Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Setting up Grim Reaper

Normally I put this kind of background stuff in with the review, but I decided to make it a separate entry because I went off a bit more than normal. I choose this album to review for October because the band had some horror related songs and because I wanted to review an album by a New wave of British heavy metal band or the NWOBHM as I will refer to it. The NWOBHM hit in the early 80's, but by 1985 a lot of bands had broke up or faded away, but there were still several that were very active. Once metal started getting popular in the early 80's American labels starting signing bands and not to sound snooty, but bands from other countries realized that if they wanted to make serious money then they would have to get on an American label. So by 1985, Iron Maiden had made it huge and I mean huge just about everywhere. Def Leppard had made it big as well when Pyromania came out in 1983. Yet by 1985 their future was a bit uncertain after Rick Allen's accident in late 84. Saxon made a little bit of an impact in the early 80's and they landed a major label deal, but by late 85 they had failed to gain the kind of popularity many thought they would achieve. Raven got signed by Atlantic and released their major label debut Stay Hard in 85. Unfortunately their sound had become somewhat tame and they did not make much of an impact. Venom had been signed to Combat and headlined the Ultimate Noise tour. They had a huge impact on the speed metal scene that was just starting to explode. Unfortunately Venom had not tried to grow at all musically and they were quickly being passed by the same bands they had influenced. That was a lot of the major players who had managed to land US record deals except Grim Reaper. This band formed in 1981 at the height of the NWOBHM, but it took them a while to get their sound together and finally they did get signed by tiny Ebony records who released their debut See you in hell. RCA picked them up and distributed the album over here to good reviews. By 1985, Grim Reaper were getting a good push from magazines and they were due to release their second album in the summer of 1985. Would it catapult them to being the next Iron Maiden or Judas Priest or would it be too little too late? I will have my review out as soon as I can.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home