German heavy metal icons U.D.O. return to North America this Fall on the Touchdown US/Canada tour. The live run comes off the back of their Touchdown album, released just last month on Atomic Fire Records. Head into the article below for full listings.
Ghost Cult caught up with the great Doro recently to discuss her long-awaited best-of album Magic Diamonds – Best Of Rock, Ballads & Rare Treasures, released from Doro’s own label, Rare Diamonds Productions. The exhaustive collection includes 56 songs on three CDs with a total of almost four hours with 20 rock songs, 18 ballads, and 18 rare treasures, offering a ton of music and content. It also has an official 4LP version, on colored vinyl. His and Hers perfume, a scarf, and a poster, all personally designed by Doro herself. We chatted about the collection, revisiting these decades of songs and unreleased music, her favorite collaborators such as Lemmy, Peter Steel, Udo, Blaze Bayley, Tarja, and more, her take on the Drive-In shows she did at the start of the pandemic, and her new album she is working on! Purchase the boxed set (available in Europe only) and check out our chat with this legend of Heavy Metal! Continue reading
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The first track of Pulses of Pleasure (Napalm) is called ‘Fast, Loud and Rude’ and that tells you everything you need to know. Once it kicks off with a riff that buzzes around like a pissed off wasp you’ve just failed to swat, high on the spillage of your fizzy drink, you know exactly what type of journey Evil Invaders are going to take you on.
With a more melodic (and slightly restrained) take on Exodus, and lashings and thrashings of Exciter worship, Evil Invaders don’t do subtle. Or diverse. They do, however, pedal a line in nostalgic old school thrash and speed metal and everything, from the retro production to the squealing solos (nice harmony lead in the title track, by the way guys) and the pacy chromatic riffs is lovingly recreated. Existing in a bubble where metal ended when Udo quit Accept and Kai Hansen stopped fronting Helloween, Evil Invaders’ sound and influences begin in 1979 and end in 1986.
While the production and performance values and the base level of pretty much every band releasing music out there these days has increased a thousand-fold in the last thirty years, Speed Metal still allows, nay, welcomes with studded wrist band adorned arms, the amateurish “rough and ready” approach which did alright by Raven and Razor (one assumes the band name is taken from the Razor album of the same name?). Deliberately Shit Metal only exists in the hearts and minds of those with both (white hi-top clad) feet in yesteryear, and Gehennah, who do this retro thing with more balls, menace and conviction, shit Evil Invaders for breakfast.
Some might argue naïve charm and a love of a bygone age, when denim and chains (and rivets) ruled the roost, but the fun factor soon wears off as Pulses of Pleasure reveals itself to be big on style and short on substance. The classic speed metal albums were great because, above all, they lived and died on standout riffs and excellent songwriting. Evil Invaders fall short on both counts.
5.5/10
STEVE TOVEY