Enter Sadmen: The Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Hall of Fame

In this episode the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes set the lads the task of finding three albums or bands that were in some way linked to criminal acts. And not just misdemeanours, thank you very much - these had to be crimes for which jail time would not only be inevitable, but also very lengthy. So, enter stage left Richard, clutching a copy of ZZ Top's Deguello (you'll have to listen to the episode to discover how it meets the brief). It marks a change of direction for the Texas boogie crew as they shifted away from their early blues and bluegrass brand of rock and roll to a more mainstream sound. 1981's El Loco would open the band up to mass awareness, and two years later the singles-packed Eliminator would become both golden goose and millstone. Welcome then to one of rock music's most significant commercial stepping stones. Next up, Mark. 1986's Mayhemic Destruction, from Aussie thrash merchants Mortal Sin was their recording debut after solid work on the local gig circuits around Sydney and the wider locale. It also contains two absolute nailed-on thrash gems. Prepare for Steve to go into an advanced state of priapism. Finally, Steve brought something as familiar and much loved as an old winter comforter, walking through the studio door with License To Kill, the 1987 sophomore effort from Amercian power rockers Malice. With a clutch of songs that could strip paint from the wall, this episode would get both loud ... and weird.

For this edition of the podcast the lads are being driven to drink. Not literally, because that would be irresponsible. No, this time the Sadmen had to find an album each that had a link to alcohol. Richard travelled back to Canada to pick up Nature Of The Beast, an album thought by many to be the finest hour of April Wine. Steve opted for the comfort of 1986 and the rock-lite Thrill Of A Lifetime by Carmine Appice vehicle King Kobra.   Mark, ever the adventurer, went a little off-piste and turned up with Behind The Eight Ball (an Eight Ball being both a whisket cocktail and a drug cocktaIl. Apparently) from German power metal band Thunderhead. Let battle commence!

The Tico Torres Tombola of Topics & Themes handed out a banger for this episode, with Mark, Steve and Richard tasked with finding three albums released between 1970 and 1995 that had a tangible link to the subject of 'school'.  Steve went all Billy Bunter and drew inspiration from the1950s when teachers in English schools were still known as 'masters'. Any excuse to get messers Hetfield, Ulrich, Newstead and Hammett back on the show, right? And so the Bay Area gods' 1986 MASTERclass - and the penultimate 'Metallica album that will feature on the show - duly made its entrance. Mark opted for something a little on the nose and mined his old timetable for some clues. After rejecting Bad English. and with the well of ideas running dry, he opted for something that was about as polar in its oppositeness to Master Of Puppets as it was possible to get. Welcome, then, Sport Of Kings from Canadian rockers Triumph - also released in 1986. And so, to Richard, who has always had an incidental relationship with the spirit of the few rules that exist on the show. Which is why we'll leave him to explain the ludicrously tenuous link to 'school' that he managed to contrive as justification for turning up to the recording session with Dare's 1988 offering, Out Of The Silence, under his arm ...

The boys didn't have to venture too far for the latest episode of the podcast - in fact, just a short hop and skip on Eurostar across La Manche and straight on to Paris.   Because this time the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes had tasked Richard, Steve and Mark to find something distinctly French to c state with each other.    Paris wasn't a prerequisite for the show, but nevertheless that's where our plucky trio ended up. Not only that, but they all ended up with a band formed at the arse end of 1979.   Steve and Richard went on a voyage of discovery, while Mark mined a familiar dream at the coalface of rock.    The result? Nicko McBrain's old mob, Trust, with Represssion from 1981 (Mark), and a deuce from 1985 in Desir De Vampyr by Blaspheme (Steve) and Desperados from Vulcain (Richard).   Mon Dieu! What a show ... !

In the latest episode of the Sadmen's journey down a rock and roll highway that starts in 1970(ish) and ends in 1995(ish), the lads pull out the corduroys and the paisley shirts and head for the warm bath of psychedelic bewilderment that was 1972. Having encountered Jethro Tull's Aqualung some 68 episodes previously, and hashed out the whole 'is it a concept album, isn't it a concept album' debate, it was time to make the acquaintance of its successor - Thick As A Brick. There were many questions to be answered, but none of them was 'Is this a concept album?' because of that, friends, there is no doubt. The problem with the Enter Sadmen podcast is that when one of the boys goes a bit weird, the other two follow suit. It's like Pavolv's dogs. Or something.  Anyway, it doesn't matter. All you need to know is that getting on board with the 'out there' vibe were two more releases that are as curious as they are obscure. From Richard, a trip back to Canada to root out the self-titled debut by A Foot In Cold Water. From Steve, a slightly less arduous journey up the M1 to Northamptonfor Dark Round The Edges, the only release by a band called Dark, and one that will set you back a cool £35,000 to buy on vinyl today. We shit you not.

So, in this episode the lads were eached tasked to find an album with a tangible (this word is important) link to the letter H. Yes, we know. You're squinting at the episode title and the featured bands and wracking your brain to think of a Pink Floyd album beginning with H. Let us help you out: there isn't one. A, O, U, S, P, D, W, M and F, all present and correct. H? Not so much. Anyway, we'll let Richard explain his bizarre rationale for bringing 1975's Wish You Were Here to the table. Back in the real world, Mark managed to unearth an old gem from 1982 with the long-since forgotten (at least, outside Canada) Turn It Loud from Headpins, while Steve grazed on the lush hinterland of late-80s hair metal with Hurricane's 1988 eponymous debut offering.   

So this episode is all about the albums you bought and lisened to and thought, fuck me that's a great album! Or possibly, fuck me, that's terrible! And then, 30 years later, you discovered your opinion had done a 180 degree turn.   In this episode, Mark revisits he much maligned Black Sabbath experiment that saw Ian Gillan step up to the mic, Steve discovers that Ratt's Detonator tickles his ears a little differently to he wya it did in 1990, and Richard recalls he moment Van Hagar suddenly made sense ....    

Yes, Sadfans, we're giving over our 75th episode to the unsung heroes of every band that ever set foot in a recording studio or onto a stage - those apparently indefatigable timekeepers without whom there would be little or no momentum. Stuck behind the kit at the back of the stage, these are the artisans of the hard rock and heavy metal engine room. Whether it's a sense of rhythm combined with a diver's boot (h/t to Gillan's Mick Underwood), the professorial science of Neil Peart, or the tour de force blunt trauma approach of Bonzo, these are the men and women who provide the metronome when you're standing with your feet apart and headbanging your way to an early aneurysm. Naturally, the list of noteworthy sticksmen is ineffably long, so consider this part one of a theme the Sadmen will undoubtedly return to in episodes to come. But for this episode the lads have picked three drummers who have, to some extent, shaped the technical art of hitting the skins with a lump of wood. First up, Phil Collins in his second outing with Genesis for 1972's Foxtrot. Having already helped to shape the Charterhouse proggers' sound on his debut release, Nursery Cryme the year before, Collins, Banks, Gabriel and Rutherford return a year later with a release that would achieve immortality in the genre. The boys' next stop was six years later, as Y&T - then known still as Yesterday and Today - drop their sophomore 1978 release Struck Down. Though three years away from the standard-bearing  Earthshaker, this is the album that perhaps best showcases the undeniable talent of their man on the kit, Leonard Haze. And the lads round off proceedings with Jeff Pocaro and TOTO's commercial juggernaut IV, which boasts the ghost notes on album opener Rosanna that to this day separate the men from the boys when it comes to high drumming art. Enjoy!  

Episode 74 sees the lads tackling the subject of inventions. If ever there was scope to push the envelope on a theme this, surely, is it. And so it proved, as Mark fishes out a set of what can only be described as 15th Century blueprints to qualify Dokken's 1981 debut, Breakin' The Chains. (Don't get antsy, America - we know the better known version of the album was released in Amercia in 1983 with a title tweak - Breaking The Chains rather than Breakin' The Chains - and a very different running order, but where there's a reissue the Sadmen always take the original release for the review - and, besides, in this case it has a better back story!) Not for the first time on the podcast, Rich went soft, opting for a post-Balboa and post-Dave Bickler Survivor and their 1984 album Vital Signs (the invention? An oscilloscope ... yeah, yeah ... they're all tenuous on this show, friends). And (also not for the first time) Steve went hard, opting for a band that has never actually existed with Piledriver's Stay Ugly from 1986. And if you don't know the PIledriver back story, that's worth this episode's admission price alone. (The admission is free, by the way. You know ... just in case that's a dealbreaker).

The latest episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast finds the boys in more familiar territory as the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes serves up 'Death' as the theme for Episode 73. End of life certainly offers up a wealth of stuff to go at in the world of hard rock and heavy metal, which makes it even more bewildering that Steve and Rich didn't follow Mark's lead and go with something completly literal. As it was, Mark arrived at the Sadmen party with an album in another one of those covers that, much like the Scorpions Lovedrive, had post-pubescent teenagers nursing a boner in the record shop. Witchfinder General's 1982 debut Death Penalty, was a marketing man's dream, yet the band still managed to evade mainstream celebrity. The songs on offer may provide good clues as to why, but Mark argues that there's lots of fun to be had ... if, in 2023, you can get beyond the gratuitous presence of female breasts on the cover. And so to Steve and Richard,m who could have gone with pretty much anything buit instead chose to plough a furrow in Scandinavia's death metal scene. First up, Richard with the npw-legendary Epicus Doomicus Metallicus from Candlemass - a 1986 release that was determinedly ignored by the record-buying public until after the band was dropped by its record company - at which point they went out and bought it by the truckload. And finally, in this episode, Steve puts forward the case for Entombed's Wolverine Blues, now a neo-classic, but then, in 1993, another radar-avoiding old skool throwback. Prepare for laughter in the face of Death Metal.

Sometimes artists feel the need to escape the confines of the environment in which they made their name and give voice to the individuality of their art. Or some such bollocks. In any event, whether going solo or, in the case of Doro Pesch, being forced by a legal ruling to cease and desist using the name of the band which made her famous, rock and roll's highways and byways are crisscrossed by the tracks of musicians who have wandered off the well-beaten track. We meet three of them in this edition of Enter Sadmen - an episode in which the lads were sent off to find famous rock musos who, for whatever reason, decided to ply their trade under their own name. They don't come much bigger than Percy Plant, of course. The erstwhile golden-maned lead singer of demigods Led Zeppelin first tasted artistic life outside that particular juggernaut in 1982 with Pictures At Eleven - and a very successful sojourn it turned out to be. But it is 1990's Manic Nirvana that commands our attention for part of the next 80 minutes. Doro, still smarting from losing control of the Warlock brand in the courts, was canny enough to know that sentiment aside, she was Warlock and that her fanbase would hang on her every note, regardless of the collective name she and her musicians gave themselves. And no one would be hanging on those words more fervently than Steve. What wasn't quite so clear, when she released her first 'solo' album - the presumably self-referencing Force Majeure - was why she chose a decidedly iffy cover as the calling card. Luckily, things got rapidly better thereafter. But first of all we encounter a man who could make girls swoon at the mere suggestion he might be on Top Of The Pops on a Thursday night with the other guys in Duran Duran. Yes, you read that right. Mark turned up to this party with the other Taylor in the Durannies - Andy - and his 1987 solo debut, Thunder. Now go and look up the word 'eclectic' and see if that don't just sum up Episode 72 ...

So, a question. How maqny albums can you name where the title track is worthy of its status? And of those, how many eclipse even that honour to be classed asd truly epic? That was also the question that was asked of our hardy rock and roll adventurers by the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes for this, the latest leg of the marathon attempt to review the greatest hard rock, heavy metal, prog (etcetera, etcetera) albums of all time (well, of 1970 to 1995, at least). It's worth saying from the outset that Steve managed to misinterpret the brief as incorporating title tracks that he simply liked, which is how Exodus's 1985 debut Bonded By Blood managed to find its way into proceedings. But, y'know, hey ho. Rich and Mark, on the other hand, rocked up - literally and metaphorically - with two bonafide essentials. First on the turntable for this episode is the first vinyl offering from Deep Purple MKIII, complete with Coverdale and Hughes on shared voal duty -1974's Burn. As with all three albums, the track opens the album's account. But would it be the best of the collection? That was definitely up for debate. So, too, the question of the title cut from Motӧrhead's 1979 offering, Overkill. Mark unapologetically claims this to be not just streets ahead of the following year's chart-bothering Ace Of Spades, but entire cities ahead. You can judge for yourselves, and see if Steve (a self-confesed Lemmy-sceptic) and Richard agree. And then there's Bonded By Blood. A criminal omission from what should be termed the Big 5, or just a lot of noise and little substance? Steve dons his gown and wig and presents the case for the defence.  

And on we go to Episode 70, in which the lads work to a brief that shouldn't have been too challenging to meet, even for men of singular taste and discernment. Yes, in this run through another three albums from hard rock and heavy metal's golden era (that's 1970 to 1995, for the uninitiated) the boys were tasked by the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes to find examples of 'Power'. Whether electrical, nuclear, steam, wind, strength or gas was up to them to decide. And so we end up slap bang in the middle of the 1980s with a trio of offerings spanning six years between 1983 and 1989. First up come our old friends AC/DC - and yet again it's not the band's uber fan Mark bringing their 8th studio album Flick Of The Switch to the party (go with us, here - it's listed in Wiki as their 10th, but Wiki has counted High Voltage and its derivative and territory-specific alternate versions as three different albums). An unloved misstep rightly cast into the depths fans' memories? Or a much-maligned and under-appreciated neo classic? You'll get both ends of that spectrum in this episode. Next up, Rush uber fan Richard doesn't disappoint - although he ducks the obvious Power Windows and instead opts for 1984's Grace Under Pressure, the band's 10th studio release and the first of a quartet of albums that were, to varying degrees, considered disappointing by fans when compared to Rush's earlier canon. That doesn't mean the Sadmen will also conform to mass opinion, of course. If nothing else they are rarely inclined to toe the party line. And bringing up the rear - and what a glorious rear it is - Mark pops up with the second offering from Tesla (and we mean that both in terms of their discography and their pod appearances) The Great Radio Controversy from 1989. Hair metal with a gritty edge? Or inhabitants of a genre of one? The boys answer that question, too.  

For their latest journey down hard rock and heavy metal's many-faceted highway, the Sadmen's destination was that utopian land of pianos, synthesisers, Moogs and mellotrons. Yes, friends, having done vocalists, singers and bass players, it was time to pay tribute to some of the ivory tinklers who help to make up rock's great tapestry. But if you thought we were going all Tony Banks, Jon Lord, Rick Wakeman or Richard Wright on you, think again, fans. Yes, in this episode we do touch on some obvious waypoints, but of Genesis, Purple/Whitesnake, Yes and Floyd there is no sign (or is there?) And though Mark and Rich go fully prog rock (or 'prock' as no-one ever calls it), Steve manages to keep it real with a big slice of late-70s hard rock. With three albums released over a period of just seven years, we start back in 1972 with Uriah Heep who, at this point were shelling albums like peas, yet still managed to trump early successes like Look At Yourself and Salisbury, with the huge cornucopia of Ken Hensley-inspired sound that was Demons And Wizards (their 4th album in just 23 months - and release #5 would follow just 6 short months later). We follow that another fourth release, this time from Kansas, and an album full of material that, staggeringly, wasn't deemed good enough for the band's previous two issues. Yes, folks, the clue is in the name - 1976's Leftoverture (though the 'after the mayor's ball' nature of the track listing didn't stop it becoming widely recognised as Kansas' seminal release) features the sloppy seconds from Song For America and Masque. Enter, then, one Kerry Livgren (among many others) on keyboard duty. And you know we said there wasn't a sign of Deep Purple in this show? Well of course, there is, as Steve rolls up with Ian Gillan, now fronting his own eponymously titled band and their second release, Mr Universe, from 1979. On keyboards, and widely appreciated as the man who steered his honey-larynxed boss off a jazz-fusion march into oblivion, one Colin Towns - a man so mercurial that he counts the theme tune to Angelina Ballerina among his many TV theme credits. So ... it's fair to say an eclectic show lay ahead ...    

And so following the previous episode, which - according to Rich - featured Diet Cult and Diet Marillion, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes rumbled ever on  and this time spat out a topic which challenged the boys to find albums that had a 'white' theme. After they all studiously avoided the apparently 'obvious' Whitesnake, they each entered the Sadmen Sound Studio with more white stuff than you'd find at a mid-Eighties Motley Crue after show party. First up for discussion was Steve's personal comfort blanket - the 1984 debut effort from the crown princes of melodic hard rock, White Sister. After coming through the shock of realising this would be the last time they'd feature in the pod (Episode 39 had already dispensed with the band's sophomore and final effort), Steve rallied gamely to prosecute the case for the eponymously titled debut to be admitted to the highest echelons of the Hall of Fame. The same year also gave us White Lion's debut, Fight To Survive, Richard swerving the opportunity to deliver the band's career-altering Pride or Big Game to the party. So, would this be a saccharine-laden amuse bouche for those two titans of commercial melodic metal, or would the original lion's roar have a harder edge to it? And after all of that harmonising, what were the lads to make of the career changing (at least with regard to the direction of travel) of Anthrax's 1993 issue The Sound Of White Noise, their first without Joey Belladonna at the mic? Would the fact it's their biggest-selling album of their career (yes, really) also mean it was their best? We were about to find out...

And so to an episode in which Richard, Steve and Mark were tasked with marking important life moments. Mark and Steve opted for a broadly similar seam to mine - that of parenthood. Rich, on the other hand, eschewed the opportunity to reflect on bringing new life into the world, or discovering love for the first time. He spat in the face of death and pooh-poohed the notions of age, friends and work. No, it seems that Richard's most notable moment in life is, in fact, stowing a lilo under his arm and heading off to the Mediterranean. And so it came to be that the lads ended up spending a week or so in the company of Alice Cooper, Mother Love Bone and Marillion. Steve kicks off the show with a look back at Alice Cooper (the band, not the man - he was just common-or-garden Vince Furnier at the time of this particular release) and their much-admired Billion Dollar Babies from 1973. Over 30 minutes or so the Sadmen try to come to a definitive answer to a simple question: Is it really that good? Next up is Mother Love Bone, a one-album sensation (thanks to yet another rock and roll overdose that robbed the world of a young talent) that ultimately gave us the behemoth that is Pearl Jam, and their sole 1991 release Apple. Meanwhile, over in Ibiza, Richard was whacking up the volume on the Steve Hogarth version of Marillion, who were vacationing in paradise in 1992 with Holidays In Eden. As the show rolls past album 200 in the big list, would these three manage to elbow their way into its upper echelons?

The lads were having such a good time, dipping a gnarly toe into the cool waters of the late 70s and early 80s, when Steve decided to spoil the party with a dirty protest in the form of a thrash album that burned through 14 songs in fewer than short - albeit painful - minutes. Luckily, you, dear listener, have dodged the bullet that Mark and Richard took on your behalf, and you'll only have to endure about 2 minutes of Nuclear Assault's live offering, Live At The Hammersmith Odeon. Before that, though, the boys consider the altogether more sophisticated (by comparison, at least) 1978 commercial behemoth At Budokan from Cheap Trick and every NWOBHM aficionado's favourite live offering, The Eagle Has Landed from Yorkshire's finest, Saxon.  

A landmark moment for the Sadmen as listener Tony, from Australia, picks three albums for the boys to cast their ears over - and what an eclectic three they turned out to be. First up, novelty sensation Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction with their debut, Tattooed Beat Messiah. With their 'out there' look, hilarious alter ego names and chart-bothering single Prime Mover, was this of British oddity just a very clever joke - or is there more to it than that? Following hot on the heels of Zodiac comes the pod's second encounter with The Cult who in 1989 executed a smart right turn away from their Gothy native American roots and headed off down the metal highway with Sonic Temple. And the show closes out, fittingly, with an old-fashioned, heads down rock and roll band. Proving there's more to Oz than the Young brothers (or is there?), we say hello for the first time to The Angels and their breakthrough album Beyond Salvation. It's no spoiler alert to say the boys enjoyed Tony's selections very much - so cheers mate!  If you've got 3 albums you'd like the lads to review, just find us on Facebook, on Twitter or at www.entersadmen.co.uk and let us know!    

In their latest journey down hard rock and heavy metal's Memory Lane, the boys are checking out supergroups - those bands formed by musos who made their names in other bands. There were some obvious ones to choose from - Bad Company, Audioslave and, erm, Revolting Cocks, for example - but the boys dived deep and came up with three outfits that were all new to at least one of them. Anything involving Sammy Hagar and Neil Schon was probably dependably good (or was it?) so they all felt comfortable with Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve's Through The Fire from 1983.   But then Mark rocked up with Dennis Stratton side project Lionheart and their eponymous 1984 debut, and Steve went full toto and picked a band that, in a different genre, might have had a lot in common with One Direction (insofar as they were manufactured for the purpose of achieving commercial success). It was promising to be an interesting chat ... www.entersadmen.co.uk

After a short hiatus, the Sadmen are back with the latest instalment of the Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Hall of Fame - an ongoing mission to create the definitive best-to-worst list of hard rock, heavy metal and prog released between 1970(ish) and 1995(ish). The Hall of Fame unique's selling point is the fact that each and every track on each and every album is marked individually, with the averages of those scores calculated to give the album as a whole an overall score - often to 5 decimal places. And because the boys each have different tastes - Steve likes his metal delivered at pace, Richard is the professorial wise head with a penchant for prog, and Mark is a simple man who's happy with a big fat riff and a glorious hookline - each is a check and balance to the others' hyperbole.  For this edition of the show the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes threw out the year 1989, setting the lads the task of finding three albums released during that year worthy of being pulled apart. Welcome, then, W.A.S.P.'s The Headless Children, Bang Tango's Psycho Cafe, and Faith No More's genre defining The Real Thing. Let the arguments commence.

Human biology is the theme of the 63rd instalment of the lads' quest to compile the ultimate 'best of' list of hard rock and heavy metal albums. It's also an episode that sees debut appearances for two bands, along with the fourth of the six Metallica albums that are eligible for consideration under the pod's strict 1970-1995 (okay, 1996) parameters. The task was straightforward: parts of the human body. Steve went for 'hand'. Check. Mark went for 'spine'. Check. Richard went for ejaculate, blood, and urine. Hmmm. And not for the first time. Enter, then, Outa Hand, the second album from Coney Hatch, the Canadian wing of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, released in 1984; another sophomore release, this time from Spinal Tap with Break Like The Wind, the follow-up to 1984's seminal (that's seminal, not semen-al) This Is Spinal Tap; and last but not least Metallica's last properly decent album (in our humble opinion) Load.  

So often pilloried and made to be the punchline of heavy metal jokes (Q: Where's the best place to hear a bass solo? A: In the bar/bog), this episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast celebrates the 4-string virtuosos without whom much of the music we love would either not exist at all, or be significantly poorer. The lads were tasked with finding three bass players who each personified their band's sound. It was a remarkably difficult choice, with Geezer Butler, Lemmy, Geddy Lee, Phil Kennemore, JPJ, and Roger Glover all in contention. But in the end, our threesome narrowed the field to an eclectic, but influential trio (whilst also vowing to return to this much-maligned instrument before too much time could pass). Mark kicks off proceedings in 1980 with Iron Maiden's guvnor and chief songwriter, Steve Harris, and the band's self-titled debut; Steve followed suit with Mötley Crüe counterpart Nikki Sixx and their debut, Too Fast For Love; and Richard served up Dave Ellefson, whose effortless genius helped Megadeth to 1990s superstardom courtesy of '92's Countdown To Extinction..

For their latest journey down the time tunnel of hard rock and heavy metal the lads fired up the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes and found themselves transported back to 1974, where they discovered just how broad this church of hard rock and heavy metal really was. First up - and not for the first time on the pod - a bunch of German musicians who had hitched their wagon to that of an English vocalist. Epitaph's Outside The Law reflects a broad tapestry of influences that range from Southern Rock to prog to jazz and funk. A case, then, of 'so far, so early 1970s'. For the second time in the pod's history Rich and Steve rebuffed Mark's attempt to bring The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway into the Hall of Fame and sent him away to try again. Which was probably for the best, since it opened the door for a true classic in the shape of Blue Ӧyster Cult's Secret Treaties - a record fans and critics widely regard as the band's best release. Mark, on the other hand, prefers Fire Of Unknown Origin. Or does he? And finally, if you thought Sweet were just another early Seventies UK glam pop-rock band from the same stable as Mud, The Glitter Band, and Wizzard, think again. Desolation Boulevard features on more rock 'Best' lists than you can shake a stick at. Which was enough to convince Richard it deserved an airing on the pod.  

The latest edition of the Enter Sadmen podcast heads off in search of hard rock and heavy metal band names, album titles, or cover art with a distinctly spooky flavour to them. Richard manages to push the envelope (again) by picking Sabbath's fifth outing, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath from 1973, on the basis that the images on the front and back of the cover depict a man being watched over by demons and angels respectively. Oh, and the whole shebang was recorded in a haunted castle. But when you're dealing with cuts as epic as the title track, A National Acrobat and Sabbra Cadabra, who's going to argue? Mark offers up the overlooked White Spirit with their self-titled 1980 debut, also their only release after the band imploded shortly after the departure of guitarist Jannick Gers to Gillan (and thence to Maiden). The band were lazily categorised as NWOBHM, but did their roots really lie back in the mid-70s and hard rock prog? And Steve sticks with the prog theme to bring in Fates Warning, a band once considered one of the so-called 'Big 3' that also included Dream Theater and Queensrÿche. In the spotlight, their 1991 release Parallels.  With the Hall of Fame now approaching 200 albums, where would the three land in the list of best hard rock and heavy metal albums of all time?

The latest episode of the Enter Sadmen Podcast turns its attention to three albums that feature either either angels or towers, or (in two cases) both. First up is the ambitious 1975 self-titled debut from American progressive band Angel, famous for both their white and outrageously angelic stagewear and for having Greg Guiffra as a member.  We then spin forward 5 years to the birth of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (at least in its recorded form) and one of its most influential releases - the self-titled debut from London outfit Angel Witch. Finally, we bridge a 17-year gap to the third and final debut release of the show - Death Angel's 1987 release The Ultra-Violence, which is notable for the fact that at the time it hit record stores every member of the band was under the age of 20, and their drummer was out Philthy-ing Phil Taylor at the tender age of just 14 ...

The lads head into outer space for the latest trip down hard rock and heavy metal's Memory Lane as they investigate and appraise the merits - or otherwise - of three very different albums boasting some sort of connection, however tenuous, to the worlds beyond our own. First up is Deep Purple with Fireball from 1971, the staging post between the previous year's In Rock and the genre defining Machine Head released in 1972. The band have since confessed to not being particularly enamoured with it; so how would it fare under the Sadmen spotlight? Next up, an album where you can almost taste and smell the drugs that went into making it as rock's ultimate beatniks, Hawkwind, serve up a sprawling space rock epic in Hall Of The Mountain Grill from 1974, released less than a year before their bassist, one Ian Kilmister Esq, was given his marching orders in what would turn out to be one of rock's most famous blessings in disguise. Having started at one end of the 25-year epoch that reflects the music that's covered by the Enter Sadmen podcast, Richard takes us all to the other, with Monster Magnet's Dopes To Infinity, released in 1995.

The Enter Sadmen podcast is on a relentless, merciless mission to identify the ultimate list of the best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal albums (yes, and prog, and Grunge, and AOR, and thrash) released between 1970 and 1995 by rating them ... track by track. Hard rocking fans and critics, Richard, Steve and Mark have so far admitted 165 records to the Hall of Fame and the next to queue up at its gilded doors like Charlie Bucket and his grandpa brandishing their golden tickets outside the Wonka Factory are an assorted motley crew of releases from the USA and the UK. First up, that band of much-loved Noo Yoik mascara merchants Twisted 'Fuckin' Sister with their 1982 release Under The Blade, Tony 'The Hat' Clarkin and the boys from Magnum with On A Storyteller's Night from 1985, and L.A. glam (or maybe sleaze?) outfit L..A. Guns showing the boys from G 'N' R how the other half lived with their own self-titled debut from 1988.

Well, it was only a matter of time. After swerving Back In Black for 162 albums, the hand of fate intervened as the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out the ball that correlated to a theme simply called "Black".  With most of hard rock and heavy metal's behemoths already admitted to the Enter Sadmen Hall of Fame only four albums have occupied the #1 slot in the list - Priest's British Steel, reviewed in Episode 1, spent a week there before being toppled following Episode 2 by Moving Pictures from Rush, which itself occupied the slot for just a week before it was casually usurped by Zeppelin's IV. For 39 weeks it seemed that no matter what the boys threw at it, Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones were never going to be overtaken. And then the unstoppable force of IV met the immovable object of Ride The Lightning in Episode 42 and it all changed. But, faithful followers, we all knew that somewhere round the corner lurked a grown man in a school uniform brandishing a Gibson SG, four of his mates and the blackest of all the Black albums. Given the theme, the lads could hardly justify sidestepping it again, and so Mark duly deferred to moral obligation. Joining the 31 million seller on the show were two albums that, even in such austere company, would have every right to expect to be challenging for a place in the Top 10. Both released in 1982, the episode rounds out with the Scorpions' Blackout and Y&T's Black Tiger - two albums that in the hands of most other bands might reasonably be considered the undisputed high watermarks. But the boys tackle both juggernauts knowing that their predecessors, Lovedrive and Earthshaker respectively, cast long shadows ...

With more than a half a century of episodes under their belts, the most surprising thing for the Sadmen was that they hadn't yet been given an episode theme that centred on the word 'metal'. That all changed for this episode as the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics & Themes finally did the decent thing and spat out the magic ball. But with two thirds of the eligible Metallica releases already housed in the Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Hall of Fame, the field boasting the bleedin' obvious had narrowed considerably. What we got instead were three releases that all hit the shelves of Our Price, Andy's Records and Shades (among thousands of others) within 18 months of one another. Mark kicks off proceedings with You Can't Have It All ... Or Can You? - the debut album from Leicester's Chrome Molly, who were at vanguard of NWOBHM's post-'84 Second Invasion. Richard returned from a voyage of discovery with Metalized from Canadian power metal outfit Sword - an album he thought neither of his co-hosts would know, only to discover the band had featured prominently on a mixtape that Mark had given Steve back in late 1986. And while Steve didn't quite go for the bleedin' obvious, it was close enough as he rocked up to the recording with a dog-eared copy of Metal Church's The Dark under one arm.

The Seventies are often lampooned as the decade that fashion and music forgot. Admittedly, it was rich on Gilbert O'Sullivan The Carpenters and The New Seekers, but it also brought us Sabbath and the golden eras of both Zeppelin and Purple, so it wasn't all bad. in fact, as the snot-nosed belligerence of punk prepared to make its invective-rich entrance, the world of rock music - and especially progressive rock music - was an interesting one to inhabit. This episode features three albums from 1977 - all, coincidentally, marking each band's second appearance on the podcast - but given the releases the lads chose the theme might just as well have been Prog Bands, because all three are high on eclectic experimentation. First up was the unapologetic tilt at commercial acceptance from Yes, with their chart-bothering 5-tracker Going For The One marking a distinct departure from its often-impenetrable though never mediocre predecessors like Fragile, Tales From Topographic Oceans and Relayer. Next comes Queen's News Of The World which is notable for many things, not least the realisation that there was a time in history when the world had never heard of either We Will Rock You or We Are The Champions. And finally, but by no means least, comes Blue Öyster Cult with Spectres, which gave fans the track that has become their second most-played concert tune of all time (behind ... Reaper, obviously) - Godzilla. Make way for mellotrons, more pianos than you can shake a stick at, and a glut of cowbell.

The albums reviewed each week on the Enter Sadmen podcast have to meet a theme. These are often tenuous and the lads aren't averse to stretching the elastic quite a long way when it comes to interpreting the episode themes that the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics & Themes spews out. Especially is it means Rich can choose a Rush album. But among their favourite themes are those that require them to each choose and album relating to a specific producer. The third knob-twiddler to come under the scrutiny of the pod, after Max Norman and Bruce Fairbairn, was Chris Tsangarides - a producer whose work with Y&T and Thin Lizzy already occupied places in the Hall of Fame's top 10 albums. Lining up for this episode were the Tony Iommi-produced and Tsangarides-engineered 1977 self-titled debut from Quartz, 1981's Spellbound, the second album from North-East band Tygers of Pan Tang, and Canadian rockers Anvil with their third effort from 1983, Forged In Fire. Tune in and find out where the riff to the title track from Sabbath's Heaven And Hell album really came from...

The next category to come out of the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes was 'insects', which the boys immediately changed to Night Crawler in homage to Judas Priest. The usual rules applied - a tangible link to entymology either in the band name, album title or album artwork. The natural choice would obviously have been the Scorpions, the obviousness itself being reason enough for the boys to neatly sidestep it in favour of something else. Which is how the lads came to spend a week in the company of Uriah Heep's Firefly from 1977 - the Brit-proggers' first album without the eccentric and erratic David Byron and with the excellent ex-Lucifers Friend and Les Humphries singers (yes, really) John Lawton. Joining the Heep for episode 51 were NWOBHM's blink-and-you-missed-them Praying Mantis and their one and only (for ten years and with this line up) album from 1981, Time Tells No Lies. Also along for the ride were Merseyside rockers Spider and their 1982 outing, Rock 'n' Roll Gypsies. We're not going to call them Quo soundalikes, but that doesn't mean no-one else did.

The Hall of Fame hits 150 albums with this latest episode from the Sadmen, who were each tasked with finding an album with an avian theme after the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out Birds as the subject matter for the pod's half century. The lure of the most obvious choice also giving him the opportunity to head back to the early 1970s was too much for Mark to resist and so he rocked up with a copy of Budgie's 1973 album Never Turn Your Back On A Friend under his arm. Steve, a self-appointed child of 80s glam and thrash rock, surprised even himself as he dredged up memories of anaglypta wallpaper, orange and tan soft furnishings, avocado bathroom suites and, crucially in this context, his old man's copy of Atomic Rooster self-titled 1971 debut. Richard bowled into the mid-Eighties and the 1984 album that proved what its successor - The Final Countdown - belied. Namely that beneath the saccharine MTV-chasing veneer of Carrie Europe were an honest-to-goodness hard rock band at heart. 

And so the Sadmen turn their attention to three albums that sit among the most commercially successful of all time. Passing on the chance - again - to put AC/DC's Back In Black into the Hall of Fame, they instead went with three records that ticked the brief in their own way, notable for not only the sheer volume of sales achieved, but also taking into account the relative stages each artist was at on the albums' release. Two of the discs are debuts. Both were released in 1977 and 45 years later one of them is still the fouth best-selling record of all time.  Foreigner's self-titled debut marked the start of a 4-album hot streak of million sellers. A few months later, and after being rejected by eight record companies before a small independent took a chance on it, Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell set off on a march to 35 million sales and a reimagining of how we define the word 'ambitious'. But the episode starts seven years earlier, in 1970, as a young British band stopped to draw breath following an epic and gruelling US tour that had seen them conquer America on a scale that no other band aside from The Beatles had managed to achieve. Led Zeppelin's third release may have been predictably titled - simply III, to follow II - but predictability ended there, with a soundscape so rich and so eclectic that it polarised critical opinion at the time, yet has come to be regarded as a pioneering classic.

Following their fireside chat with the Queen of Metal, Doro Pesch set the boys some homework, choosing the next three albums that would be up for review on the next episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast. Once Steve had got over the shock of actually talking to Doro rather than just watching her from afar on a stage, the lads divvied up the albums she'd chosen and got down to business. It wasn't exactly a chore.   First up, Saxon's fourth album (the fourth in two short years, as it happened) Denim And Leather. Two hot singles, 9 fabulous tracks. Its place in the Hall of Fame was guaranteed. The only unknown was exacxtly where it would land. Next came Dio's sophomore solo album, The Last In Line. Often overlooked, the boys discovered, upon revisiting it, that time had been kinder to it rthan they perhaps expected. But kindlesws can also be cruel, so where would it end up in relation to its predecessor, Holy Diver? Finally, the concept album that should have been a solo album. 1992's The Crimson Idol from W.A.S.P. The mutual respect that Doro and Blackie had for one another is largely unchronicled - and you'll have to listen to the interview to understand why - but listening to Blackie's concept album it's not difficult to understand why the Metal Queen and the King of Sleaze found a (platonic) connection.

At the end of Episode 46, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out 'Four Elements', meaning our trio of trusty adventurers each had to find an album that had a clear and non-tenuous link to one or more of the four elements of life. Yeah, we had to look them up, too. But at least we can save you the bother of also heading to Google or Wiki. Fire, Earth, Air and Water. After a false start which saw Steve and Richard sniggering at the lack of creativity evident in Mark's original choice (Y&T's Earthshaker) the lads reconvened for a chinwag over three albums that had a claim to fame without actually being all that famous in their own right. First up, Down To Earth - Rainbow's 4th album, and their first without the Little Wizard's disproportionately enormous voice. Though it escaped broad critical acclaim at the time it did spawn arguably one of the all time great pop rock songs in Since You've Been Gone. The big question was whether the rest of the album could keep pace with its signature song. Next came the eponymous 1990 debut from FireHouse (yes, that incongruous capital in the middle of their name is deliberate, thank you) - an album that bagged the band the 'Favorite New Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Artist' award at the 1992 American Music Awards. But while their star burned bright in their native America, the UK and pretty much the whole of the rest of Planet Earth passed them by without so much as a sideways glance. And bringing up the rear was the some-might-say-cheeky-others-like-Mark-might-say-twattish Ginger and his post-Punk band The Wildhearts with their world-hating wink-and-a-smile 1993 effort Earth vs. The Wildhearts.

Big production. Big hair. Big names. Big albums. In Episode 46 the boys turn the Enter Sadmen spotlight on the year that marked the commercial peak of hard rock and heavy metal. Following the path forged for them the previous year by the likes of Slippery When Wet, 5150 and Eat 'Em And Smile, the big guns rolled themselves into the fray in 1987. The podcast has already reviewed, rated and ranked some of the year's other big hitters - most notably Hysteria, Crazy Nights and Appetite For Destruction (coincidentally, in consecutive episodes - #25 and #26) - but two of the three selected by the lads for this show perhaps define where rock and metal had landed as the decade neared its close. But where Whitesnake's 1987 and Mötley Crüe's Girls Girls Girls epitomised the decadence of the era, the album that closes this show - Rush's Hold Your Fire - shows that some bands didn't need media fireworks and furore to keep pace with the times.

So here we go again, thrill-seekers, with another three albums looking for admittance to the Enter Sadmen Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Hall of Fame - an always evolving homage to the great and the good of that broad church we all worship in. This week, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out Points of the Compass as the theme against which the boys' album choices needed to be made. But since they'd already reviewed South Of Heaven in Episode 34, the lads got a bit stuck. After rejecting some obvious choices, Steve and Richard turned up with a couple of corkers. Mark's, on the other hand, choice set him and Steve on a collision course that no-one foresaw. Welcome, then, Axis and It's A Circus World, .38 Special and Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, and Threshold's Psychedelicatessen. All three albums were previously unknown to at least two of our tres hombres, and one that at least one of our merry band wished one of them had remained unknown. 

n the latest edition of the Enter Sadmen podcast the boys are challenged to find three albums oin the theme of Things That Swim.  Rich managed to hit the brief with You Can Tune A Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish, REO Speedwagon's forerunner to their commercial smash hit Hi Infidelity (which the boys reviewed way back in Episode 7).  Unfortunately, Mark and Steve stretched the elastic a bit too far by choosing things that float rather than things that swim. So, making up the trio of albums aiming for a place in the Top 100 of the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Hall of Fame are Kings Of Metal by Manowar - not, as Mark thought, a ray but instead a jellyfish-like organism totally incapable of self-propulsion; and, washing up on rock's shoreline, No Place For Disgrace by Flotsam And Jetsam (see what we did there?)

For the latest leg of their journey through the history of hard rock and heavy metal from 1970 to 1995, the boys were each tasked with finding an album that broadly met the theme of 'things that spin'. That made for an episode that began in 1973 with the album that most afdicionado's widely regard as ZZ (spinning) Top's finest - the raucous Tres Hombres. From there it was a 12 year sprint to the mid-Eighties and Fighting For The Earth, the 1985 debut effort from ahead-of-their-time Los Angeles environmentalists Warrior, ahead of a final stop at 1986 where German rockers launched album #6 on an expectant world. Would any of these high rollers garner enough critical acclaim to gain a coveted spot in the top 100 of the lads' increasingly competitive Hall of Fame?

After spending the evening chatting music, darts and very fast cars with Sky Sports F1 lead commentator David Croft a few weeks back, it was time for the lads to review the albums that Crofty had picked out for them to feature on the pod. After wrestling with the thorny issue of whether one of them - Springsteen's Born To Run - should be included (a question that prompted comparisons of an F1 car with a Le Mans prototype) the boys settled down to a week of listening that, as Steve observed, was never going to be a chore. First up, in place of The Boss (but featuring solidly in Crofty's Top 10 albums of all time) 1982's The Number Of The Beast by Iron Maiden. Having dealt with the band that ruled the metal globe in the late 80s, the Sadmen turned their attention to the band that would steal that crown for the 90s as they gorged on Ride The Lightning, the 1984 the coming of age release from Metallica. And making up this episode's trio, as incongruous in this company as the Foreign Secretary turning up to an ambassadorial dinner in a pair of silk pajamas, The Black Crowes with 1992's The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion.  

In this episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast the lads are travelling back to explore another year from hard rock and heavy metal's golden era of 1970 to 1995. This time, they're slap bang in the mid-80s - they year Bon Jovi's hair exploded and you weren't anyone unless you had a keyboard player in the band.   First up was Baby Tuckoo, a blink-and-you'll-miss-'em melodic hard rock band out of Bradford with their second - and. as it turned out, final outing Force Majeure. Lead singer Rob Armitage would briefly join German metallers Accept, but their two-album tilt at the big time left the world with some superior tunes that should have been bigger than they were. Next up, Seattle's other prodigal son Queensryche who followed up their debut album The Warning with Rage For Order, the record that would essentially lay down the marker for both sound and partiality to a concept album.   And rounding off the episode, a jaunt to the Land of the Rising Sun and the gazillionth album from the mighty Loudness - this time launching their own bid for superstardom with the Max Norman-produced Lightning Strikes.

This time out the boys are told to find three albums on the theme of 'machines' - which ended up being trickier to pull off than they had first imagined. But never ones to back down from a challenge, they each returned to Enter Sadmen HQ with an album each that met the brief - and gave them their hardest listening week since Tool and Kyuss were on the show back in Episode 10. This edition of the podcast features Orgasmatron from 1986 - Motorhead's first album as a four piece following the departures of both 'Fast' Eddie Clark and Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor, industrial US rockers Machine Head with 1994's Burn My Eyes, and Earth Crisis' 1995 offering Destroy The Machines.

In this episode of the Enter Sadmen podcast, the next three albums to join the list on the definitive all time hard rock and heavy metal hall of fame are linked by colours and include two bands yet to be considered by our trio of intrepid reviewers. First up is Thin Lizzy's Black Rose from 1979, the album that marked the final appearance - albeit briefly - of Gary Moore in his third visit to the line-up (two as a fully-fledged recording member and one as a touring substitute for Brian Robertson).  It's hard to find a Lizzy album that doesn't feature a stone cold classic - but how would this one fare following the rapturous reception given to 1983's Thunder And Lightning in episode 9? Next up, Steve introduces the first of the episode's newcomers, American melodic rockers White Sister and their second (and, to all intents and purposes, final) album - 1986's somewhat under-appreciated (one might go so far as to say unappreciated) Fashion By Passion. And helping to make the episode quorate, Richard introduces Anglo-American politicos Living Colour with their sophomore release from 1990, Time's Up. Three diverse albums by three diverse bands. But where would they end up in the big list?

After a forensic examination of the work of Max Norman in Episode 22, the second visit to the control desk by the Enter Sadmen podcast headed for America and the man behind some of the biggest selling rock albums of the 80s - the late Bruce Fairbairn. Mention Fairbairn in a game of word association and the chances are the words that immediately spring to mind are Bon and Jovi. closely followed by Slippery, When and Wet. In fact, record a show about Fairbairn's work and it would be an act of near criminality to omit New Jersey's finest (with apologies to Springsteen fans) from consideration.  Joining Jon and the boys were veteran rockers Aerosmith and their renaissance album from 1987, Permanent Vacation. And Steve deals up the joker in the pack with Gorky Park, the band mentored and championed by JBJ back in the day, and their self-titled debut.

The lads fired up the time machine for the latest episode in their quest to find the greatest rock album of all time, journeying back to the farthest limits of the Enter Sadmen Podverse. 1970 is the arbitrary stepping off point for the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal Hall of Fame, so it was no surprise when the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes finally cranked it out as the focus of episode 37. The boys went off in search of musical riches and reconvened on WhatsApp a week before the show was recorded to share their discoveries. Mark, it turned out, went more or less mainstream, breaking the elasticity of time to offer up Climbing!, the debut album from Mountain (if you discount the Leslie West solo album Mountain, which is now largely viewed as the spiritual start of Mountain's recording career). Steve went deep into the unknown and unearthed a then much admired but long since forgotten self-titled debut from US prog rockers Bloodrock. And Richard emerged clutching the better-known and eponymously-titled calling card from Lucifer's Friend, featuring future Uriah Heep vocalist John Lawton, the only Brit in an otherwise all-German line-up. Get your bell bottoms ready - 'cos this one's a banger ...

In the latest special edition of the Enter Sadmen podcast the lads catch up with John Verity - guitarist, vocalist, record producer and, as it turned out, a fount of great rock and roll stories. In the course of their hour and a bit the boys were taken on a journey that included guns at dusk with Jimi Hendrix's road crew, a manager dropped from a 4th floor Miami window in a drug bust, life on tour with Argent, being 'encouraged' to leave the United States by the US immigration service, the trials and tribulations of getting the Verity-produced Saxon debut over the line, and a far from conventional production gig on a Motorhead live album ... Strap in for a hilarious ride through a rock and roll life that starts back in the 1960s ... and discover what albums mark the emotional waypoints of one of Britain's great blues rock guitarists ...

For the latest leg of their tour through rock and metal's highlights and lowlights the boys were given the brief of 'transport'. The rules were simple - the band name, album title or album cover had to have a demonstrable link to a form of transport. Like all the pod themes, it should have been easy. But then Steve and Rich hadn't factored in Mark's wide-ranging interpretation of what transport might actually mean, nor the fact that he failed to make the link between Steve's album choice and a well-known electric car brand. Eventually, though, they settled down to chew over the various merits - or otherwise - of three debut albums from three 1980s outfits who would go on to have varying degrees of success. First up was Def Leppard's 1980 cherry-popper On Through The Night - an album the band has since more or less airbrushed from their own history - and completely airbrushed from their live set. Which, according to Mark, gives a small insight into how fast and loose musicians can play with the loyalty of fans who were there at the start. Next in line was Terraplane's Black And White, a record that sowed the first seeds of what would set the band on the road to public affection once they rebuffed their label's attempts to turn them into Rick Springfield-esque pop rockers, changed their name to Thunder and dialled up the guitars. Finally, another of rock's finest debuts from Sacramento rockers Tesla and Mechanical Resonance, released in 1986. As Steve said - it's hard to imagine a time without the majesty of Modern Day Cowboy ...  

For this edition of the pod, the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out the ball with 'HEALTH' written on it, which meant the lads each had to find an album that not only had a medical theme, but was also infectious enough to merit consideration for a place in the Top 100 rock and metal albums of all time. Richard tunnelled back to 1977 and emerged with the Ted Nugent classic Cat Scratch Fever. Mark put on his rose-tinted spectacles and relived a 1987 holiday in L.A., a lot of West Coast sunshine and the then-newly released Contagious from Bay Area veterans Y&T. And Steve returned to 1988 and the day Poison released their second album, Open Up And Say ... Ahhh! The only thing left to decide was the prognosis for each, which was easier said than done.

Episode 34 of the Enter Sadmen podcast sees the lads taking a more spiritual approach to their listening as the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spits out the ball labelled Religion to determine this instalment's theme. But even though the show's title is a nod to all you Metal Church fans out there, the boys managed to avoid the dark (see what we did there?) and instead chose another ecelctic selection of albums spanning two decades. Leading the charge is Steve with the first of what he considers to be Genesis's holy trinity of albums, 1971's Nursery Cryme. Richard fast forwards to 1985 and adds a neo-gothic hue to proceedings by picking Love from The Cult. And in a surprise move, Mark opts for expertly crafted blunt force trauma with Slayer's 1988 release South Of Heaven. Let the arguments commence!

So, for this episode the Tico Torres Tombola of Topics and Themes spat out Concept Albums, which gave the boys a very large playing field to go at. A night, surely, for the big hitters to make an appearance ... who would choose Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway? Who would earmark Thick As A Brick to represent Tull's third visit to the pod? And surely to God Richard couldn't resist the temptation to slide Operation: Mindcrime into the mix, could he? The reality, as it turned out, was very different. Richard turned up with Helloween's Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part I which certainly tells a story - but would the l;ads be able to work out what it was? Then Mark threw the curve ball from left field as he rocked up with Warfare's tribute to the UK's best-loved horror studio, 1990's Hammer Horror. We're still not sure if Steve and Rich have forgiven him for that. Although arguably Steve had bigger questions to face as he delved into the box marked 'Noise' for Fear Factory's Demanufacture, an album which by his own admission met the brief in only the most gossamer-thin sense.