Heavy Metal (not the music) started as a Graphic Novel for mature adults, and later spawned two movies. The first one was simply titled Heavy Metal, and had a soundtrack I started lusting after long before I saw the movie.
With names like Sammy Hagar, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath and Nazareth who could go wrong, was my thirteen year old belief. I liked Van Hagar, BOC was Classic Metal, Black Sabbath is Black Sabbath, and I was a greatest hits fan of Nazareth. Sounded pretty promising to me.
Let me start with Sammy Hagar's Heavy Metal. It's a fantastic party style song, which I don't think anyone does better than Sammy. I love and crank this song everytime I hear it. I'm sure my neighbours are very happy I don't put it in the CD player more often.
After that the album starts bouncing up and down. Riggs has two tracks on the album Heartbeat and Radar Rider. The first one I have no use for. The second one I find impressively intriguing.
Radar Rider is just a really cool collection of simple music mixed with phasing, and minimal lyrics. By far the better of the two songs Riggs has on the album. In fact it's in my top five of songs from this collection.
Devo on a soundtrack called Heavy Metal? A bit oxymoronic I think, but I love Working In The Coal Mine. It's one of my favourite Devo tunes, for reasons that can not be rationally explained, no matter how many times I've tried. Which is exactly how I feel about Devo too.
America's answer to Black Sabbath was Blue Oyster Cult. They were just as heavy, not as well produced, and a hell of a lot more Fantasy/Sci-Fi. Just the title, Veteran Of The Psychic Wars, brings about images best kept in nightmares. Then the music starts and you find yourself in a situation that I've only felt when listening to Metallica's One. You want to kill the survivor of the war, just to make the suffering stop. Veteran was also eight years before One, and a lot creepier.
Cheap Trick also got two tracks on the album, Reach Out and I Must Be Dreamin'. Reach Out is a really good Rock song. It adds more to the movie sequence it's in than it does to the album, but as far as album filler goes, this is one of the better tracks. I Must Be Dreamin' is just really cool. It's not special in any way, except for it's minimalist attack mixed with ambience sounds. It also has a pretty good rhythm to get it on to.
Don Felder's Heavy Metal (Takin' A Ride) is okay. It has a bit of a Disco hangover feel, and reeks of groove because of it. That's pretty much it for the song. In fact I think having this song called Heavy Metal is a bit of a boner. Takin' A Ride (Heavy Metal) would have been much better. Also I think it hurt Sammy's Heavy Metal, through simple accidental confusion. This title is no where near as good as the album's lead track.
True Companion by Donald Fagen is a Smooth Jazz piece of shit, that was only put in the movie with the hope of attracting a female audience. The same reason it's wrecking the soundtrack. Even the guitar solo can't save this one.
Nazareth is a band that I really like. Those scratchy, yet screechy, King Diamond-like vocals without the ball crushing screams, mixed with heavy low end, driving drums and melodicly distorted guitars are just awesome. Crazy (A Suitable Case For Treatment) is everything I like about Nazareth, and fits right in on the soundtrack. It's a song I'd probably even like to cover in a band myself.
I have a love/hate relationship with Journey. Open Arms is why I have so much anger towards the band that helped pioneer the power ballad. I hate mushy power ballads, they only have one purpose, to weed out the pussy. If a person likes this song, they clearly are a weepy sissy-girl pussy and should be kept away from the people that like real music, so not to contaminate the real women, or men.
One band I have ignored buying albums from for years is Grand Funk Railroad. I don't know why. Even Queen Bee is an awesome, bong rattling (Thanks for that one Homer!), bass driven, masterpiece of awesomenss. It's a love song that I totally get, because I love my little queen bee too.
When I read the name Black Sabbath I think Iommi, Ozzy, Geezer and Ward. This is not Black Sabbath, it's Heaven and Hell, Iommi, Dio, Geezer and whoever is drumming instead of Ward (Vinnie Appice in this case). This is an awesomely wicked song from half of the guys from Black Sabbath and the killer vocalist from Rainbow.
I'm not sure about how Don Felder got two tracks on here as well. The second one, All Of You, is no better than the first, and is Smooth Jazz sounding enough to maybe say it's in fact worse. I do like the bass work, but sadly that's what causes most of the icky feel to the song.
Trust, is a French band I know best for having Nicko Mcbrain of Iron Maiden as a drummer at one point. This song didn't make me want to learn or discover anymore about them. In fact this song sounds a bit like a leftover from Maiden's first two studio albums.
Stevie Nicks Blue Lamp finishes the album. It's a bit slow, a tad drawn out, and little too soft for me. Which leaves me wondering why I kind of like this track with it's goat-like warbling vocals and simple sound. The simple answer is I like female vocalists when they rock it out, even if this song doesn't really rock out.
The Heavy Metal album on a whole is a good listening. It can easily be played through, with minor soft music annoyances. It harkens back to a simpler time, when music was confusing, and people still weren't sure what Metal really was. After all only three or four of the bands on the soundtrack are in fact actually related to metal, if not considered Metal.
7/10 - content
7/10 - production
8/10 - personal bias
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