2009年 01月 9日 金曜日 07:28

(Previous NWoBHM Band of the Week) / (Next NWoBHM Band of the Week)

This is the fourth entry in my ongoing series investigating the less succesful New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands (nwobhm). This week, I'm going to be discussing savage (not to be confused with the other artists they share a page with).

It was difficult to find information on this band anywhere other than their Myspace Page, mostly due to identically named and similarly named bands eclipsing Savage in most searches I could imagine, but eventually I managed to turn up a lot of listening material and a few extra scraps of information.

As far as my sources indicate, two original band members, vocalist/bassist Chris Bradley and guitarist Andy Dawson, have always been with Savage. Initially the line-up was completed by Wayne Renshaw (guitar) and Dave Lindley (drums), but by the time of the first full length album Lindley had been replaced by Mark Brown. The band quote Thin Lizzy, UFO, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Wishbone Ash and Van Halen as their primary influences, but place an emphasis on Thin Lizzy by describing the their debut album as including "some fine Lynnot-esque narrative style lyric writing".

Although the band formed in Masnfield, Nottinghamshire in 1978, the band's first album loose 'n lethal was not released until 1983, and was preceded by 1982's single ain't no fit place b/w the china run (both sides of which were also used on the 8 track LP). Listen to the a-side on the band's myspace and you may be able to hear some of the Phil Lynnot influence the band claim to have.

Loose 'n Lethal became the band's biggest success, receiving good reviews and frequent imports to America, but the band's label, Ebony records, was independent and inexperienced and couldn't cope with the demand, ushering the contract to an early termination.

Loose n' Lethal track listing with youtube links
track 1, Let it Loose (youtube)
track 2, cry wolf (youtube)
track 3, berlin (see below)
track 4, dirty money (youtube)
track 5, Ain't No Fit Place (see the band's myspace)
track 6, on the rocks (youtube)
track 7, The China Run
track 8, white hot (youtube)

Interestingly metallica (supposedly) covered Let it Loose in '82 (before the album had even been released…you can see why I'm dubious of this 'fact' can't you?) here.

When searching for Berlin, I came across this video, which I assume to be fan made, but as it provides a break from the monotony of my writing I thought I'd imbed it: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tGrF7qM6s

Contract with Ebony records terminated, Savage quickly signed with similarly unknown independent record label Zebra Records for another single and album cycle. This time we got the edge (1984) preceded hyperactive (1985). As evidenced by the lack of youtube clips to represent this album, Hyperactive saw nothing like the success of Loose 'n Lethal. I did find the whole album downloadable through a dubius blogspot link though. If you've gone through the Loose 'n Lethal videos though, you needn't bother testing Hyperactive as it is not a huge departure. In a few places, most notably the single, and opening track We Got The Edge, the Thin Lizzy influence shows through prominently, but there's not really a lot on Hyperactive to make it stand out from the NWOBHM pack or stick in your head apart from the nice cover art.

While with Zebra, offers from more capable record companies including Roadrunner came in, but the band was unable to negotiate their way out of their contract with Zebra and following the commercial failure of Hyperactive entered an early retirement in 1986.

As so often seems to be the case though, this NWOBHM band was urged out of retirement after almost a decade. The tygers of pan tang's Jess Cox had become CEO of Neat Metal Records and remembering the members of Savage from their days of extensive touring persuaded Bradley and Dawson into reviving the band name, resulting in 1995's Holy Wars. (Frustratingly, I haven't yet been able to find out who completed the band's line-up for any of the post re-union albums.)

Again, Holy Wars didn't garner the following of Loose 'n Lethal, having no presence on youtube except for the re-recording of let it loose '95 (youtube). Additionally, how is available on the band's myspace page. The only other place I could find samples of this album was another blogspot download. On Holy Wars, the band sound less frantic and a closer fit for what we today would describe as hard rock rather than metal. To my ears, the influence of Thin Lizzy is now more prominent than it has ever been, while Chris Bradley's voice could hardly be more different from Lynnot's, the lyrics and arrangements frequently sound like a deliberate attempt to emulate Lynnot, as frequently do the bass lines, particularly the thunder and lightning album. fashion by force even takes a riff directly from thunder and lightning and there are several guitar moments that sound similarly designed to replicate the Sykes/Gorham pairing of Thunder and Lightning. Having said that, it's not a total Thin Lizzy tribute album, other named influences Queen, Led Zeppelin and Van Halen come to mind come to mind in the first few tracks alone. Check the track How on their myspace page and tell me you don't hear a few seconds of Zeppelin in the intro before a near full track of Thin Lizzy emulation.

With that, there's little left to say. babylon and xtreme machine followed Hoyl Wars on teh Neat label before a best-of was released on Sanctuary/Castle (by now I'm well aware that anything on Sanctuary/Castle is probably the doing of Iron Maiden manager Mr. Smallwood, hence why so many NWOBHM acts seem to have ended up with best-of releases on the label). Release dates for Babylon and Xtreme Machine seem to be under debate, varying with different sources, but 96-97 seems to be the window for Babylon, which the band claim to be one of the best metal releases of the 90s, though they only provide a ballad for sampling on their myspace. Xtreme Machine has been listed as both a 2000 and 2001 release, while its track smiling assassin on the band's myspace is all I have managed to sample from it. Smiling Assassin does remind me of soundgarden though, the verse melody reminds me specifically of my wave, judge for yourself though.

In summary, Savage probably aren't the greatest NWOBHM band by a long way. Their early material had a lot of energy, but hasn't struck me as the most catchy, pioneering or well written from a songwriting point of view. Holy Wars if you can get your hands on it is, on the other hand, very accessible with catchier songs that stand apart from each other more distinctly and is an enjoyable listen. It's still not pioneering, but possibly the closest thing to a sequel to Thin Lizzy's Thunder and Lightning the world will ever have, so worth listening to for that alone, surely?