MORE, 'Metal Explosion', and Time Travel
Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:25 pm
I recently got the 2 LP comp 'NWOBHM at the BBC Friday Rock Show Sessions vol 2'. First band on side 1 is MORE.
Ugh.
MORE? Really?! That's how you wanna start your NWOBHM comp?!
Back up about 27 fucking years ago and I was buying my second NWOBHM album, the 'Metal Explosion' comp featuring tunes from the BBC radio sessions. Not the best sophomore purchase for an aspiring NWOBHM fan perhaps, but it was 1992, I was 17, and I was looking for British vinyl in the rural Southeastern US; the fact that I found this one comp in a used LP bin at a record fair was the highlight of the entire summer. It did feature a couple of great tracks by TRESPASS and ANGEL WITCH, but it also included some real duds. The worst offender was, arguably, MORE's 'Soldier', a slow, plodding, blues-rock number that seemed to embody the 'dinosaur rock' mentality that the NWOBHM was meant to dispense with. Even at that embryonic point in my NWOBHM development I understood that this song had no business being on the same album as 'Extermination Day', MORE was on my Shit List, and mentally they became my poster child for 'stuff labelled NWOBHM that has no fucking business being called NWOBHM'. Lame name, lame logo, signed to Atlantic, shitty blues-based rock sound. Yep, they suck. Paul Mario Day's lackluster WILDFIRE project did nothing to earn MORE a reevaluation (those WILDFIRE LPs weren't awful but they did nothing for me).
Back to 2019. So now I have to sit through 4 more MORE (ha!) songs, including the hideous 'Soldier', before getting to the GIRLSCHOOL tracks. Y'know, I had ALMOST forgotten why I disliked MORE so much, but then it all came rushing back as I opened the new album.... oh yeah, it's THAT song all over again. Okay, let's get this over and done with.
Track 1, 'Atomic Rock'.
Wait a fucking minute, this doesn't sound like 'Soldier'.......
Wait a fucking minute, NONE of these other songs sound like 'Soldier'...... these songs actually sound pretty good!
If, when I woke up this morning, you had told me that I would be spending my afternoon looking up MORE's 'Warhead' on Youtube, I would have pelted you with the stack of DEBBIE GIBSON CDs that my wife refuses to dispose of. And yet, here we are.
The moral of the story kids, and one worth remembering in this day and age of disposable digital music: don't base your evaluation of a band on a single song, even if the band does have a lame name and lame logo and was signed to a major label.
Now, can someone please explain to me why in the blue hell the folks behind the 'Metal Explosion' comp decided to include 'Soldier' over 'Atomic Rock'? You're calling your compilation 'Metal EXPLOSION' and one of the bands did a song for your show called 'ATOMIC ROCK'. You can't get more perfect than that! How did you miss that?! You're British! Shitty puns and not-so-clever wordplay is what your nation's entire sense of humour is built upon! You, you just can't miss fruit hanging that fucking low! It's so very bloody obvious!
And I'm thus left to wonder, what if 'Atomic Rock' had been the selected track for 'Metal Explosion'? Even a 17-yr-old nightsblood would've dug that track. Would 'Warhead' have wound up on my very first vinyl want list? Would I have ordered 'Warhead' instead of some other NWOBHM album back in the day? What if 'Warhead' had replaced 'Death Penalty' on one of my early NWOBHM vinyl orders and I then spent years digging MORE and didn't wind up hearing WITCHFINDER GENERAL until I got the 'Soviet Invasion' EP, which I didn't like and traded away? Would I have bypassed the mighty WITCHFINDER GENERAL, or JAGUAR, or some other band because my limited income forced me to chose the album that features 'Atomic Rock' over a different album? Would I have turned into a Paul Mario Day fanboy and leaned into other post-NWOBHM major label releases? Would I be sitting here today with a stack of nothing but GIRL, MORE, and BAD COMPANY albums? What would have happened to my fucking life?!
Hmmm, maybe including 'Soldier' wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Or maybe this is another instance of the Time-Travelling Discography Manipulators at work. In 2031 a certain 59-year old disillusioned Paul Mario Day fanboy invented time travel and went back through the ages and convinced Tommy Vance to put 'Soldier' on 'Metal Explosion' instead of 'Atomic Rock', thus ensuring that the time traveller's 17-year old self would reject MORE in 1992 and instead travel a path of much tr00er steel.
I think we're through the looking glass here fellas!
End rant.
Ugh.
MORE? Really?! That's how you wanna start your NWOBHM comp?!
Back up about 27 fucking years ago and I was buying my second NWOBHM album, the 'Metal Explosion' comp featuring tunes from the BBC radio sessions. Not the best sophomore purchase for an aspiring NWOBHM fan perhaps, but it was 1992, I was 17, and I was looking for British vinyl in the rural Southeastern US; the fact that I found this one comp in a used LP bin at a record fair was the highlight of the entire summer. It did feature a couple of great tracks by TRESPASS and ANGEL WITCH, but it also included some real duds. The worst offender was, arguably, MORE's 'Soldier', a slow, plodding, blues-rock number that seemed to embody the 'dinosaur rock' mentality that the NWOBHM was meant to dispense with. Even at that embryonic point in my NWOBHM development I understood that this song had no business being on the same album as 'Extermination Day', MORE was on my Shit List, and mentally they became my poster child for 'stuff labelled NWOBHM that has no fucking business being called NWOBHM'. Lame name, lame logo, signed to Atlantic, shitty blues-based rock sound. Yep, they suck. Paul Mario Day's lackluster WILDFIRE project did nothing to earn MORE a reevaluation (those WILDFIRE LPs weren't awful but they did nothing for me).
Back to 2019. So now I have to sit through 4 more MORE (ha!) songs, including the hideous 'Soldier', before getting to the GIRLSCHOOL tracks. Y'know, I had ALMOST forgotten why I disliked MORE so much, but then it all came rushing back as I opened the new album.... oh yeah, it's THAT song all over again. Okay, let's get this over and done with.
Track 1, 'Atomic Rock'.
Wait a fucking minute, this doesn't sound like 'Soldier'.......
Wait a fucking minute, NONE of these other songs sound like 'Soldier'...... these songs actually sound pretty good!
If, when I woke up this morning, you had told me that I would be spending my afternoon looking up MORE's 'Warhead' on Youtube, I would have pelted you with the stack of DEBBIE GIBSON CDs that my wife refuses to dispose of. And yet, here we are.
The moral of the story kids, and one worth remembering in this day and age of disposable digital music: don't base your evaluation of a band on a single song, even if the band does have a lame name and lame logo and was signed to a major label.
Now, can someone please explain to me why in the blue hell the folks behind the 'Metal Explosion' comp decided to include 'Soldier' over 'Atomic Rock'? You're calling your compilation 'Metal EXPLOSION' and one of the bands did a song for your show called 'ATOMIC ROCK'. You can't get more perfect than that! How did you miss that?! You're British! Shitty puns and not-so-clever wordplay is what your nation's entire sense of humour is built upon! You, you just can't miss fruit hanging that fucking low! It's so very bloody obvious!
And I'm thus left to wonder, what if 'Atomic Rock' had been the selected track for 'Metal Explosion'? Even a 17-yr-old nightsblood would've dug that track. Would 'Warhead' have wound up on my very first vinyl want list? Would I have ordered 'Warhead' instead of some other NWOBHM album back in the day? What if 'Warhead' had replaced 'Death Penalty' on one of my early NWOBHM vinyl orders and I then spent years digging MORE and didn't wind up hearing WITCHFINDER GENERAL until I got the 'Soviet Invasion' EP, which I didn't like and traded away? Would I have bypassed the mighty WITCHFINDER GENERAL, or JAGUAR, or some other band because my limited income forced me to chose the album that features 'Atomic Rock' over a different album? Would I have turned into a Paul Mario Day fanboy and leaned into other post-NWOBHM major label releases? Would I be sitting here today with a stack of nothing but GIRL, MORE, and BAD COMPANY albums? What would have happened to my fucking life?!
Hmmm, maybe including 'Soldier' wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Or maybe this is another instance of the Time-Travelling Discography Manipulators at work. In 2031 a certain 59-year old disillusioned Paul Mario Day fanboy invented time travel and went back through the ages and convinced Tommy Vance to put 'Soldier' on 'Metal Explosion' instead of 'Atomic Rock', thus ensuring that the time traveller's 17-year old self would reject MORE in 1992 and instead travel a path of much tr00er steel.
I think we're through the looking glass here fellas!
End rant.