I can't even remember when I picked up this record. I can tell by the symbol in pen on the back that it was a while back because I have a bunch of records with that symbol. Someone marked all their records with that symbol instead of their name and then the whole collection ended up at the thrift store. I purchased a bunch of records from that collection back in the day. So why post this record now. Why even digitize this record now. Well the story goes like this. This last year I bought my first house. Yes, I know. It is exciting. So the house has this long hallway and I decided that for Christmas this year I would hang all Christmas album down the whole hallway. Stay with me, this will work its way back to More. So those Christmas records stayed up until the end of January. They were the last Christmas decorations to come down. Part of the reason it took so long was I couldn't decide what the new theme should be with the records. One afternoon I looked through all the records, specifically for album covers to get some inspiration for a theme. I was toying with the idea of all Sinatra records, metal records and hard core punk records from the 80's. I ended up going with the hard core punk theme. Also during this search I pulled records that I had forgotten about or perhaps never even listened to that might be good candidates for the blog. Well, this record was one of those records. So now two months later it is finally making it to these pages.
I didn't know anything about this band before buying it and even before listening to it. In fact I thought the band name was Warhead up until I began doing research for this blog. I had to rename all my files and re-upload them once I discovered that mistake. Most of my reading came from this very informative
article about More and review of this very record. I'm glad I stumbled across it because I was about to post that it was hard to find anything on this band, but as it turns out it was because I had the wrong name.
I gave the record a good solid listen this morning on my morning walk. As I walked I thought about what I might write. They sounded to me like they were part of the whole New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which I then confirmed through that blog review.
The other thing I new I had to mention was the opening of "Fire". It starts off with the lyric "I am the god of hellfire" which of course reminded me of "Fire" by Prodigy. I did some quick research on where Prodigy got their sample. It wasn't from More, but was from Arthur Brown's 1968 track "Crazy World Of Arthur Brown". So how's that for going on a random thread of thought. All I know is I want to track down "Crazy World Of Arthur Brown" now. Needless to say, "Fire" is one of the better tracks. Overall I'd say side one had the better tracks. "Road Rocket" is solid and a decent album opening. The opening riffs remind me of "Blackout" which opening the Scorpions record of the same name, but was release the year following this record. However if I had to choose between the two songs, Scorps would win. "Soldier" pretty good. 'Reminds me of Judas Priest or maybe Rainbow comes to mind as well. Some tasty guitar licks in there. I really like "Depression". Lyrically it kind of reminds me of something a punk band may sing about, but musically it is square in the land of hard rock or heavy metal. The rest of the tracks are standard fair. Listenable, but nothing you want to go back to over and over.
As for the artwork, I dig on the simplicity which is why it was also a candidate for the wall. I also like the name Warhead. It's so 80's. We were all so afraid of nuclear war or nuclear meltdowns. The nuclear war fear has subsided and I think even the meltdown fear has lessened until recent events in Japan. Even still it was a great 80's theme in metal and even punk rock.
The other reason I suspected the album would be somewhat decent was the picture on the back. To me it clearly says that these guys mean business. These guys aren't getting by on their looks, so I had to assume they had some musical chops to get them a record deal. That isn't the case for the next record I will post. I'll leave you with that tease for the next posting, which shouldn't be too far away.
Enjoy!
01 Road Rocket
02 Fire
03 Soldier
04 Depression
05 Warhead
06 Way Of The World 07 We Are The Band 08 I Have No Answers
More - Warhead.zip
01 Road Rocket
02 Fire
03 Soldier
04 Depression
05 Warhead
06 Way Of The World
07 We Are The Band
08 I Have No Answers
Here's a bonus track from the German release.
"Lord Of Twilight"
Am I on a roll or what? Another post in the same week. This is my companion piece to the More record from the post last week. I picked this up for the cover, especially the hair. The actual music on the record is pretty weak. The first track is okay, and by that I mean it isn't un-listenable. The rest of the record is all rather dreadful and not even in a cheeseball fun way. It's just bad. The badness reminds me of Dirk Diggler's band in Boogie Nights.
