The Industrial Twilight: Heavy Load - "Stronger Than Evil" [1983]

Saturday, May 27, 2017

Heavy Load - "Stronger Than Evil" [1983]

Artist: Heavy Load

Title: Stronger Than Evil

Genre: Heavy Metal

Country: Sweden

Release date: 1983

Track List:

Run with the Devil
The King
Singing Swords
Dreaming
Stronger than Evil
Free
Saturday Night
Roar of the North

Heavy Load were arguably the first metal band to come out of Sweden, formed in 1976 and released their debut album "Full Speed At The High Level". In addition, the closing track on that album, "Son of the Northern Light", might be the first viking metal song ever, with lyrics more expected from some black or pagan metal band from the mid-1990s. However, when it comes to music, it's rather sloppy and uninteresting compared with their later releases - in particular, this one.

Of course you shouldn't expect this album to be viking metal as we understand it nowadays - it's a fairly traditional heavy metal release which, however, has influenced both many viking metal bands, and traditional heavy metal bands like Manowar. Too bad they broke up shortly after releasing this album, and their two comebacks in 1985 and 1987 were unsuccessful. Most metal fans nowadays probably wouldn't be familiar with them, if Hammerfall haven't covered their song "Run with the Devil". It's a pity because they were a seminal band for the whole Scandinavian metal scene, and they certainly doesn't deserve to be forgotten. My personal favourite on this album is the closing track, "Roar of the North".

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).