This is a thrash song, see? Yes, the main riff is in a major key but can you really call it happy? Given the subject matter, it instead sounds ironic, like the triumphant martial pattern of the army falling at the battle of Waterloo.
Listen to how the sections are clearly segmented, the riff does this, the bridge that, the chorus is shouty. Just one song before, Helloween were starting to break down these chunks of song into smaller orchestral configurations. But this song is grim and linear. Lots of galloping guitar triplets. Mr. Kai Hansen is getting this sort of song out of his system as it's one of the very last straightforward bangers on record. Markus Grosskopf (bighead? That's the extent of my German) can't resist throwing in more melodic bass licks around the staccato rhythm guitar figures but that's pretty much it as far as flavour for this song. The three-part solo is remarkably uninteresting, mainly due to the weak switch-up in the rhythm pattern between part two and three. Helloween will do so much better at this sort of thing. Very soon.
Had this been the direction this band pursued, Helloween would have been remembered by obscurantist enthusiasts as an interesting second-tier speed metal band that contributed a variation to a form that, by 1987 would be considered charmingly outmoded while the death metal bands and the technothrash bands upped the ante. Like Pyracanda, perhaps.
The lyric is interesting for a few reasons.
Blackened sky a final flash
Death is in the air
Warriors without a face
Destruction everywhere
Silent
falls the hammer
Noone hears the cries
No escaping from this hell
Your prayers won't be heard...so die
Brainless cruel commanders
Sending death and pain
Soldiers only robots
Fight for their life in vain
Die, now! die, warrior!
Somewhere in the shelter sit the men
Who hold your fate in hands
Playing chess and you're the loser
You're a small pawn in their game
Somewhere in the shelter sit the men
And they don't realise
A war without survivors is a fight
That's never won So die!
Barren land desolate waste
Destruction is complete
Survivors creeping thru the ruins
Decaying flesh and meat
Somewhere in a shelter
Some pigs are still alive
And still they play the game
They don't give a damn
This
is a very stereotypical view of war by teenagers and that's why the
song still is resonant for me. It's not a politically informed
thesis, it is instead a sideways look into a common wound. How much
do you know about war? Do you understand the
geopolitical confluence of events that led to the second World War?
Why are some wars called 'humane' while others are considered unjust
in the eyes of history? Do you understand the functionality of war?
How supply lines work, what trench warfare is? Well, Helloween did
not. They had an open heart and open hearts are also open sores. The
colour of the lyric is existential, as expressed by someone you had
no first-hand experience with the philosophical movement. War is seen
as senseless and alienating. The motives of it are misunderstood;
Powerful men playing a sadistic game. Mom and Dad are engaging in
tactics that little Helm and little Helloween are ill-equipped to
understand. Again, the dark beauty of oblivion turns the teenager
towards a morbid fascination. "Decaying flesh and meat... they
don't give a damn... SO DIE".
It could be said that
much of Heavy Metal's fascination can be traced back to these two
words. Wielding death as a weapon. Darkness descends.
Understanding why Heavy Metal of
darkness is a dead-end requires the understanding of what wielding
death entails. The final command is self-destruction. Outward
devastation, internal desolation. Letting light in is as much a
choice as continuing to exist can be said to be a choice.
Helloween
are dabbling with death, it's fascinating. Song by song they're
shedding skin. Even by the next song to this, the light will begin
shining through the mists of oblivion. Are there better weapons to
wield than the cruel scythe of death? Helloween will make their case.
But for young Helm, and for young Helloween, up to now this record
has had to say this to us: Drugs are bad. Society misunderstands me.
My parents quarrel. Nobody gives a damn about me so I'll teach them
all by dying tragically!
Now, pay attention to Murderer. From the
intro, they're trying to do something outside the thrash paradigm.
One guitar starts hacking away at a palm muted, E. Business as usual
so far, it could be a slightly faster Judas Priest. Then the stereo
guitar enters at a minor third, and then the bass at a fifth, and a
snare fill takes the place of the octave. Go,
Helloween-mini-orchestra, go!
The riff is introduced, an E - D
is placed in the background and we're off to the verse. Tightly
integrated to the movement of the vocal are mini guitar hooks. This
is where power metal starts, really. In density. The main connective
force between US power metal and the Teutonic counterpart is in this
density. In putting thirty Judas Priest hooks into a single song.
There is more considered melodic information in the verse switchup on
'Murderer' than in most individual Heavy Metal songs that came out up
to 1985 in their entirety. Why is this? Were Helloween possessing
some genius that their inspirations, say, Iron Maiden lacked? Of
course not. Mr. Harris could write you his awkard Heavy Metal suite
as well. The difference is not in capacity, it is in quantity.
Helloween, along with a slew of NWOBHM-inspired Heavy Metal bands,
are in a hurry to impress. Every song must be packed. Whereas
America's Jag Panzer would go to a length even further and throw
contrasting parts that do not seem to cohere at all in a sequence and
hope their sci-fi power metal would stand on its whole merit at the
end, Helloween are very concerned with both density and flow.
Starlight showed this on the solo section, but Murderer goes at it
throughout.
(As an aside, this density is why little Helm had a difficult time going from his power metal introduction to appreciating 'classic' Heavy Metal from the originators. Songs too slow. Too few parts. Not enough speed! Took a good decade and a very roundabout journey to see the brilliance of using less to achieve less)
Thematically, the lyrics to this song are
kind of ridiculous on the surface level. They come to me often
because I sang it to death as a teenager. The initial verse/bridge/chorus in particular
He
said get out of here
Nobody
wants you here
You
smashed his head
And
the man died
And
there's a murmur going 'round
For
the appearing crowd
Searching
for motives
and
reasons why
Now take a look at yourself and you'll see
What
you are in the eyes of the world
You
didn't want it but now he is dead
And
you're on the run from the law
Murderer - in every crowd
Murderer
- to the whole world
Murderer
- you're on the run
Murderer
- you'll have to kill AGAIN
Let's look at the subtext here
however. The first strong theme is alienation. The reason for the
murder is not because the protagonist wanted to steal something or
even because they were sadistic as in a death metal song. The reason
is because the protagonist, before he even became a murderer, was
undesirable to society. They wanted him out, he lashed out and it's a
downward spiral from there.
People try to understand why this
happened and blame the protagonist for being out of control. "And
like an animal which escaped from the cage, they're hunting off of
their holy land" they go on. There is a strong christian
morality substrand to this whole thing, especially with how sin leads
to sin leads to sin. The protagonist will have to kill again, it's
the only way to survive now that he's done it once. In effect, he is
inhuman. Yet, the shocking power of this 'you'll have to kill again'
is ambiguous in tone in the song itself. Power metal is about
conveying the sense of will of the protagonist. This is the invention
of Helloween more than anyone elses, this is their contribution. I am
not sure they meant it to be so (we will discuss this on the next
song, "Warrior" and finally on "Victim of Fate"
to have a clearer picture) but this dreadful subject matter is
elevated through the power of the song to the point where I did as a
restless child - and still do as a well-manned, thoroughly docile and
harmless adult - a surge of dark power at the end of that chorus. "So
be it, then!" goes little Helm "a murderer by accident, a
murderer by intent!". Stepping outside of Christian morality
only to get air in one's lungs means one is a Christian pretending
not to be one. As a result, they'd be wracked by guilt. One can only imagine what life would be
in the shadow of the horns by pretending to be in-human. No gray
zones, no middle grounds. If you've taken a life, you're a
monster. Suddenly, the flirtation with Carpenterish campy horror movies makes a bit more sense, as they too, were completely Christian. The killer in Halloween is, we are told, directly to the camera by the psychiatrist in the film, beyond salvation, completely inhuman. A monster. Words no real physician of any kind would endorse.
So, I think mr. Kai Hansen was taking some air
with songs like this, as he's definitely returned to the light
triumphantly with further offerings. But that doesn't mean this music
is incincere. In fact isn't it more sincere, this vague storytelling
of a man's downward spiral as means of roleplay, than pretending to
be, for example, a serious 100% goat-worshipping, blood-drinking,
nun-defiling satanist when you're not?
Music doesn't
need to be real. If art is anything, it is the opposite of real.
Music doesn't need to be ideology to be imposing. There needs to be a
passionate driving force behind what is expressed, and there needs to
be ethos in the execution, certainly. But the text can be as little
as 'Murderer' has to offer and still resonate. People do not really
think in nuanced terms. They struggle to keep up with their own
thoughts, and they put them in order in text (likeso) and with
constant reviews until a higher structure seems, for a second, to
crystallize. This is how philosophy is written. Philosophy is not
written in art, in song, there is no such desire, I am certain of
this. A lot of bands could stand to augment their art a lot be being
stupider about it, by having less clever things to say,
meta-conceptually, about their own art. A lot of art needs a lot less
definition to be powerful.
Helloween didn't need anyone
in 2012 to tell them any of this, they were in a big hurry to lay
down these tracks. I am sure the lyrics to this song didn't take more
than ten minutes to put down. I killed a man. I have to kill again.
My rest comes in my own death. I've had this thought when I was
twelve, as most of you kind readers did also. Why didn't you write a
Heavy Metal song about it and yet Helloween did? This is a question
that doesn't request an answer, a rhetoric device, if you will. What
it insinuates is that the business of doing and the business of
explaining are often divorced, and for good reason. There's nothing
more crippling than the business of explaining when you should be in
the business of doing. This is why I haven't posted here in a while,
because I've had to make a whole lot, very fast.
Helloween
were on the fast track too. The Helloween EP landing in '85, the full
LP in '86, along with Judas. A good corpus of work, very fast, very
dumb, yet reaching with mad ambition as far as composition goes. Soon
we'll talk about the interesting brother track to Murderer, called,
well... Warrior. From gazing inwards (Murderer) to gazing outwards
(Warrior) and ultimately to gazing upwards (Victim of Fate). Don't
hold your breath, gentle reader. God is far away.
As I reflect on it all, I
realize more and more that I initially came to Heavy Metal for light,
not darkness. My best friend Nick would describe to me his early
metal experiences and they were not like my own. Whereas he would
listen to 'Fight Fire With Fire' and feel like setting his dad's
pickup truck on fire for sweet revenge, I never felt like that exactly.
Heavy Metal felt mystical, instead. Like a portal to somewhere not
exactly inwards... more like turning oneself outside out. More like
retreating, back turned, towards the exit. Does it become an
entrance, then?
Sure, the primal forces of
this bludgeoning sort of music had some effect on me (it takes a
certain kind of masochist to put their ear to so many decibels, but
that's a different piece I always mean to write) and yes, I have
headbanged alone in my room as a youth as much as anyone – or more?
I remember denting my head against a heating body by mistake. Metal
took its place, right? Anyway, it always felt like it was leading to
something, even as early as twelve years old, I was looking for
something more than a sore neck in all of this. This explains why I
moved quickly from what turned out to be thrash to power metal at
that age. I didn't know of course what these things were yet, but
after picking up on Helloween and that whole Teutonic sound, I didn't
look back into the darkness for at least three or four years.
Well... the Starlight's dim, frankly. A strange song for
twelve year old Helm. Now I understand where it comes from much more.
There's an intro before the song proper, it's a sound collage and we
must spend a moment with each sound that comes in because, let me
tell you, some of these signifiers here really left child Helm
baffled.
The intro starts with someone snoring. They they
wake up and – of course have their morning beer. Then a song comes
on, on the tv, on the radio? Not clear. The song clearly says 'Happy
happy Halloween', even at twelve I caught as much. Then... silver
sheppard? That doesn't make sense. Silver shamrock, it turns out.
Years later, with the benefit of our most-powerful Gnostic demiurge
in play (that is Google) I found out that this song comes from a
peculiar source:
Halloween 3? Pulpy slasher
films? In my Power Metal of Light? Oh shit. The blood-curdling scream
by Mr. Kai Hansen is not very power metal at all, is it? The
implication is that the freshly woken up person in the intro has
become a victim to molten steel, of course. Listen to Death growl
like the primordial entity of terror that he is while his skeleton
crew revs up the mixed metaphore. Mean and sloppy, muddy with reverb
and filth Death is. And what's this riff now? Well, it's thrash, of
course. Or 'speed metal', hilariously. Do you remember that
Helloween debuted in the Noise compilation named “Death metal”
just few months earlier than when the Helloween E.P. came out?
I
wouldn't know it at twelve but what I was introduced to by friends
and metal press as 'Germanic power metal' didn't come directly from
Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. It wasn't a self-conscious invention by
Helloween to start a new genre. Not yet. It's very clear here they
were listening to Bay Area bands as much as the more classy European
bands that usually get connected directly as power metal
inspirations. But at twelve these weren't concerns, I could hardly
tell how this enormous racket was produced, much less have an opinion
on discerning thrash and speed and power metal.
The equal measures of pomp
and filth here can be sampled clearly in the intro switch-up from
glam rock chords while Mr Death here goes 'whoo hoo! Alright!' after
the scream and the absurd polka tempo change that introduces the
shape of the verses. It's so clear to me now that just like I, in the
late '90s, were listening to two very different Heavy Metal bands at
once and mixing their aesthetics up and thinking 'this is all Heavy
Metal', Helloween were a product of a similar aesthetic mix of what
was for a pre-fall of the Soviet Union, a largely foreign music. This
is important. You cannot understand how Heavy Metal was shaped in
countries under Soviet influence if you're judging from an American
or British standard. Most of us, even people older than me, they
didn't get the full story. They didn't follow Heavy Metal from its
birth in the seventies through its resurgence in the eighties, the
progression wasn't clear. They listened to whatever they got their
hands on and if it was distorted, then it was good. If it was from
'the Western world', it was good. If it had anything to do with
Robocop and Conan, it was good. I can imagine, now, Kai Hansen and
co. at age sixteen, madly hunting for records from the USA and being
just as happy with returning home with a Dokken record if a Metallica
vinyl could not be found. Or, more to the point, with a Van Der Graaf
Generator record. It's got distortion and it's not disco, it must be
worthwhile, right?
It's a testament to the
strength of this record (as we will see further on) that the band is
more than an aesthetically muddy mix of “Heavy Metal as we see it
in Hamburg, 1984”. It seems Helloween very, very quickly became
more than the sum of their parts. But not on “Starlight”.
You're
hangin' around and got nothin' to do You
wanna get out some pills in front of you You
fly on invisible wings Be
careful my friend for too many can kill You
say that the meaning of life's in those pills You
forget all earthly things
You
swallow your pill you wanna feel free A
trip to a world made of games You
do it again yet it's never the same But
a junkie's not something to be Starlight
fallin' in deep through your eyes Starlight
shinnin' down for your soul to rise Now
there's a needle lying in front of you I'm
frightened of those things But
I know what you'll do You
need it to escape from the night You
ride on through heaven you don't feel no pain You
ride on and ride on again and again On
the needle that brings you the light You
feel the mind-blowin' stuff Flow
through your veins You
take off and fly to the sun But
when you get too near your wings will be burnt You'll
die in the flames and you'll fall
Thematically this is a
“Winners Don't Use Drugs” screed. Or is it? We'll talk about the
overarching theme later on, but I have to say that child Helm was
totally on board because I was – and remain for the most part –
phobic about drug use in general and and recreational drug taking in
particular. Preach it, Helloween. I don't need those pills to find
the meaning of life. I just need the metal. Right? Right?
Anyway, the nascent beauty
of Helloween can be noticed in the bridge (“You swallow your pill
and you wanna feel free...”). That's the European influence coming
in, as Metallica wouldn't do that, and if the did in order to emulate
their NWOBHM gods, they would chop it up into smaller, more staccato
phrases and repeat it endlessly to show us how smart their little
off-kilter melody is. Like a retarded Mercyful Fate, perhaps. Well,
like a retarded Mercyful Fate with a Cliff Burton desperately trying
to re-orchestrate the mess, let's say. Instead, Helloween's sense of
melody overflows. They've got so much they tack it on to ends of
prases everywhere. They try to play thrash here and can't keep it
straight, their inner Scorpion longs to get out and play us a rock
symphony. Wherever one guitarist plays palm muted single string
backup, the harmony guitarist (usually Mr. Weikath) would elaborate
(and NOT improvise) these long flowing melodies on top. Sometimes
connecting with the vocal melody, sometimes countering it. Often,
these melodies would be, ghasp! Shock! Quelel Horreur! Major in key.
Hetfield is frowning and giving you the finger.
This is not the best song
in this record, by far (it's not the worst either) but what can still
be gleaned is that there's a new statement about Heavy Metal here.
Perhaps not fully formed, but something's going on. The extensive
solo section that doesn't just lick and lick lazily over one
established past riff but instead builds “new parts as needed” to
extend towards a direction is testament. Sure, even in the '70s some
great bands would build these elaborate solo sections (Wishbone Ash
comes to mind) but it wasn't all the time, and it certainly was a point into itself. Here Helloween can barely contain
themselves, there's not a single song in this record that doesn't,
when given an opportunity to solo, become an elaborate mock-orchestra
suit for a moment. Even the punky opener. The light is getting
brighter. Mr. Hansen and Mr. Weikath arrogantly trade solos, they
want me to know whom is playing which, as my soul is washed by their
inspiration's light. Seriously, in the booklet it clearly spells what
personnel is performing what lead section. And after all these years,
I can tell just by listening to their particular tones and
inflections which is which.
Starlight ends quickly because
Helloween didn't yet know how to write an epic, or know that they
could if they tried. But put it next to openers by other metal bands
of the time (especially thrash metal bands, don't forget this is
1985, most of what was vital in thrash metal had already occurred)
and see how there's a different focus to that stuff. We'll talk about
this more, as there truly is only one thematic point to the whole
album, repeated again and again. And that point is integral to this
record's enduring potency.
For those not about to scroll, I present to you again:
One
of the stupidest Heavy Metal covers that I've ever seen. Really. But
it'd take me a long while to understand why it's stupid. It's worth
mentioning that I never thought this cover was cool, not even as a 12
year old. It looked too weird and plastic to be scary. The giant
destroying the wall looked to me as if he were wearing a mask, that
this wasn't his real face. Why else would he have human hands?
I'm
an artist now, I certainly wasn't at twelve, but there's things even
a twelve year old sees from an aesthetic standpoint. They just take
them at face value instead of criticizing them. It's supposed
to look weird.
For example, the broken parts of the bulwark that are flying about
look like they're made from tinfoil or something. There's just too
much highlight and liquidity to the forms, now I realize. I do like
(and I liked as a child as well) the bits of storytelling to this
cover. There's footsteps in the sand leading up to the scene, so this
giant has traveled an epic journey to come smash these walls. And I
do think the person flying off at top is kinetically well-done, I do
believe he's screaming for his life wondering why his God wouldn't
help him. Wait.
So...
yes. As I understand it, this cover, along with the name of the
record are a reference (and an intro to “Ride the Sky”) to the
biblical tale of the Israelites marching, their trumpets bringing
down the walls and all that. I had no knowledge of this story when I
got this record, and for some years after, actually. I read the Bible
mostly for polemic reasons as a very angry fifteen year old or so.
That aspect of this cover, now known to me, only serves to make this
cover look even more silly. Helloween are telling us that this
monster (which even at twelve I realized from my brother's Iron
Maiden covers was an Eddie rip-off) is an agent of God of some sort?
Well that's... nice. 12 year old Helm had no idea what white metal
was at that point and just how many power metal bands (especially
from the U.S). had a crypto-biblical message in their lyrics. Were
Helloween a Christian band? Not very much, at this point. They would
turn to even more positive Christian-lite apologetic sloganeering
with age, and especially with their drastic lineup shifts. The jump
from this, their debut to their 'Keeper of the Seven Keys' follow-up
is very dramatic, though. This record's got a lot of bite to it, even
the cover is violent, at least.
Other
things my 12 year old self noted and I still find funny about this
cover: the muppetface spearman running towards us in the bottom right
corner. The one chance for the cover artist to inject some human
pathos into the situation and it turns out they can't draw faces to
save their life. This must have been even worse in the original LP
size. The way the artist gave up drawing proper masonry on the far
wall, instead sticking to the Chris Achilleo patented solution of
'stick a sporadic brick texture in there and they'll buy it'. Less
bad but still kind of funny is the airbrush sunset in the horizon.
This technique, now very out of fashion is therefore very obviously
dated. Some people have a soft spot of airbrushed Heavy Metal covers.
I don't enjoy the muddy result even when I do enjoy the naive
motifs.
Other things
I liked and continue to like about this cover: There's a real sense
of impact to the wall punch, I'll give the artist that. Good parallel
action with closer people shocked at the event and further people
running for cover. I guess that spear that the main defender is
holding up against the monster is very sharply rendered and sticks
out even at the tiny CD cover resolution, which is... good? The logo
is ace. I love prespective logos and even from early on when I toyed
with starting a band, a top priority was to draw its logo-to-be in
various prespectives. Prespective rocks! More a problem with the
logo is that the symmetry is off. The pumpkin is not in direct
middle. And it's maddening because 'Hell' and 'Ween' are the same
number of letters. The artist just had to make the two L's take a bit
more space each and it'd been... well, something a twelve year old
would have dissected less endlessly.
As
a Greek I wasn't very aware of what Halloween was, so the pumpkin
head in the logo (and other iconography by this band) was more a
Helloween thing than a Halloween thing, if you get my meaning. That
goes double for the - awful - pun in the name. It's like Halloween
you say but it's hellish? It's like, for real, man? Terrible idea for
a name, I'm sure the band, later in their success, agrees. I had no
idea at twelve it was even a pun. Look, I get that Heavy Metal names
have to be inversions. Iron Maiden. Black Sabbath. Judas Priest. I
get it. But putting the Hell in Halloween is just kind of stupid and
obvious. It's saved for me because Helloween the band are infinitely
more important than Halloween the dressing-up american holiday ever
came to be. To carry this point further, "Walls of Jericho"
is far more important to me than the Walls of Jericho themselves are.
In a more depressing note, that monster on the cover is probably more
important to me than his daddy, Eddie is.
As to those strange
words on the cover. What is a Mini-LP? I sure like how it's
Extra-long playing though! I have this one CD to listen to for
a year, good that's there's a lot of sounds on it! I didn't even know
that this CD includes the 'Helloween E.P', however. And the cover
doesn't mention it either. When I redownloaded a better sounding rip
of this than I had made on WMA on my very first personal computer, I
was shocked to find that the record starts with "Walls of
Jericho", not "Starlight" as I had been used to for a
decade and a half. For me that just isn't right, so we're going to
talk about the Helloween E.P. both as a part and at odds with the
rest of this material, starting with the next post.
Does
anybody really need 71:30 of Helloween all in one go? There's record
label pressure for you. It would plague Helloween and Gamma Ray for a
long time, Noise wanting them to make their next 70 minute opus. As a
child I would never put on a record and listen to just half of it, so
this was an endeavor to sit through. I still don't like to
turn songs off,
but I have grown a lot more lenient with skipping tracks altogether.
That's a practice that dates as far back as my infatuation with this
record because let's face it... there's a couple of bad tracks on
here. But we'll get to them.
Things I realized about this
cover later in life are obvious, I guess. Heavy Metal covers like to
have monsters and violence on them, so Helloween half-heartedly
followed suit. The monster is an aforementioned Eddie rip-off,
because all Heavy Metal bands owe it to their fans to have a mascot
to make merchandise of. Little did young Helloween know that their
real mascot potential was in silly pumpkin-head comedic caricatures
and not in Eddie-son here. Kai Hansen would keep this monster when he
would leave Helloween to go start Gamma Ray, for good or worse. I
also learned that '80s cover artists like to airbrush and they
especially like to do highlights with white airbrush, which looks
awful and unnatural. In the same vein I also learned that most of
these covers must have been done in a real hurry and without
much reference. The latter perhaps is a good thing to make this
art individual-looking, the former never is for any art,
ever.
Edda and Uwe Karczewski are credited in the
booklet for this creation. The idea for the cover goes to guitarist
M. Weikath. We are all much obliged.
Helloween's "Walls
of Jericho" is a very important Heavy Metal record for many
reasons. For one, it arguably is the starting point of the modern
definition of power metal. There have been many 'power metals' since
the early eighties and there has been even more confusion as to what
the genre stands for, especially in contrast to what is now called
the 'traditional heavy metal' genre. Helloween, though I'm sure they
didn't expect to, helped clear the waters with the release of their
debut but even more so with their follow up albums "Keeper of
the Seven Keys", part one and two.
But we'll get to
all of that. "Walls of Jericho" is important for metal, but
it's really important to me, personally. What I'm going to do in
covering this very important item, then, is going to be different.
Well, it's not like Poetry of Subculture has so far had a stable
approach to discussing records, but in my head I'm deviating even
further from my usual deviance here.
You see, this was
in a strange way my first real Heavy Metal record. Before it I had
only listened to Metallica. When I mean only, I am being very
literal. I got into Heavy Metal at age 11 or so by having my father
buy me "Master of Puppets". We were in a record shop,
shopping for him and my older brother and he urged me to pick
something up for myself as well, and I was drawn to the inexplicable
malice of the combo of band & record name and that cover.
I
didn't even own a CD deck, I just had this little tape player. My
brother dubbed the cd on tape and kept the original (like the pack
rat he was and still is) and man, I lived on that tape. I learned
English to understand that tape (also, for adventure games). The
allure of it is difficult to define because it is difficult to
access; I no longer feel as I did for "Master of Puppets".
You can see that in that it's not even in my Master List of personal
HM favorites. But "Walls of Jericho" is.
For the
next year and a half or so I managed to accumulate the full Metallica
discography, all on tape, through my brother's English teacher. She
had been very kind to give me these tapes, which I got in no
particular order and rather slowly. I do not know if it was wisdom or
just boredom that made her tickle out the dosage on Metallica, but it
took close to a full year to get all the stuff from her. If I close
my eyes I can still remember her handwritten song lists on the back
of the tape. It's due to her that I still can't immediately
recognize "Metal Militia" readily, as it didn't fit on the
"Kill 'Em All" tape. It's her fault Dyer's Eve ends just
after the first verse for similar reasons. Even today the rest of
that song sounds so off to me. Inno – cence! Torn from me
with – out a shelteeerr! So off-key and annoying.
"Load"
had just come out if you'd like to date this process. It should tell
you a lot that I couldn't understand any difference, stylistically,
between "Load" and "Master of Puppets". I
remember very clearly that I didn't like it as much, but I couldn't
tell you why. Boy, I can tell you now, but let's not.
For
almost my first two years into metal, I wasn't really listening to
metal (and certainly I had no concept of the full range of Heavy
Metal out there), I was listening to Metallica. But I did have a
taste of adventure and lots of alone time, so I decided to
investigate further. I wanted to be a metalhead. I started reading
Metal Hammer GR - a magazine of some repute then, mandatory reading
for nascent metalheads. Not so much now, I started imagining myself
with long hair, you know. I think this is a very common metalhead
experience. It's been sixteen years. I turned 28 a few days ago. My
hair is real fuckin' long.
My older brother had a friend who
was selling "Walls of Jericho" for whatever reason. I think
he was getting out of metal, or at least perhaps he didn't like the
record. Man, I remember at least two older dudes getting out of metal
at around that time. The second guy's story was hilarious. He claimed
to have met the devil in his bedroom one night, hovering over his
Venom and Obituary cds, which he threw out immediately the next
morning. The kicker is that he went and picked them out of the trash
later one because he figured, hey, might as well make some drachmas
reselling them. God won't mind. I remember feeling equally scared and
jealous at this nocturnal meeting with the Daystar. The fear has
dissipated over the years, but the allure burns like a black flame.
I must have read
something on Metal Hammer about how Helloween were a great band and
you know, that's all it took at that point. To help you understand, I
bought the Metal Hammer magazines out of a very meager allowance and
I always felt guilty bringing it home, what with this King Diamond
devilface on the cover and all these photographs inside of clearly
villainous personalities. "Master of Puppets", with its
rather diversionary cover was one thing, the magazines were another.
Later on I would get my dad to buy me new CDs at the record store
every few weeks, but early on I felt the type of guilt associated
with Heavy Metal that I think is imperative to be acquainted with to
understand why this music has such a hold on those that it
enthralls. So I read about much, much more than I listened to
new Heavy Metal records. Do you see how from there there is a line
leading us directly here, me with a blog about Heavy Metal and you
reading about it?
I bought the
record used, for very little money. The person that sold it later on
died of cancer. Unfortunate. I always remember this guy because I
always remember "Walls of Jericho" and how I fell in love
with it, how I learned what Heavy Metal was and furthermore imagined
what it could be through it.
What I'm going to try to do is
discuss every single song on the record from two vantages. One is the
one of the modern Helm, with all his encyclopedic knowledge of metal
music, the one you know from Poetry of Subculture. The other vantage
I will try to summon is of the 12 year old Helm, the one who doesn't
even know there's a difference between bass guitar and electric, the
one who has no idea what 'double bass' is. It's not the only way to
service how I feel about "Walls of Jericho", but it's
really one of the most interesting ones.
I will start
soon and carry on as time allows. Let's grow up together, strong and
proud and very lonely, let's become metalheads all over again.
This is a very typical '70s
Heavy Metal riff, as devised by Sabbath, Zeppelin and perfected by
Priest. Its characteristic is its fluctuating between the seventh,
the root and the third (with a small variation including the fourth).
For those of you that don't speak music theory, these terms are easy
to explain in a different yet more verbose way:
Think of the root as the foundational
stone of the piece of music. It's usually the first note you hear
(though on this song you hear a slide chord from the seventh to the
root but Priest are beautifully gay like that) and the one you hear
the most. It's the note you subconsciously wish for your ears to
return to, it's your safety net and your Ithaca, your dream
destination. Music that deprives you of this safe return is in some
degree cruel. Music that diverts you from this destination but
ultimately arrives there is either toying with you or challenging you
(more on how to tell which later). Either way, it is making you feel
things. Much of established classical music theory revolves around
how to set up a tonal way point first, and
how to return (or, 'resolve') to it in an interesting, yet keeping
with compositional decree, way. Here's the riff broken down to just
the tonal shifts, no embellishments.
The third used here is a sad one, that
is to say, a minor third, characterizing
the scale of the song as a minor scale. Were it to be a single fret
higher in pitch, you'd get a very different impression of this riff.
Kind of gross, right? That's not only
due to the minor-to-major change of this particular riff but the way
any minor riff behaves when literally shifted about like that. I mean
to say that a smarter major interpretation would involve moving the
three-one and four-three a step higher to four-one and five-four, but
let's not too much into that.
The seventh is the last note of the
scale before it repeats an octave higher (therefore, an 'octave'
note, the eighth, is just the root note one
whole repetition of the scale higher). It's a note that makes the
listener long for resolution, for a return to the root. Judas Priest
aren't modern classical, they return to the root evenly most of the
time, but check out how the riff hangs on the fourth instead at the
end of each fourth bar. Judas Priest like the tension of unresolved
fourths, we'll see it again in the chorus. Also a word about the
seventh in this song, it's quite interesting. In the beginning it
sounds like a slide from seventh to root but it's really a hammer-on
from a 'strange' chord to a full root powerchord. What's the strange
chord? It's like a seventh power chord but without the seventh,
instead the root. Guitarists can very easily understand this by
playing a single finger barre chord at the seventh position like
so:
-
-
7
7
7
0
and then hammering in the full
powerchord
------
------
7(h)9-
7(h)9-
7-----
0-----
How is this 'disguised' seventh chord
then different from a proper seventh powerchord? Well, it's somewhere
in-between the journey, it's even more eager to resolve. It's
half-there, the foot's on the shore, so to speak. Judas priest looove
this trick. As do early Deep Purple, in
fact. Think hard, where have you heard this exact voicing before?
Oh.
But that's a diversion, isn't it? Guess
where Judas Priest really got this from:
The moment you stop hearing this and
you hear proper parallel fifth sevenths to roots is the moment NWOBHM
breaks out. Iron Maiden do not do this, it's too wimpy for their
linear riff-terror. Everything must parallel, forever. It's really a
'70s thing. Tool are influenced by Sabbath and Zeppelin, not by Iron
Maiden, you see.
All that said, this is a very simple
riff. In fact, only AC/DC would conceivably
find a way to play this riff with even less 'parts' to it. They'd
probably remove the initial hammer from disguised seventh to root as
they would remove the in between notes from
first to third, cut out the swagger but add groove by involving the
up-beat more. Something like this?
There's also an overall
presence of the fifth note of the scale but not as part of the chord
progression, but inside the chord voicings themselves. The hammer
from seven to one in the beginning also has in there a fifth. The
fifth stabilizes, but it also colors the
sound as very 'metal'. Wherever you hear something that isn't a
single note here, you're listening to parallel fifths (that is,
fifths that are perfect to whatever note they're the dominant of) The
power chord makes this riff metal. Were this to be played in a minor
scale relying on the third more than the fifth, it'd sound something
like this:
Weirdly different, huh? This is more
emotional in a way, perhaps, but it's a grand characteristic of Heavy
Metal music to *not* be played like this. In fact the moment you hear
that sort of harmony in a HM song, you can date it to post 1985 at
least. If you take this a step further, you're listening to ISIS,
really.
The weird thing about this riff to me
is that it's not very impressive on its own. It only starts to move
when the band goes into a groove with it and eventually Rob Halford
comes in with his vocal line on top. The emotion that's missing with
all the parallel fifths in the chords is serviced beautifully with
that violin-esque vocal line. Whereas a modern metal band would try
to do both things with the choppy riffs, Judas Priest knew then how
to not overplay and let their lead instrument tell the tale.
As to the chorus, I expected it to move
to an inverted (that is, an octave down instead of higher in pitch)
fifth as is very customary for this sort of early Heavy Metal, but
instead it's an inverted fourth, the exact pitch the verse riff hangs
on, then. Let's listen to it:
As you see this riff hangs on its own
fourth, that it to the relation of the root, the seventh. Not only is
the listener here anticipating the resolution of this verse riff's
fourth into the somewhat-established but transient tonal, the return
to the verse riff provides true resolution from seventh to root. It's
beautiful and tidy.
The other interesting thing about this
chorus riff is that it omits a lot of steps
in an imaginary chord progression, instead adding in a wobbly tremolo
tease. It's a playful chorus line that a lot of latter metal
guitarists would instead pack with staccato trills and other flash,
something like that perhaps
But that just doesn't move like the
original. That's the sort of arrangement detail that only comes from
a full band rehearsing material and being brave with changes. '70s
Heavy Metal originators were innovators by virtue that there wasn't a
'script' to stick to to begin with. This sort of vitality is inherent
in '70s Priest. No matter how many tight and complex riffs an '80s US
Power metal band would later cram in a song, there's an excitement
here that was lost in that the '80s US Power band already was well
aware of the script that Priest laid down.
From then there's not much guitar to
transcribe. There's a pause with just drums. Then there's open root
power chords, and then the second guitar starts playing a series of
minor third chords in an ascending melody. And then the song erupts.
From there it's a return to the initial
verse riff.
The song structure is the following
A B A B C D A A
Which is generally speaking, a pop song
structure. But there are so many little touches in here that are not
simply embellishments. They are there to perform a function. The only
way to understand that function is to look at the lyric, and where it
ties in to the music.
Verse 1:
They laughed at their gods
And fought them in vain
So he turned his back on them
And left them in pain
Now here come the saints
With their banners held high
Each one of them martyrs
Quite willing to die
Chorus:
Wake the dead, the saints are in Hell
Wake the dead, they've come for the
bell
Verse 2:
Cover your fists
Razor your spears
It's been our possession
For 8,000 years
Fetch the scream eagles
Unleash the wild cats
Set loose the king cobras
And blood sucking bats
Bridge:
We are saints
In hell
We are saints
In hell
We're going down
Into the fire
We're going down
Into the fire
Break Riff:
The streets run with blood from the
mass mutilation
As carnage took toll for the bell
Abattoir, abattoir, mon Dieu quelle
horreur
For a time is was like second hell
Saints in Hell
Verse 3:
The battle is over, the saints are
alive
How can we all thank you, we felt so
despised
Saints in Hell
To understand why this song is so
awesome, we have to come to terms with at least a little of what
mister Halford is telling us here. As usual with many Judas Priest
lyrics, there's a lot of symbolism going on. The song seems to be
about one thing, but it may be conveying a divorced sentiment. On the
surface level this seems like a cryptic biblical tale, where a squad
of saints-to-be (willing to die) descends into hell to recover the
bell. I'm not too into Christian theology so I'm not sure what this
bell's about, but what I get from the song is that it's a relic of
importance for the faithful. So they descend into hell and there is a
great battle. Curiously, it is the streets that run with blood from
the carnage, our streets (as I do not believe hell is paved by the
state) and we are informed it was like 'a second hell'. Hmm. Then,
their objective accomplishes, the saints leave, alive (therefore not
really saints). And the question hangs, how can we thank them, we
felt so despised.
There's a thick layer of irony, I
think, to this song. Self-appointed saints that go on a divine quest.
Much suffering as a result and they leave as they came. We, the
spectators are divorced from their cause, if anything the saints
bring us hell.
What I think this song is really about
is war. It's about a 'holy empire' going on a crusade against
imaginary enemies, resulting in real casualties. It is the war torn
felt despised, struck by the thunder of a
brainless god.
Judas Priest are a smart band.
The verse singing is standard for '70s
Priest. Halford's doing his 'dramatic Opera' soprano, with its
beautiful vibrato and repeated phrasing. This voice is the voice of
power. In the chorus we get a more rock n' roll extravagant phrasing
that is also augmented by a cavernous guitar overdub. '70s Priest
were very into theatrical mixing. Halford says 'the saints are
descending to hell' and a Tipton hits a reverberating dive-bomb to
punctuate the fact. If they were an orchestra, they'd use different
instrument timbres to achieve this result, but as they were a Heavy
Metal band, all they have are guitars and guitar effects.
In the second verse, where Halford
calls for the 'scream eagles', listen to yet more guitar overdubs
doing theater. The 'wild cats' are a pick scrape, the cobras a
salient hiss and the bats a staccato swoop. How many other bands
would go this far to illustrate their lyric? And especially the type
of Heavy Metal lyrics by Halford that many were quick to describe as
juvenile and throwaway?
In the break where Mr.
Halrford informs us that the saints are indeed going down into the
fire we get dramatic delay effects. This 'descend' is commented by
the ascending melody in the guitars. In fact, the final sound effect
before the battle breaks out is what sounds like a missile
being launched (though its origin is probably a reversed cymbal
crash). And then the tempo picks up dramatically. To me it sounds
like superior firepower is in effect, like the battle that is
happening is asymmetrical. Self-appointed
holy men are reigning destruction down on heathens.
The streets run with blood from the
mass mutilation.
Abbatoir, abbatoir mon Dieu quelle
horreur.
Oh the irony.
We come back down from the battle high
with many self-congratulations. The beautiful thing about the ending
of the song, that quivering 'Saints in Hell' that is repeated is
this: Mr. Halford puts to use a considerably difficult vocal
technique, where he both uses timed tremolo (meaning, the 'period' of
the tremolo in his voice is clear eights of the tempo, it's not just
whatever tremolo he could muster) and he also slides from a note to
another and then down again. Ask any trained singer, this is very
difficult to do. He uses this technique to push the ironic message of
the song home (for anyone paying attention, at least). All this
melodrama is to serve self-appointed saviors.
They're patting themselves on the back. We went to hell. We went to
hell. We are Saints. They will love us for saving them from
themselves.
What I want to keep from this whole
discussion is something that I feel is missing from a lot of modern
Heavy Metal, and which I would love to see restored. There is a
dialog between composition and lyric here.
There are meaningful choices being made on every level of this
production that are commenting on what the song is about. There
aren't just riffs and riffs and a solo (actually this song doesn't
even have a solo). This song is very much about a thing, and
everything about it is about this thing. It's impossible to study
this song and not arrive to a thing, perhaps this thing, but
certainly a thing. The thing that this song is about is not the song
itself.
A long of great music has a program,
as they call it. Heavy Metal used to be About Things. Now it's
about Heavy Metal itself. It's about how extreme the music itself it.
It's about how technical the players are. It's about
self-congratulation. It's as if when you listen to modern extreme
metal, you're looking at the self-proclaimed Saints descending to
your level to pummel and disembowel you for your own sake. Do you
like how our loud double-bass is fucking you? Do you like how my
linear myriad of notes is flaying you
alive? Do you enjoy being our little masochist? And then the saints
leave. We felt so despised. It was a solution, for a time.
I want Heavy Metal to tell me a story
that isn't about Heavy Metal itself. I do not love Heavy Metal
because it's Heavy Metal, I love it because it's a powerful avenue
for expression of higher ideals and lower desires. If Heavy Metal is
just talking about itself, it's then merely a different type of hip
hop, boasting about its beats per minute and palm muted trills and
sweep-picked solos. It should be a challenge to modern metal
musicians: if you don't have something of value to say, something you
believe in, then find it. Find a thing. Describe the thing to me.
Tell me why it's important to you. If you can't talk on the level
that Judas Priest are talking - and keep in mind Judas Priest were
and are widely mocked for much of their material's apparent vacancy -
then, mon Dieu, quelle horreur, you're doing it wrong.
Wonderful turnout on the post below. Here's my second run in the interest of science.
1. Starts with sound effects akin to some Carpenter film. Then immediately when the riff comes in, it's Aspid off of their only album 'Extravastation'. I think this is the opening song, named something something in Russian. Excellent techno-thrash, recently re-released. Very worth anyone's time if they're into weird metal. I love their vocals and their guitar sound. Snarly thrash vocals go well with Slavic languages. The left-field augmented scale guitar solos in this fusion-ish guitar tone go over the savagery beautifully. The bassist couples everything the guitarists play like he's in Coroner. Super-tight playing all around, no fat, no dud riffs, good structure. The musicianship here is easily below their full ability. I theorize all Russian metal musicians were effectively slumming it from their proper State-sanctioned classical music gigs, at least up and until the fall of the Soviet Union. The playing here has this air of effortlessness similar to Watchtower on "Control and Resistance".
2. Machinegun riff. Double bass. Bolt Thrower "Promises and LIES." The song's 'Entrenched', off of "Those Once Loyal", their best, and last album. How can a band so old pull off such a strong final record? I don't expect them to top this, I really don't expect them to put out any more records after it, frankly. Some people call this death metal, I don't hear it in there anymore, it's just very linear, very muscular Heavy Metal. The core melodic ideas and riffs could be found in the repertoire of a NWOBHM band, really. It's just the execution that is idiosyncratic (and so often copied!). It's impossible for this music to not induce some physical reaction for this listener, but since my cat is in my lap, in lieu of headbanging, I tapped the double pass patterns on the desk with my fingers. Metal (the polite way).
3. Oh, oh, this is a very distinctive guitar tone! And the riff is... am I listening to Bolt Thrower back to back here? Great slow intro. Is this off of "For Victory"? Hm, the verse riff doesn't sound like Bolt Thrower though. The harmonization is totally their style. And then it ended! I am at a loss if it's not Bolt Thrower.
I checked, it was "For War", off of For Victory. Kind of got lucky there. Good thing for Bolt Thrower than that their style's so distinctive even on their instrumentals.
4. Mayfair. Nobody else has a voice like this. This is off of "Fastest Trip to Cybertown", their last record, and the one I listen to less. This is honestly an indie rock track, something like R.E.M. would write, only with a more active bass line - remnants of progressive metal are difficult to shake off. It's catchy and melancholic, but it lacks that edge that makes Mayfair's first two albums some of the best progressive metal there's ever been. There's many bands that play indie rock like this or better than this, I mean. Nobody's ever made anything like "Behind" as far as I've found. I checked the song name and it's "Waterproof".
5. One of these horrible mid-to-fast party rock n' roll Manowar songs. I might figure out which but there's absolutely nothing here for me. I can list the Manowar songs I adore from memory (Battle Hymns, Mountains, Secret of Steel, March for Revenge, Hail to England, Gayanna, Gloves of Metal, Each Dawn I Die) and if it ain't in there, I am bound to hate it, not just feel indifferent to it. Something about "the Night" is what Adam's going on about on this song, it could be about motorcycles. It's post Kings of Metal, I can tell from the involved guitar solo. But it sucks. "Return of the Warlord", off of Hell on Wheels live, from 1997. I am deleting this. Good drumming at least.
6. Oh, oh, I know this. This'll be easy. Probably Greek. Wait, no. Is this the Burzum instrumental off of 'Det Som Engang Var'? So it is. This one shows mr. Vikerness had a good ear for more traditional types of harmony. It's quite pretty in a way. And thinking it was Greek metal makes some sense because this guitar tone was used by pretty much all the early Greek black metal bands (it's shitty in an endearing way) and because the mid-tempo melancholic feel Burzum's got going here is pretty much Mode A for Varathron, Rotting Christ et al. From here to In The Woods... it's a small leap. And from there to proper Peaceville doom/death it's just another. I like this middle ground between the premier romantic metal genres.
7. Immediately recognizable as Nevermore, off of their 'In Memory' EP. After 'Politics of Ecstasy', easily their best work. Not the best song in there though. The song's called "Matricide", I know the lyric. It's a weird composition, Loomis and company hadn't gotten a handle on how exactly to write coherently. The changes are awkward, it's even got an embarrassing kind of 'rock' vibe to it. And the vocal line on top is just bizarre. Dane had a big problem with finding suitable vocal lines for Loomis' songs since the beginning and it really didn't get better with time. He's ultimately a lyrical vocalist, best suited for music that behaves, harmonically (hi, Sanctuary!). The nightmarish industrialized metal that Loomis would get involved with didn't leave much space for someone with Dane's talents. Mr. Tate from Queensryche would have found something smart to sing over this stuff.
The end of this song is prime Nevermore though, their next two albums can be seen in that guitar matrix phrase and the revolving phrases on top. And the change from it back to the chorus is hilarious. I still like this but I don't know if it's just nostalgia talking. That I remember a girl I was after at the time when I was listening to this a lot says it's probably the latter. And talking about girls and songs about girls, read the lyrics to the same titled song off of 'Im Memory'. Stalker anthem if there ever was one.
8. Is Winamp trying to make me cry? This is Secrecy - "The One to Adore". Ultimate teenage anxiety & nostalgia metal. Their albums are called ART IN MOTION and RAGING ROMANCE, for christ's sake. This band is amazing. There's absolutely nothing sub-par in these two albums (and even the demo "Like Burning One's Boat", it's even a bit thrashier if you'd like to see the connection between thrash-thrash, techno-thrash and then proper progressive metal). Every song is stellar. No filler. Such a range of emotion covered. So many atypical guitar ideas, and yet not to the detriment of catchiness. Superb engineering. More bands should study what Secrecy achieved here. Then again, perhaps not. There really is no other entity in metal that makes me feel like this, best keep it, uh, secret.
9. A drumkit is falling down the stairs. Seagulls through a guitar amplifier. Piano enters. Is this Zeuhl? No idea. I give up. It's very beautiful though and deserves more listens. Turns out it was "Friends of Dean Martinez", the same titled track off of "A Place in the Sun". I listen to "Random Harvest" and "In The Shadow of Your Smile" and love them, so this is an easy error on my part to rectify.
10. Haunting double-tracked vocals, their notes slightly incongruous. Damien Youth? If it's not him off of the one cassette I've downloaded, I don't know what it is. It's very beautiful and I want to listen to the whole thing. Indeed, "Hunger Circle" off of "Festival of Death". But I couldn't remember that's what the record's called, so that's a point lost. This music deserves an examination or ten by people more equipped than I, though. It's not Heavy Metal but it's equally intense and sometimes disturbing, but it's also other things, less blatant. If anyone can suggest where to go from this, be it to other Damien Youth material or other similar artists, I've got some space inside me for a little more like this.
