Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!William Wordsworth, The Prelude
Most of the records sank. When the independent labels folded and the majors cleared their rosters between 1982 and 1984, the wave went down like a merchant convoy caught by a winter gale off the Tyne with its holds full, and for forty years reissue labels and collectors have been sending divers to the wrecks, cutting the crates open on deck and finding most of the cargo rotted through and a few cases still sealed, dry and fit for sale. The best NWOBHM albums are those cases.
Ten held. Each is a full-length album, made by a band of the new wave of british heavy metal between 1980 and 1983, and each still plays from the first groove to the last, which is more than can be said for several that outsold them. Singles, EPs and demos, where much of the wave's best work lives, answer to a different court.
The best NWOBHM albums that reached the chart
The five who had outgrown a pub disco's request chart by the spring of 1980 were Iron Maiden, and their self-titled debut, released by EMI that April with Paul Di'Anno singing and the producer Will Malone at a desk the band later disowned, went to number four in Britain. Iron Maiden carries "Prowler", "Running Free", "Remember Tomorrow" and the seven minutes of "Phantom of the Opera", a song that changes direction more often than a street fight. The playing is sharper than the sound. It still wins.
Released by Carrere in April 1980 and driven to number five on the album chart, Wheels of Steel is the record on which Saxon learned to write for the crowd rather than at it, with "747 (Strangers in the Night)" as the hit, "Motorcycle Man" as the opening salvo and the title track stamping along at the pace of a march. Their later Denim and Leather is the better album. This one is the purer one.
The Whitley Bay band that swapped singers and added John Sykes on second guitar before it went back into the studio with Chris Tsangarides were Tygers of Pan Tang, and Spellbound, released by MCA in 1981 and taken to number thirty-three, is their best record by a distance, Jon Deverill's voice and the two guitars pulling "Gangland" and "Hellbound" much tighter than anything on Wild Cat.
Four women from London who had toured in Motörhead's slipstream answered to Girlschool, and Hit and Run, produced by Vic Maile and out on Bronze in April 1981, reached number five on songs as short and blunt as "C'mon Let's Go" and the title track. Def Leppard's High 'n' Dry, the first of their records with "Mutt" Lange in 1981, misses the ten by a hair, peaking at twenty-six in Britain against thirty-eight in the United States, its eyes already fixed on America.
Brian Tatler's riffs outran the budget by miles. The budget never caught up.
Pressed on a shoestring
The Stourbridge four who could not find a label and pressed Lightning to the Nations themselves in 1980, on Happy Face, in a plain sleeve with no title on it, were Diamond Head, and "Am I Evil?", "The Prince" and "Sucking My Love" make it, beyond dispute, the one record on the shelf nobody argues about. Brian Tatler's riffs outran the budget by miles. The budget never caught up.
The Edinburgh five whose The Nightcomers came out on the small Phoenix label in 1981, carrying "Heavy Metal Mania", "Smokin' Valves" and the slow, circling "The Small Hours", were Holocaust. Raven's Rock Until You Drop, cut for Neat the same year, only just misses the ten, played at a pace that left the drummer no time to breathe.
Cut at Impulse Studios in Wallsend on Neat's money and released that December, Welcome to Hell is the record that made Venom a byword for heresy, and on "Witching Hour", "In League with Satan" and the title track the band plays like a coal fire kicked across a bare floor, embers skidding into every corner and nobody reaching for a brush. It is crude. It meant to be.
Records the next genres stripped for parts
The Stourbridge band that slowed the wave to the pace of a tumbril climbing to the scaffold, with riffs dragged up the hill one turn of the wheel at a time, was Witchfinder General, and Death Penalty, released by Heavy Metal Records in 1982, holds "Witchfinder General" and "Burning a Sinner". Doom's whole lineage has been taking it apart for decades. It was never a hit.
The trio Algy Ward built with the brothers Peter and Mark Brabbs called itself Tank, and Filth Hounds of Hades, produced by "Fast" Eddie Clarke while he was still Motörhead's guitarist and released on Kamaflage in 1982, kicks its riffs through the record like a steel toecap through a pub's back door, with "Shellshock" and "Turn Your Head Around" doing most of the damage. Speed metal was listening.
The Tyneside five that arrived when the wave was already ebbing, with Brian Ross on vocals and Russ Tippins and Steve Ramsey on guitars, went by the name Satan. Court in the Act, released by Neat in 1983, is the last great record the movement made, the two guitars fencing on "Trial by Fire" and "Blades of Steel" rapier against rapier at a speed that would take an eye out. Thrash was months away. It could hear this.
Two records with a higher seat
Two albums of the wave sit higher than any of these, on a wider shelf. The debut by Angel Witch, on Bronze in 1980, and Saxon's Denim and Leather of 1981 are ranked among the best heavy metal albums of all time, and both have already been weighed against the whole genre and held. Take them as read.
Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, number one in Britain in April 1982, stands outside the ten for the opposite reason. It is the record on which the band left the wave behind, with Bruce Dickinson at the microphone and Martin Birch at the desk, and it belongs to the arena years that followed.
The shelf below the ten is crowded. Jaguar's Power Games, on Neat in 1983, runs nearly as fast as Satan without the songs to match; Praying Mantis's Time Tells No Lies, on Arista in 1981, has the songs and a polish closer to American radio than to a pub back room; Samson's Head On, from 1980, is heard today mostly for a singer who would soon be elsewhere. Close. Not close enough.
Some of the wave's sharpest bands never finished an album while it lasted. Blitzkrieg, remembered for the single "Buried Alive", did not release a full-length until A Time of Changes in 1985, and Sweet Savage waited until 1996 for Killing Time. Their best work sits on seven-inch singles, which is where much of the movement's energy was always spent.
| Album | Band | Label | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron Maiden | Iron Maiden | EMI | 1980 |
| Wheels of Steel | Saxon | Carrere | 1980 |
| Lightning to the Nations | Diamond Head | Happy Face | 1980 |
| Hit and Run | Girlschool | Bronze | 1981 |
| Spellbound | Tygers of Pan Tang | MCA | 1981 |
| The Nightcomers | Holocaust | Phoenix | 1981 |
| Welcome to Hell | Venom | Neat | 1981 |
| Death Penalty | Witchfinder General | Heavy Metal Records | 1982 |
| Filth Hounds of Hades | Tank | Kamaflage | 1982 |
| Court in the Act | Satan | Neat | 1983 |
One band never appears among the wave's records at all, and it is the one people ask about most. The band that recorded British Steel in 1980 had five studio albums behind it before the wave had a name, and whether that makes it part of the movement or its teacher is argued out in is Judas Priest NWOBHM. The short answer is no.
Every one of the ten was made faster and cheaper than the records that outsold it in its year. Every one has outlived them.
