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.

JUNKYARD – SIXES, SEVENS & NINES (1991)

After discovering just how good the self-titled debut Junkyard album really was a couple months back, I figured I didn’t want to wait too long before hearing what their second album had to offer me as well.

If I was expecting Junkyard to sort of ease into things I was quickly disabused of that notion. The album’s opening cut “Back on the Streets” has a killer pacing to start off the song and that is melded together with a catchy hook filled delivery as the band seemingly goes for broke right from the get-go.

The next song up is “All The Time in the World” and while the song isn’t delivered in quite the same breakneck speed style, there is still an extremely quick moving tempo here. And the song’s chorus really grabs you. The guitar solo on the song is fantastic and singer David Roach continues to surprise the hell out of me. (All that time not hearing the Junkyard albums is really biting me in the butt once again!)

While there is always a bluesy type of feel to Junkyard’s brand of hard rock, the song “Give The Devil His Due” brings that swinging rhythmic blues-driven feel more to the forefront of the song. I could feel my foot start bouncing in rhythmic time to the music and I love when a song can make this totally lacking in any kind of rhythm guy feel like I could somehow move in time to the music.

“Slippin’ Away” (not to be confused with the Dokken song of the same or at least similar name) is much slower at the start. Not quite a ballad delivery, but it has that kind of storytelling country music vibe even with the harder rock edge coming in here and there throughout the song. The lyrical content is excellent. I know that I usually prefer the more rocking type of song but this track was just flat out superb. You can wrap yourself up in the music as the song transports you into the world it creates with each note and lyric line.

The first side of the album comes to a close with the full bore rocker “Nowhere To Go But Down”. The music hits you square out of the gate and then Roach’s vocals hit you all over again! It is yet another song that will grab ahold of you and not let go until the final note. The lyrical content makes it seem like Roach and/or the band is admonishing some repeated ne’er do well or something. Just a damn entertaining track.

As for the second side of Sixes, Sevens & Nines, the song “Misery Loves Company” kicks things off in an interesting fashion. You’ve got a hard rocking soundtrack that is deepened by the inclusion of a piano track that makes everything else sound that much more lively. According to the liner notes on the cassette, the piano (and Hammond organ) is played by musician Kevin Savigar. His playing gives this song a great little boogie-woogie sound to it. Incredible to say the least!

The piano goes away for the song “Throw It All Away”. That track has pretty much all sharp edges to it. At first I thought there was kind of sneer in how the vocals came across but that ended up being a figment of my imagination. Instead, Junkyard just bulldozes through the song giving listeners yet another song that will let them raise their fists and yell.

There’s a more deliberate delivery on the song “Killing Time”. It’s nearly seven minutes long and the kind of swamp rock music vibe rolls over you like a slow moving river. As the song heads into the chorus, the music does get a bit more of a jolt which gives the song an added edge but it works just about as perfectly as you could hope for.

The slightly country sounding tinge returns in the beginning of the song “Clean The Dirt”. It’s a rather spare musical soundtrack to start the song off with the guitar and vocals pretty much alone in the forefront, the drums come in a bit later and at first they are almost muted (or pushed way down in the mix), but then the band comes in full for the song’s chorus before going back to the slower delivery. That tempo switch continues throughout the song and makes for a very interesting track to listen to.

The album ending track “Lost in the City” has its foot on the gas from the first note of the song. It aims for straight between your eyes and finds the mark easily enough. Just a resoundingly uptempo way to end the album. It plays almost as a final victory lap in my head because it finishes off a rather superb album that has just rocked me back on my heels with just how good it is.

One thing I can definitely say after hearing the two Junkyard albums is that the next time they are in my area (or at least close enough that I can drive there and back), I’m going to have to go see them live. The studio material is just incredible and now I have a serious hankering to see how it translates live. Sixes, Sevens & Nines once again confirms that I’ve done myself a great disservice to have waited so long to get into Junkyard and that I now have a lot of catching up to do!

NOTES OF INTEREST: Guitarist Chris Gates and singer David Roach co-wrote each of the tracks. There were only two other co-writing credits with one of those being Steve Earle. He co-wrote (and sang backing vocals on) the song “Slippin’ Away” with Gates and Roach. He also added background vocals on the songs “Misery Loves Company” and “All The Time in the World”.

Bassist Clay Anthony left the band just before the Sixes, Sevens & Nines album was released. He passed away in 2020.

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.

DANGEROUS TOYS – PISSED (1994)

With the sold-out Dangerous Toys show at The Vault in New Bedford, MA, happening just two days (Saturday October 21, 2023) after this article will post online, I thought it would be interesting to check out the band’s album Pissed this week. While I’ve written about the band’s self-titled debut album and their Hellacious Acres release, not only have I not written about their third album but I’ve never even heard it before deciding to write about it for The Cassette Chronicles.

So I get to go in totally cold on the 10 tracks that make up the album because to the best of my knowledge I’ve never heard any of the songs at all. And since the most recent set lists attributed to the band on setlist.fm say that two songs from Pissed are played live, it might be nice for me to have some familiarity with them.

And that new-slash-growing familiarity with those two songs comes right at the start with both the title track and “Paintrain” opening things up on Side One.

There’s nothing in the way of overture or intro for the title track with the music pretty much kicking in hard and fast right from the first notes. It’s aggressive with singer Jason McMaster viciously intoning “You always seem to piss me off!” While the song may not have had the same “hit single” attached to it as the band’s best known songs, I really liked this song and the seeming level of extra intensity the band had in the delivery.

With “Paintrain” listeners get another in-your-face rocker with a razor sharp focus from the music given increasing fuel to the fire with the gripping vocal performance.

As for the rest of Side One, “The Law Is Mine” kicked off with this very brief but cool sounding drum beat in the intro before the band kicked in as one. This is a blast of a track for me. I loved the way the guitar solo came out on this one. The fast pace had my foot a-tapping throughout.

On “Promise The Moon”, I wasn’t crazy about the way Jason McMaster’s vocals were presented during the song’s first lyrical verse. It was just too over-produced sounding to me. And while this song is probably what we all would consider a “power ballad” (or at least the Dangerous Toys version of one), it’s actually a pretty cool track. McMaster’s vocals return to a more natural style after the song’s first stanza and the questioning and emotional nature of the lyrics come through a bit more powerfully.

The first side closes out on a far more aggressive posture with the song “Strange”. The immediate opening of the song might make you think differently the first time you hear the song but man, once that more fiery delivery kicks in, you can hear how the band’s songwriting “posture” changed immediately (and for the better). And the gutteral yet elastic vibe conveyed through the vocal performances are just fantastic. Edgy and vicious without sacrificing clarity and power.

The second side of Pissed opens pretty much like side one. There’s no real table setting intro for the song “Loser”. Instead the song once again just bursts forth from your speakers and goes full bore right from the first note. And man, the guitar playing on this one (particularly the solo) is phenomenal.

And then comes an absolute monster track in “Hard Luck Champion”. OH MY GAWD! This is incredible. A full frontal musical attack of the senses, the music is fierce (with another highly motivating guitar solo) and the way McMaster attacks the vocals is awesome. The middle part of the song slows down just a bit before getting back to the more aggressive stance of the track. This is an amazing song. I WISH this was going to be in the set list this coming weekend.

“Screamin’ For More” and “Oh Well, So What!” serves to provide a particular focus on the way that McMaster’s vocals are rapid fire machine gun bursts. He spits out the lyrics that leaves you rocked back and glued to your seat.

When you hit the album’s final cut, “Illustrated Man” you’ll find that the tempo is a bit more restrained than the two tracks that preceded it but it is still a pretty lively number. And it brings the album to a fitting conclusion.

After Dangerous Toys was dropped from their major label during the tour for their 2nd album, you have to think they were indeed ticked off about how things had gone for them. I would say this third album being called Pissed is probable confirmation of that notion. I’ve seen other reviews and editorial comments calling the album darker and harsher in terms of the music and lyrics. But I have to say that I found myself thoroughly enjoying this album from start to finish.

This was a really interesting development for me because when I wrote about the first two Dangerous Toys album back in 2017 and 2021, I wasn’t quite as taken with those releases as a whole. Sure I liked the “known” songs but particularly with the first album, I thought the non-single tracks left me wanting just a bit.

But Pissed pretty much avoided anything resembling a song I wouldn’t want to hear ever again. It’s a great collection of songs that may have missed its mark with audiences in 1994 but nearly three decades later, it’s finding a home in my cold dead heart.

Listening to this album will leave you feeling anything but “pissed”. Instead, you’ll find yourselves wondering why I was so stupid as to have spent nearly thirty years without knowing just how damn good Pissed really is!

NOTES OF INTEREST: After the recording of the Pissed album, bassist Mike Watson was replaced by Salty Dog’s Michael Hannon.

The Pissed album was produced by Billy Sherwood, who has had two stints (including the current lineup) with the prog rockers Yes.

The album was reissued in 2017 through ex-Megadeth bassist David Ellefson’s record label EMP Label Group.

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.

DIO – HOLY DIVER (1983)

Given the fact that Holy Diver, the debut studio album from Dio, is to this day acknowledged as the best album the group did and remains a defining moment in the career of singer Ronnie James Dio, I don’t think it is going to shock anyone if I get the spoiler alert portion of this article out of the way early.

That is to say I absolutely love this album! Of course, I was late in getting around to the album because the first time I heard a Dio release was the Dream Evil album which came out four years after Holy Diver.
But on this first album, when you combine Dio’s vocals with Vivian Campbell’s guitar playing, Jimmy Bain on bass and Vinny Appice on the drums, you definitely get a full-on metal assault that stands the test of time.

Whether or not it was expected to go down that way when the album was originally released, I have no idea. But I know that I still get excited each time I go to put this album on.

The music for Holy Diver was written by the four individual members in varying combinations while Ronnie James Dio wrote all the lyrics. And it is the lyrics that really stand out to me. I mean as a whole within each song and then with each track also having some killer individual lyrical lines that continue to blow me away even now. They have just struck a chord with me so that each time I hear them, I get this little jolt of memory from the first time I heard the words.

The first side of the cassette opens with the song “Stand Up and Shout”, which is ball of kinetic energy tossed into a crowd like a grenade. It bursts out of the speakers and wastes little time in getting the listener amped up. I can’t imagine anyone not jumping out of their seats when you hear this song. The anthemic exhortations feel just as empowering now as they did in 1983. And I love the opening line, “It’s the same old song / You’ve gotta be somewhere at sometime /And they never let you fly”.

The album’s title cut comes up next and while the video for the song isn’t exactly what you would call “great”, it was always a thrill to see it come on MTV back in the day. It’s still one of the most popular Dio tracks and while it is not quite as revved up in terms of tempo as “Stand Up and Shout”, the song still has a highly charged uptempo feel to it. As for a killer lyrical line I think “Between the velvet lies / there’s a truth that’s hard as steel” is great one.

The song “Gypsy” is a solid rocker that lets the band shine nicely as a whole. And the verse: “Well I rolled the bones / To see who’d own /My mind and what’s within /And it’s a given rule / That we’re all fools /But need to have a little sin” always manages to catch my ear.

I could be wrong about this but I think the song “Caught in the Middle” is a bit of an overlooked track in the Dio catalog. But I actually like this song a lot. I like the uptempo pacing and I think Vivian Campbell’s playing on this one is really cool. To top it off, I like Dio’s vocal performance here a lot as well. And the lyrical line “Looking inside of yourself / You might see someone you don’t know / Maybe it’s just what you need / Letting the river I know that’s in you flow” seems rather like a positive affirmation kind of lyric without being the kind of cheesy that would make one’s eyes roll.

The first side of the album closes out with “Don’t Talk To Strangers” which is another classic Dio track of the first order. I love the way the song opens with a vastly slower and more dramatic tempo but then blows up into a take-no-prisoners fiery rip-roaring rocker. At times, Ronnie sounds positively vicious in his delivery. And I have to say, start to finish, the song has a killer set of lyrics though I do love the line “Don’t writing in starlight / ‘Cause the words may come out real” a lot.
As a fan of stories and words in general, I am always on the lookout for song lyrics that can just hit me out of nowhere and continually catch my ear no matter how many times I listen to the song. And the Holy Diver album never disappoints.

The second side of the album opens with “Straight Through the Heart” which is a powerfully stomping rocker. I love the first line of the song “Hanging from the cobwebs in your mind” but the verse “Oh, never tell a secret with your eyes / It’s the eyes that let you down / Tell a little truth with many lies / It’s the only way I’ve found” is just flat out awesome in my estimation.

While “Invisible” starts off with a sense of the theatrical in the song’s intro, it quickly becomes a blazingly hot high energy rocker. The storytelling that Dio does with his vocals and the song lyrics is amazing. It’s another track that I found that I love the entire set of the song lyrics. But the opening stanza when the song is far slower in tempo always gets me. It’s just incredible to hear “If your circle stays unbroken / Then you’re a lucky man /’Cause it never never never has for me / In the palace of the virgin / Lies the chalice of the soul / And it’s likely / You might find the answer there” before the band comes in hot and heavy and Dio adds an edgy growling tone to his performance with lines like “She was a photograph / Just ripped in half / A smile inside a frown”.

Chances are if you still listen to the radio, you are still hearing the song “Rainbow in the Dark” a lot. I know when I am listening to 94 WHJY out of Providence, RI, I hear the song all the time. You’ve got that instantly recognizable keyboard heavy intro leading into the song as a whole but man, just when you might think the song is a tad overplayed, you hear it again and it hits you all over again. And while I do love all of the lyrics that Ronnie James Dio is singing in the song the stanza “You’re just a picture / you’re an image caught in time / We’re a lie, you and I / “We’re words without a rhyme” is just intensely cool.

The Holy Diver album ends with the song “Shame on the Night” and it’s Jimmy Bain’s bass and Vinny Appice’s drums that not only hold down the bottom end of the track but give it that thumping whallop you hear throughout the song’s running time. It’s a much more methodical delivery that the more fast paced and in-your-face songs but no less heavy and catchy. Plus how can you not like a song that has lyrics like “Shame on the night / For places I’ve been / And what I’ve seen/ For giving me the strangest dreams / But you never let me know just what they mean”?

I can’t imagine anyone who could hear the Holy Diver album and not like it. I’m shocked if people don’t LOVE it! After time in Rainbow and Black Sabbath, Ronnie James Dio got it right once again with his solo Dio band right out of the gates. Holy Diver is an essential heavy metal album that belongs in every fan’s collection. You’ve got great music, killer lyrics and perhaps (or even likely) the all-time greatest metal singer on the mic. What more can you ask for from an album whose greatness is undisputed four decades after it came out?

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Holy Diver album has achieved at least platinum certification according to the album’s Wikipedia entry. It was remastered and reissued in 2005 through Rock Candy Records with audio of Ronnie James Dio answering questions. It was then reissued again in 2012 in a 2-disc edition that had nine bonus tracks on it.

The documentary Dio: Dreamers Never Die was released on DVD and other physical media formats on September 29th, 2023.

A graphic novel entitled Dio: Holy Diver was published by Z2 Comics in 2022. It was written by 30 Days of Night author Steve Niles with art by Scott Hampton and Bill Sienkiewicz. Its storyline focuses on what led up to the moment that is captured on the cover art for the album. I own a copy of the graphic novel and it is a decent story.

According to a September 27th news article link I saw, Dio’s widow Wendy has said that the Dio’s Disciples band will be going back out on tour in 2024.

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.

SURVIVOR – WHEN SECONDS COUNT (1986)

In 1986, when I was still too young to have a license, Survivor released their sixth studio album When Seconds Count. As luck would have it, their subsequent tour included a stop at a venue I could get to…if I could convince my father to take me. With him not being a rock music fan, this wasn’t all that easy to finagle.

But he knew I wanted to see the band and while I’d seen a country music act in concert before, this would be my first rock concert. So, two tickets were purchased and off we went. I remember that I had a Chicago Bears baseball hat and was wearing that because the band’s hometown was in fact Chicago, Illinois. In my completely naive thinking, I thought maybe that would get me somewhere so that I could maybe meet them or something. I also brought a camera so I could take photos and I still have them to this day. Not that they are very good shots but still, I’ve got live photos from the one and only time I saw the band in concert.

But before the tale of that concert continues, what about the music? Well, much like the majority of Survivor’s first seven albums, When Seconds Count is a standard bearer for the best of what the melodic rock (then called pop rock, I believe) had to offer. Great hooks, big choruses, exciting uptemp rock songs and powerful ballads. Add in a powerhouse dynamic singer like Jimi Jamison and it is no surprise that I was so eager to get my hands on the album. While I was in well into my heavy metal awakening by this point in 1986, Survivor was still one of my favorite bands.

The album opens with “How Much Love”, the first of three singles that were released to promote the album. The strange thing is that despite it having a high energy driving tempo and an incredible melodic hook, the song didn’t do much on the singles chart. It’s too bad too because it is a fantastic song in total and really gets you pumped up as the album opener.

The next song is “Keep It Right Here” and it starts off more like a ballad with a keyboard intro from Jim Peterik with only spare instrumentation to go along with it. The opening portion of the song is more about Jimi Jamsion’s vocals setting the stage for more of a dramatic presentation of the song. But as the song progresses, things grow more upbeat and at one point, the song bursts out in full force as Jamison cuts loose vocally.

The song “Is This Love” was the first single from the album and it was the only one that actually charted. It ended up reaching #9 on the charts and the article I read said it was the last Top 10 hit for the band. The song’s title could give the impression that this is a ballad track but instead, the music is rocking right from the start. The keyboards and guitars blend together perfectly. And I like the way Jamison’s vocals are shown to be both melodically soaring at times and then there’s more of a gritty vibe to other parts of his performance.

Now, if you want your first taste of a ballad, you have to check out the song “Man Against The World”. While it didn’t chart as When Seconds Count’s third solo, I have always loved this song and think of it as one of my personal favorites on the album. It starts off slow with that hook-filled piano/keyboard sound. But as with most power ballads, the song grows far more intense and the slow delivery picks up and becomes far more in-your-face for the majority of the track’s run time. The bridge for the song is killer as well.

The first side of the album closes out with the song “Rebel Son” and back when I was dumb enough to think I was “a rebel” (spoiler alert, really not the case), I loved the title and the song as a whole even if the lyrics might not be a perfect fit for my delusions of being a grand rebel. Like a couple other songs on the first side, the song starts out slow with just a smattering of music, led by the keyboards. But then like being shot out of a cannon, the music explodes out of your speakers and you find yourself treated to one hell of a great rock track!

Before we get on to Side Two of the album, I should get back to telling you a bit more about that concert I attended. If I remember correctly, the opening act was a keyboardist named Steve Mullen. I do remember that I liked his set and I think I met him after he finished. I tried looking him up online but I can’t be sure if I have the right guy or not.

Anyway, then Survivor came on stage and man it was fantastic. Well, for me anyway. At one point, my dad took a break and went outside the venue. When he came back, some seats had opened up as people moved around. And that’s when drummer Marc Droubay tossed a drumstick in my direction. It landed in my dad’s seat. Or rather where his original seat was. When he came back, he had moved over a couple of seats and it just landed in the empty seat where someone else was faster than me at grabbing it.

ARGGGGH! I can’t pretend I was mad or anything it was just funny considering how I like to get stuff like that when I go to concerts nowadays. But hey, I got my Survivor T-shirt at the merch stand so I was happy regardless.

Survivor’s show was fantastic as the band ran through a slew of hits and teenage me was having a ball. And then came the encore…which I’ll talk about after Side Two of the album!

I’ve always wondered how the song “Oceans” came into being. If I ever meet Jim Peterik, I’ll have to ask him that. Not that it isn’t a damn good song, but it has always struck me as being a bit different than the other songs on the album. It’s got a great little sound and it is not quite as keyboard-heavy as other songs, so maybe that’s why it seems so markedly different to me.

The album’s title track is an absolute killer track! While the song’s uptempo throughout (at times it has a nice thump to it thanks to bassist Stephan Ellis and drummer Marc Droubay), the main lyrical passages are just slightly slower in delivery than the chorus. When said chorus kicks in, you can hear that extra heft infused into the band’s performance. Plus I love the line, “Funny how you speak of forever / Only to wind up restless and bored” a lot. I don’t presume to know how other Survivor fans feel about this song but I would’ve loved to see this song as a single. It’s another of my personal favorites.

“Backstreet Love Affair” features that slightly slower start that ramps up to something more akin to a full on rock and roll track. Peterik’s keyboards feature a lot on this song and there’s one part of his playing that I really found myself drawn to as I listened to it for this article.

As for “In Good Faith”, it is a power ballad of the first order. Initially fueled by Peterik’s keyboard playing and that more dramatic vocal presentation from Jamison, the “ballad” gives way to the “power” for the song’s chorus. Survivor always seemed to have the ability to write great ballads back in the day but the best way to know how good this song is will be realizing just how well it holds up more than thirty-five years later.

The album closes out with the song “Can’t Let You Go”. And it is gritty little number. It opens with a cool sounding guitar riff and then goes on to deliver a great dose of rock and roll. Jamison’s vocals have more of a gritty tone to them which I think helps give the song a different edge. And Frankie Sullivan’s guitar work is excellent. If I’d been able to see the band more than once, this would’ve been a song I would’ve been very excited to hear if it had been included in the set list.

Oh about that encore, I’m sure you can imagine what song the band saved until then. Yes, big surprise, it was “Eye of the Tiger”. And the crowd actually left their seats to get closer to the in-the-round stage. Eventually I worked my way down as well. I ended up getting close enough that when Jimi Jamison was in front of me, he looked down and gave me a high five. I pretended that it was because he saw the Bears hat on me even though he wasn’t from there. Still it was SO COOL for teenage me at my first rock concert to get that high five of acknowledgement from Jamison.

So as you might’ve guessed long before now, I remain a staunch fan of Survivor’s music to this day. And the myriad of reasons why are amply demonstrated on the When Seconds Count album. I play this album a lot and each time I do, it just brings me joy as I listen to each song. I can’t think of a better endorsement than that.

NOTES OF INTEREST: Here’s something I didn’t know until I started looking up information for this article online: Along with other albums from Survivor’s catalog, When Seconds Count went out of print for a brief time in 2009. However, the band’s catalog was then reissued and remastered by Rock Candy Records. The Rock Candy edition contains the song “Burning Heart” as a bonus track. It was originally released on the Rocky IV movie soundtrack. As a single, the track peaked at #2 on the Billboard chart.

While there were only three singles released in the U.S., a fourth song (“In Good Faith”) was apparently released as a single in Germany.

Since he was brought in late in the process for the previous album Vital Signs, singer Jimi Jamison had no writing credits on that album. But for When Seconds Count, he co-wrote four of the songs with Survivor’s main writing team of keyboardist Jim Peterik and guitarist Frankie Sullivan.

Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw is credited with providing backing vocals on When Seconds Count.

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.

HERETIC – BREAKING POINT (1988)

It’s kind of funny how things work out sometimes. You see, I didn’t actually intend to write about an album featuring the late vocalist Mike Howe just three days after what would’ve been his birthday.

But I guess the universe decided it had other plans. But it sure took a roundabout way of getting me to write about the Heretic album Breaking Point. I’ve had a copy of the album on vinyl for I can’t remember how long. And while I had listened to it when I first got it, I can’t remember playing it much since that point. The fact that I don’t have a great record player was certainly a factor, but I just simply never got around to it much in the first place.

But then I saw Metal Church in concert a couple months ago. And the night before that show, the band did a signing at the local record shop, Purchase Street Records [in New Bedford, MA]. Because Metal Church guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof had co-produced this Heretic album, I decided to bring it with me to have him sign.

And yet, that still isn’t why you are about to read this article. Instead, it is because a couple weeks ago, the record shop posted a photo online of some cassettes they’d just gotten into the store. And there in the lower right hand corner, just barely able to be read, was a cassette edition of Breaking Point. As soon as I was able to get to the store, I grabbed up the cassette because I knew I wanted to write about it. And thus, here we are.

Two years prior to the 1988 release of this album, Heretic had released an EP called Torture Knows No Boundary. But Mike Howe wasn’t in the lineup yet, though he did join the band sometime soon after the EP was put out. And while he does lend his vocals to Breaking Point, you can be forgiven for seeing this as kind of his audition for Metal Church because he ended up leaving Heretic for Metal Church before 1988 was out.

Now, I had said I hadn’t listened to the album in a while. And while my original listen to it when I got the vinyl left me thinking the album was good, I don’t remember being overly blown away by it either.
Funny how time changes an opinion though.

The first side of the album opens up with the band’s namesake song “Heretic”. The opening serves as a bit of a mood setter before the song kicks into a much higher (and relentlessly faster) gear. The tempo becomes explosive, the sound of the song immediately gripping you and Mike Howe’s vocals shine through quite nicely.

The lineup for the band on this album also included the founding guitarist Brian Korban (who wrote eight of the album’s ten tracks), bassist Dennis O’Hara (who wrote “The Enemy Within” and “Shifting Time”), plus Bob Marquez on guitar and Ricky Merick on drums.
Korban certainly sounds great on a lot of the guitar work he’s involved with on the album. The opening track of Side Two is the instrumental “Pale Fire” and it is one hell of a track. It has an acoustic vibe to it and it is deceptively sedate. You can feel the intensity of the playing as you listen along. I did think it an odd placement in the track listing for an instrumental to open a side of an album, but “Pale Fire” really works.
But getting back to the first side of the album, after “Heretic” the next three tracks follow a roughly similar path in regards to tempo. They are all fast-paced rockers designed to not really let you catch your breath. What makes each track individually is how the band varies them up just enough so they don’t all run together.

On “…And Kingdoms Fall”, the song’s tempo is offset by a killer set of lyrics that when you read them now take on a slightly more somber tone as it relates to just how Mike Howe passed away. If you can, look up the lyrics. I know when I did, my sadness over his passing washed over me once again.

I think my biggest issue upon re-listening to Breaking Point was how some of the songs had some really mediocre lyrics in the chorus. Case in point: While I really liked the main lyrical passages of “The Circle”, the chorus mind-numbingly pedestrian.

But I got over that when the next song on Side One, “The Enemy Within” started playing. As I said, it is a fast-moving number that just really seemed to hit the mark perfectly with me.

As for the closing track on Side One, “Time Runs Short” was featured more of a deliberate take in the delivery…for the most part at least. In the main portions of the vocals, the song is almost like a set piece type of song. The anchor track to tie the side together with a sense of drama thrown in the mix. The delivery does get a bit harder-edged during the chorus but then switches back to the more methodical style. It is just a darn good song in my book.

Of course, then we move on to Side Two. After that “Pale Fire” instrumental opening things up in a more measured tone, Heretic slips into full throttle mode with the song “Shifting Fire”. There’s a grittier feel to the delivery and the overall style of this song made for another track I felt came off like a winner for me.

Of course as fast as that track was, “Let ‘Em Bleed” took things up a few more notches. The pacing for the song is viciously intense. The entire band is just shredding on this killer track.

You’ve heard of that movie I Spit on Your Grave, right? Well, despite a kind of boring chorus, the song “Evil For Evil” serves up lyrical content of a woman getting her revenge on whomever done her wrong. Well, at least that’s what I got out of listening to and reading the lyrics as the fast-paced track rolled along.

While Side Two opened relatively slowly, those next three tracks all had quite a sense of pulse-pounding metal rhythms. But much like the first side of the album, the closing track (“The Search”) of Side Two was more of a methodically delivered and filled with dramatic tension set piece. The lyrics are plentiful (it is one of the album’s longest songs in terms of just how many lyrics there are) and you get the sense that you are being taken on a musical journey.

I can’t lie to you. The first time I heard Breaking Point, it was fine. But even with the added interest of Mike Howe on vocals, I just didn’t quite get into the album as much as I would’ve perhaps liked to have done. But all these years later, I’ve found a new outlook on the album and while Heretic might not have been successful with the album, Breaking Point does indeed have some pretty great sounding material you’d be remiss to not go give another listen to for yourself.

NOTES OF INTEREST: After Heretic broke up, Brian Korban and Dennis O’Hara would go on to form the band Reverend with, oddly enough, ex-Metal Church frontman David Wayne. However, in 2011 Korban and O’Hara would reunite Heretic bringing back former frontman Julian Mendez (the singer Mike Howe replaced back in 1986. Stranger still, the Breaking Point album contains a dedication to Mendez. O’Hara only stayed with the reformed band for 2011, but the band is still active today. They released two albums 2011’s A Time of Crisis and 2017’s A Game You Cannot Win.

In 2013, Metal Blade Records released a 3-CD box set called From The Vault…Broken and Tortured that included the Breaking Point album, the Torture Knows No Boundary EP as well as bonus tracks and a live DVD of the band.

The current lineup of the band includes guitarist Stuart Fuji. He’s been with the reformed lineup since 2014. However, he appeared on the Breaking Point album as a session keyboard player. However, he was credited as Stu Fujinami.