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Omen: Battle Cry (1984)

If you were a daydreaming, Tolkien-reading, Dungeons & Dragons-playing teenager with a penchant for decorating your school notebook with fantasy drawings and band logos, this gatefold LP’s artwork and Omen’s medieval battle garb on the flip would look like your wildest imagination made real, am I right?

And while it’s true that many up-and-coming American metal bands of the early 1980s wanted to be just like Iron Maiden, very few came closer than Los Angeles’ Omen did with this excellent debut, filled with heroic head-banging adventures like “Death Rider,” “Dragon’s Breath” and “In the Arena.”

Heck, Ronnie James Dio would have killed to write these castle metal nuggets!

Omen’s Maiden fantasies were further fulfilled on “Die by the Blade” (where guitarist Kenny Powell conjures up studio magic to clone him some twin harmonies), the frantic “Last Rites” (which bridges Steve Harris’ patented gallop and the ensuing, thrash-fueled power metal style), and the blush-inducing “love song,” “Be My Wench” (not exactly “Charlotte the Harlot,” but close enough). 

All these years later, Omen’s innocent yet enthusiastic devotion to these traditional heavy metal devices is impossible to resist; so it’s a bummer that increasingly disappointing later efforts wound up undermining their standing among U.S.-bred classic metal bands of their generation – like, say, the overrated Metal Church, the often ludicrous Manowar, or even well-deserving label mates Armored Saint. 

Such is life … in war and metal!

You can read these and other impassioned observations in my All-Music Guide review for Battle Cry.

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Venom: At War with Satan (1984)

To understand the folly of At War with Satan and its meandering, twenty-minute-long, side one-spanning title track, one has to remember that, in 1983, Venom weren’t revered black metal pioneers, but rather mocked as incompetent buffoons by the vast majority of heavy metal fans and critics.

Oh, how perceptions can change over time …

So as I pointed out in my All-Music Guide review, what Venom craved, above all else, as they prepared their third studio LP was R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and they were willing to take desperate measures in order to validate both their musical and songwriting abilities.

Obviously, the lovable trio of Cronos, Mantas and Abaddon were simply not cut out to pull off such an ambitious endeavor (but then, how many bands are?), and what memorable moments do crop up are, I think, ultimately neutralized by “At War with Satan’s” massive, oft-confusing girth.

Thankfully, Venom reverted to their brief and blistering speed metal ways on side two, which contains the very respectable tandem of “Rip Ride” and “Genocide,” the all-bases-covering “Women, Leather And Hell” (what else is there in life, really?), before having the last laugh with the self-effacing and self-explanatory “AAAAAAARRGHH.”

And what a long and hearty laugh Venom would have a few years later, when their primitive creations were rightfully revealed to be so groundbreaking and influential upon the evolutionary course of heavy metal, warts and all – heck, especially because heavy metal SHOULD have warts and all! 

Finally, let’s celebrate At War with Satan’s deluxe gatefold packaging, which was designed to look like an ancient grimoire, complete with satanic readings and, as you can see above, a unique misprint on the A-Side label of this Roadrunner Records pressing, reading “Dat War with Satan,” which for some reason cracks me up every time.

And it could have been even worse/better if it were “Dat War with Stan”!

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TBH learned the hard way.

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Motörhead and Girlschool -Please dont Touch

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Beetlejuice (1988)

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Hocus Pocus |1993| Kenny Ortega

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Johnny Depp’s deleted scene from A Nightmare On Elm Street, 1984.

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Don’t Break The Oath