initially knowing that information when I ended up writing about their debut album. Time may heal all wounds, but it also seems to make me forget things too.

Not counting the song “Desperate” which is a cover of the Babylon A.D. track, I’d never heard any of the material on this album so once again I get to approach the release as a totally new experience.

Since the first Baton Rouge album was a commercial flop, the band ended up on a new label for the 2nd album. And while it once again failed commercially, I was intrigued to discover what the album had to offer me.

First up was the song “Slave to the Rhythm” which had a great riff powering the song right from the start of the track. It helped fuel the fast pacing the song enjoys. The vocals from Kelly Keeling had a nice little extra bit of gravel mixed in and the big gang vocal during the chorus helps sell the song. I even found myself digging the guitar solo, even if it felt like it got cut short for some reason. I will say that I hated the abortive way the song ended though.

“Full Time Body” was another jacked up hard driving rocker that employed a similar creative construction as “Slave to the Rhythm” but I once again found myself drawn to the guitar playing, particularly the solo.

On “Tie You Up”, the song starts out a bit slower in tone, but after the first part of the opening lyrical stanza, the tempo explodes forth for the song’s chorus. Lyrically, the album title comes from a line in this song. That back-and-forth tempo switch settles in for the 2nd lyrical stanza as well. 

After these first three songs, I found myself thinking that if I had actually paid attention to Baton Rouge during the time of the album’s release, I probably would’ve liked them instead of only barely being aware of their very existence for so many years.

The band’s re-do / cover of Babylon A.D.’s “Desperate” is a bit of a mystery to me. Not for the performance which is good and I love the way the vocals come through. But the original version from Babylon A.D. was only two years old when Baton Rouge’s version was released. Was it really necessary to re-do this song? Also, in a bit of a coincidence, the song is the fourth track on both albums.

After the power ballad stylings of “Desperate”, the album picks the pace back up with the song “Tokyo Time”, a fast moving rocker that I felt did a nice job of delivering a jolt of energy to the proceedings. That faster pace continued on “Vampire Kiss”, which has such a great hook to it that I found myself kind of bopping along to the song as it played. I’d venture to say it is one of my favorite tracks on Lights Out on the Playground.

While the song has a ballad-like title, the song “The Price of Love” is actually a pretty entertaining rocker. The music offsets the vocal in a point-counterpoint style in the main lyrical passages. Weirdly, I found myself thinking the vocals were similar to what I might hear on a Survivor album when David Bickler was their frontman. Well, at least in parts. Maybe I’m just imagining things here. But it was cool to me. Of course, in the chorus the uptempo style meant you got that big gang vocal and you can’t help but feel carried along as the song blazes to its conclusion.

It is at this point that I realized how much I was enjoying the album in full. The song “Dreamin’ in Black and White” was another shot of pure energetic adrenaline. I was really digging this track as I listened to it. Of course, at the same time, I was kicking myself for not keeping on top of things back in 1991 so that I could’ve been enjoying the album since that time.

“Down by the Torchlight” is an uptempo song but it is not a blitzkrieg of fiery notes. Instead, there’s a slower burn feel to the music even as you get a solidly paced thump to go alongside of it. There’s a somewhat bluesier feel to the music and the vocal turn is impressive. However, the one drawback to the song is the lame way it peters out at the end.

Baton Rouge takes a step back a bit with “Light at the End of the Tunnel”. It’s got everything you’d expect from a power ballad from that time period. It’s decent enough overall, though I liked when the presentation was more intense musically a bit more myself.

The track “Tear Down the Walls” alternates the vocal delivery between a more measured tone in the main passages and a harder edge comes in the build up to the song’s chorus. And the chorus was definitely a full-throated roar. And that guitar solo was pretty cool too.

The album closes out with the song “Hotter Than Hell” which ends up eschewing the more overt 80s metal trappings for a more blues rock driven song. The music is intense but you definitely get that more of a slow burn to the delivery and tempo. It’s got a great groove that draws you in as a listener and lets you see a different side to the band. And vocals are incredible!

I know that in terms of commercial appeal that Baton Rouge was a rather big failure, but here I am more than thirty years later, enjoying the hell out of Lights Out on the Playground. It’s an album full of great material. And while it may be considered out of step with today’s rock and roll scene, back in the latter days of 80s metal heyday, this was some damn good music to hit the scene. I am glad that I FINALLY discovered this but I’m still kicking myself for taking so long to come around to this appreciation of Baton Rouge’s second album.

NOTES OF INTEREST – Producer Jack Ponti was once again heavily involved in the writing of the material for Baton Rouge. He had co-writing credits on pretty much every track on Lights Out on the Playground. And that includes the song “Desperate” which he wrote with Babylon A.D. singer Derek Davis and originally appeared on the self-titled debut album from Babylon A.D. Sadly, Ponti passed away on October 7th, 2024.

Ex-Keel guitarist Tony Palmucci replaced David Cremin in the band ahead of the recording of Lights Out on the Playground. He would go on to collaborate with Dee Snider on his solo projects.