Gama Bomb : Speed Between the Lines on red vinyl

This recently popped up on my Discogs alert email and I managed to buy a brand new unopened copy from a seller in my country. 

I'm very pleased to have it as I already have a clear/splatter copy of the recent Sea Savage and I hope that in time I can score a copy of Untouchable Glory too (which may be my favourite of their full-length albums). 

It's apparently one of 250, it was plastic-wrapped, which I slit to open the gatefold and get at the record. It's such a pleasure to put a virgin record on the turntable and hear nothing but the needle drop. This is a heavy chunk of vinyl too and the sound is amazing. 

A real record like this is a much more special thing to have than a CD and certainly more so than the digital recording (however clean that sounds). It feels so good to be able to buy new and newish records on this format. I hope this isn't a passing fad and that more bands do it. 

If you love their sound (and what's not to love?) then you get 35 minutes of it. They're nothing if not consistent. There are some stand-out songs with quality lyrics; 666teen is my favourite. 

Metal Warriors (1983) and Paradox - Product of Imagination (1987)

A couple of recent additions to the vinyl collection and some observations. 

The first is another of the Ebony compilations which I'm actively collecting. Metal Warriors is EBON 11 (1983), the fourth of their compilations (as stated on the cover). Once again it has around a dozen tracks of varying style but based around the NWOBHM sound that Ebony liked. It has the trademark Ebony studio timbre -  not ridiculously trebley this time but there's something about the sound, particularly the vocals, that you'd recognise anywhere. (I think it may be Daryl Johnston's natural reverb chamber which he was very proud of.)

It has the feel of a bunch of bands getting their first break which is an appealing thing to me. Some of the bands did go on to bigger things, in particular Shy who appear on side one track one.  I have to say that this is probably the Ebony compilation that I have enjoyed the most on first listen, there are some really good tracks. 

I think this album is most notable for its excellent artwork - the best artwork of all of these compilations I think - I mean look at this... look at it!

A shout out to Garry Sharpe (the signature on the artwork appears to say GAZ). I don't know whether he's been responsible for more album covers - I would assume so judging by the quality of this one. I'd love to know more about his career.

According to Discogs, it was re-released on CD in 2002. I don't know whether it was remastered at all. My record plays really well though and I have a really good quality rip from it. 

Bought at the same time (because one UK seller happened to have two albums from my wantlist at the right quality and price) is Product of Imagination by Paradox (1987). They're not a band I was familiar with, although I may at one time have seen this cover while browsing the secondhand traders in Norwich. They're a German thrash metal band that remind me of Megadeth. It's a good listen, I feel that it will grow on me. 

Again the cover artwork is notable. I didn't notice it straight away but the signature is very familiar: 

- that's Joe Petagno, famous for the Motörhead covers among others, and some science fiction book covers. I really don't know what this cover shows. You can see some kind of demon face in there surrounded by horns / claws. There's a figure down in the corner looking very unconcerned, a landscape, maybe a city in the distance, and some celestial objects above. 

Two great records and two awesome covers. The kind that were intended to be viewed on a 12" x 12" record cover and look best that way.

Metal Fatigue, Ebony Records' first compilation

I've just added this to my Ebony collection and I'm really chuffed with it. Its number is EBON1 which I assume means that it's the first of such compilations to issue forth from Darryl Johnson's stable.

First impressions are that the sound is remarkably good. The guitars sound very real and present, it's not the tinny distant sound heard on many Ebony releases. I'd love to know the technical reason for that.

It's a compilation of up-and-coming (at the time) bands. There's little to be found on many of the bands here, but one track is by Savage, who made some commercial full-length releases on the same label and then others.

As with the many compilations of this type, some of the songs sound amateurish, some much more professional and some of the songwriting is surprisingly good. It's a delightful listen throughout.

I really enjoyed my first listen of this record, it's a rewarding listen if you like NWOBHM / classic / 80s metal.

MetalHammer free flexi-disc, Mammoth / Slave Raider

An expedition into my attic failed to retrieve what I went looking for, but I did find a stack of not-very-interesting-looking singles and out of curiosity brought them down.

Among them were a couple of gems, a metalhammer 4-track EP and this flexidisc!

Details are: Jive, free with Metal Hammer, 33.3rpm, not to be sold separately, Mammoth: Fatman / Bad Times / Slave Raider: Take the World By Storm, LYN19855, Made in Britain by Lyntone.

Will it play?? It has a couple of little knocks, let's give it a clean and find out....

[update] played beautifully, no skips just a couple of little pops that can be filtered out electronically. The sound is surprisingly good considering it's a thin cheap material. Disappointingly the Mammoth track (which is really good) is half of one song, which fades out and then half of another song. The Slave Raider track isn't so interesting but it is the whole song.

Death Row, second album from Touched

The latest addition to the family that is my Ebony Records collection is the second album from Touched, Death Row.

There's something really satisfying about buying a vinyl record that contains music that's not available via the streaming services (correct me if I'm wrong. I've found a couple of downloads online from other fans but I don't think they're great rips.) I would have bought this and many more discs at the time if the paper round money had stretched further.

I'd love to go back and tell my younger self "Don't worry - in the future the Internet will make it easy to find and buy decent copies of these albums, you'll have a bit more money to buy them and you'll have better equipment to play them. But there won't be much need; the vast majority of music will be available on demand via the Internet at a much better quality than you're getting from those crackly discs and that cheap stereo." "What's an Internet?"  "Possibly the most amazing thing that happens in the history of mankind. But you know how you think it's weird that ancient Egyptians worshipped cats...?"

I've got a rip that I'm pretty happy with and I'm very happy with the music. After the first couple of listens I feel that the music is a little more serious here than on the first album. Still boppy in places (moving on) and has the obligatory power ballad (When I Call Your Name) but goes to some harder and heavier places (title track). There's definitely a touch of Motley Crue going on. The guys are tight musically; John Hull does great work on all guitars and I like Ronnie's voice.

Rather confusingly, the track 'Back Alley Vices' appears on this album, which is the title of the debut album.

I've written before about the quality of the sound of the recordings from this studio which I don't really mind. It makes me smile, and it's the music that matters. This one definitely sounds better than the band's first album (I notice the words "digitally mastered" on the cover) but still isn't a very clear dynamic sound.

Grim Reaper, See you in Hell and the Ebony label

I've just welcomed this little beauty into the family.

I'm collecting Ebony LPs now. I have a few in the collection, bought at the time (mid-late 80s) because of the great music; Touched, Samurai among others, but strangely not Grim Reaper, possibly (I know now) the best act to come out of the Ebony studio. (Don't judge too harshly, these were pre-internet days - we relied on magazines, a weekly rock show and word of mouth. Plus you often had to buy a whole album without any way of sampling any of it on demand. It was easy to miss great stuff.)

With so much of that output currently not available to buy or for streaming, it's a reasonable excuse to fill the gaps in the vinyl collection now.

Why Ebony? Back then, on cheap stereos and without the benefit of an audiophile's ear, it was obvious that the sound on these particular LPs sucks, but what they lacked in polished sound they made up for with top-quality A&R.

They had an ear for a really good band and great songs, and even on the Rock meets Metal compilation albums (bands payed for a day's studio time in return for being cut into a record) there are some real gems.

So here's to Darryl Johnston. Being able to discover (and afford) the music was difficult at the time, but better late than never!

Scorpions - Tokyo Tapes

I've come to this album in my project to rip some of my old vinyl*. It's bringing me so much joy all over again and so I have to write a few words about why it's such a special record.

It marks a milestone in Scorpions' extremely long (and continuing) career. (This is why I'm trying to avoid 'The') At the point that these concerts were recorded, Uli Roth had officially left the band but agreed to play this tour. His replacement as lead guitarist was the more metallic Matthias Jabs who brought a new sound and new style to the band.

They continued to develop their style and popularity, the high point of their powers for me being a few albums later; Blackout and Love at First Sting.

But here we have a collection of the best 'Roth period' Scorpions songs played for the last time by that line-up.

I'm not a huge fan of live albums. Metal in particular doesn't lend itself well to being performed live. Don't get me wrong, seeing a band perform can be awesome but there's a difference between the experience of a live concert and listening at home to a live recording. It's magical to watch people you admire on a stage in front of you performing songs that you know and love. But take everything away from that except the recorded sound and what's left usually sucks compared to the studio recordings of the songs.

I'm sure some people are thinking 'what about xxx, it's a classic album'. It's true that sometimes the magic just happens and you end up with a performance that's really special. (Bear in mind also that a live album may have been overdubbed in the studio later.) But that's the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise we'd all be listening to live albums all the time and bands would only occasionally put out a studio album.

This is one of the exceptions. There are songs here that I'll play in preference to the studio counterpart.

The fact that it's a huge 12" square item makes it all the more special. The front cover is a great shot that really sums up the contents. The big piece of artwork that comes with each album is something I really miss. In this case it doesn't stop there, the gatefold sleeve contains more images from the tour, including this one that I love. Notice the boots (which I'm sure looked really trendy in 1978) - Klaus is wearing monstrous platforms but is still only shoulder-high to the others. (No disrespect Klaus, I'm in awe of every note you've sung.)

** Scorpions are on tour right now

* Who'd have thought that I'd be able to buy a stylus for my 30-year-old Pioneer turntable, and through the Cambridge Audio amp I have now, these records have never sounded so good to me. If it wasn't for the very annoying pops and crackles and the fact that they inevitably degrade slightly every time they're played I'd choose to play the vinyl rather than the digital version.