Ольга Рожнова - "Дорога" [1990]

Artist: Ольга Рожнова

Title: Дорога

Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock

Country: USSR

Release date: 1990

Track List: 

1. Дорога
2. Грусть
3. К Счастью Путь
4. Белый Снег
5. Мы Все Зависим Друг От Друга
6. Защитить Своей Судьбой
7. Вот И Все

On 8th of March, I traditionally post something with female vocals, and it would be a good idea to post this undeservedly forgotten album that was unearthed and re-released not so long ago by GS Productions. Olga Rozhnova started professionally playing music in 1980 and was a member of a pop-rock band VIA Aquarelle until 1986. Since 1984, she started to write her own songs, and with the help of musicians of a band called "Park", she released her debut cassette album in 1987. After that, she formed her own band called "Voyage", with which she has recorded this album in late 80s. That was the time when Soviet hard rock became hyped in the West (for a rather short time), and it gave them an opportunity for a tour in Germany with the American singer Annie Addington. From 1993 to 1995, Olga was one of the hosts of a TV show called "Rock-n-Roll TV". However, mid-1990's were very bad times in post-Soviet countries in general and for rock/metal musicians in particular, and after releasing one more album in 1995 (which featured mostly ballad-oriented hard rock), Olga has stopped making new music.

This album is easily the best out of everything she has recorded, and one of the best Soviet hard rock/metal albums I've heard. The first half may be 80's hard rock in the vein of Lita Ford, but the second half is definitely metal (if a bit ballad-oriented). I won't be the first to call Olga "Soviet Lita Ford", but I think her voice is even more powerful, and nearly every song on this album is a hit (although the quality of production may vary):

Turbonegro - "Rock'N'Roll Machine" [2018]

Artist: Turbonegro

Title: Rock'N'Roll Machine

Genre: "Death Punk", Hard Rock

Country: Norway

Release date: 2018

Track List: 

1. Chrome Ozone Creation (The Rock And Roll Machine Suite Part I)
2. Part II: Well Hello
3. Part III: Rock'N'Roll Machine
4. Hurry Up & Die
5. Fist City
6. Skinhead Rock & Roll
7. Hot For Nietzsche
8. On The Rag
9. Let The Punishment Fit The Behind
10. John Carpenter Powder Ballad
11. Special Education

I think we all can agree that Turbonegro are much more than just a punk band. Their unique mix of glam rock, punk and hard rock/heavy metal was dubbed "death punk" (not to be confusted with deathrock!), and their international fan club "TurboJugend" has reached a level of a mini subculture on it own, known for the heavy use of politically incorrect humour and provocative imagery with a clear homoerotic innuendo:

It wasn't worse than Pål Bøttger Kjærnes (Pål Pot Pamparius) screaming out aloud: "Hey, let's put a new band together! What shall the band name be?" Pål suggests Mindburger. Another suggests Nazipenis (which later ended up as a name of the band's tribute band). But suddenly Pål remembers a tag he had seen under a bridge in Finstad, Ski. Turboneger (Turbonegro in english). Founding member Thomas Seltzer once said, "A turbonegro is a large, well-equipped, armed black male in a fast car, out for vengeance. We are his prophets."

Their final band consists of: Hans-Erik Dyvik Husby, vocals (Hank Von Helvete), Thomas Seltzer, bass (Happy-Tom), Rune Grønn, guitar (Rune Rebellion), Pål Bøttger Kjærnes, percussion & piano (Pål Pot Pamparius), Knut Schreiner, lead guitar (Euroboy) and Christer Engen, drums (Chris Summers).

 From an old interview with Hank von Helvete:

Q: But don't you know that in Germany the Iron Cross is a symbol of the Political Right-Wing and the Nazis ?!?

A: This symbol is a lot older than the Nazis. I don't believe they are allowed to incorporate these symbols for their matters, and that we are now forced to stick to it forever. I am wearing this sign because I am a dominant Norse homo punk rocker, and 'coz I love to beat up people.

Don't you love those guys?.. Their latest up-to-date album "Rock'N'Roll Machine" is easily one of their best, no worse than their legendary release "Apocalypse Dudes" from 20 years before. It's quite far from classic punk, incorporating a lot of elements of 80s hard/glam rock and even synthwave, but the true punk attitude is definitely there. My favourite tracks are "Special Education", "Part III: Rock'N'Roll Machine" (which again offended someone's sensitivities with the line "I work all day and I last all night and I'm cheaper than a Mexican", although the actual Mexican TurboJugend members loved this song, and the band themselves explained it as a "song sung in the first person by a character; a creepily love-sick cyborg bragging about how he is going to take over the world and destroy the job market. He’s also a reactionary and a bigot. Pretty satirical stuff..."), "Hurry Up And Die", and of course, "Hot For Nietzsche" (which is, in my opinion, one of their best songs ever, along with "Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker" from "Apocalypse Dudes"):

Northern Haze - "ᓯᕿᓐᓈᕈᑦ (Sinnaktuq)" [1986]

Artist: Northern Haze

Title: Sinnaktuq

Genre: Hard Rock/Metal

Country: Canada

Release date: 1986

Track List: 

1. Qailaurit (Come Here)
2. Nutaraq (Poor Child)
3. Quviasuk (Let's Have a Good Time)
4. Puigo (Can't Forget)
5. Sinnaktuq (Dreams)
6. Anivunga (Set Free)
7. Trust
8. Inusivut (Our Life)
9. Uvaguk (You and I)

This album is believed to be the first rock/metal release with lyrics in an indigenous language of North America. Northern Haze were formed in a small Inuit village in the far north of Canada (Nunavit) in 1984 or 1985, and released only one album during their heyday. They've reformed in 2017 and recorded a new album not long ago, but with a different lineup, as their original bassist died of cancer, and their former guitarist/vocalist was murdered. As for their classic 1986 album, it turned out to be lot less "exotic" than I've expected (pretty simplistic 80s hard rock, but with lyrics in the Inuit language), but nevertheless it would be an interesting discovery for anyone who's interested in the minor indigenous languages and cultures of the Arctic.

Дубль-1 - s/t EP [1986]

Artist: Дубль-1

Title: Дубль-1 (demo EP)

Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock

Country: USSR
Year: 1986

Track List:

1. Дни, подстерегающие нас
2. Суббота
3. Ворон-викинг
4. Страшный век
5. Спи, дитя

Among the bands featured on this compilation, there's one female-fronted band (one of the very few ones at that time) called Markiza (not to be confused with Markize!), which was considerably popular among Soviet metal fans during the late 80s, yet is largely forgotten by now. Here's their even more obscure predecessor, whose music I personally like better.

Both bands were started by Sergey Sokolov, who began his career of a professional musician in 1970, and has played guitar in many "prestigious" pop/rock bands during the 70s. By the end of 1978, he and his wife Elena decided to record a hard rock album. They did have recorded a full-length album by 1982 (which wasn't officially released), but it wasn't particularly "hard" when it comes to sound. After one more failed pop/rock project, they again decided to start a hard rock band in early 1985. Their first live performance for a big audience took place at the festival "Rock Panorama '86" - the very first official rock festival held in Moscow during 4-8 May 1986. Again, they haven't played anything particularly "hard" there - their program consisted solely of pop-rock, although of a rather good kind:

While they haven't particularly impressed the public with their sound, Elena did cause a scandal by demonstratively wearing a very short skirt on stage - nothing special in today's times, but quite provocative back then. Yet that performance helped them to get more recognition, and, after some line-up changes, they officially hired by the Moscow regional philharmonic society. This enabled them to record their one and only hard rock EP, which is presented here. However, the next 1987 year wasn't good for them - Elena and Sergey have divorced, and in the end of the year, they were fired from the philharmonic. Later in 1988, they went on to form a much more successful glam-oriented band Markiza, but that's another story.

This EP turned out to be surprisingly good, all things considered. Obviously influenced by Lita Ford, Doro Pesch and Lee Aaron, it mostly lies on the blurry boundary between hard rock and traditional heavy metal (+ a ballad in the end of the EP, which is probably the best song on the whole release). The 3rd track can even be half-jokingly considered to be the first viking metal song made in the USSR... or, with all seriousness, probably the first Soviet/Russian metal song with lyrics based on the Norse mythology:

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Юрий Морозов - "Свадьба кретинов" [1976]

Artist: Юрий Морозов

Title: Свадьба кретинов

Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Proto-Punk

Country: USSR

Release date: 1976

Track List:

1. Конформист 
2. Кретин 
3. Не знаю, за что 
4. Дай крылья мне, Бог 
5. А мне и так конец 
6. Свадьба кретинов (Бродяга пес) 
7. Сон 
8. Черный пес

Yuri Morozov's name is largely unknown to modern Russian rock fans, but he was a cult figure during the 1970s, mainly because he was one of the first to record several proper rock albums in the USSR. He started his first band in late 1969 when he lived in North Ossetia, but his early works were far from rock music - it was mostly acoustic singer-songwriter stuff usual for the 1960s Soviet independent music scene. Three years later, he started to work at a Melodia studio in Leningrad as a sound engineer. So, he was lucky to have access to the professional recording equipment, which enabled him to record several albums in good quality (if you really want to know how awful most amateur recordings from that time were, check out this or this).

In the early 1980s he became increasingly religious and quite reclusive in his lifestyle. During the late 1980s Russian rock boom he formed a new band which wasn't particularly successful. Until his death in 2006, he worked mostly as a sound engineer and a writer, yet he's now remembered mostly as a multi-instrumentalist and a pioneer of Soviet rock.

His discography is quite vast, consisting of 50 or so albums, ranging from psychedelic rock and hard rock to electronic/ambient. This album is his best known work, recorded at his workplace in 1976 and released on tape in 1977. The vocals for a couple of songs, which had some "risky" lyrics, were recorded at home. Lines like "I'm a cretin and I love it!" would indeed fit into the lyrics of any early punk band quite well, but as a whole, this album is fairly typical psychedelic/hard rock of the early 1970s. It is also noticeably different in tone from his early recordings, which were more lighthearted, with fairly inoffensive lyrical topics of the "wine, women and songs" variety, while this one is much gloomier, with a prominent theme of death and suicide; the topics of spirituality and non-conformism are also present. Overall, this album might be nothing special by the measures of the Western rock scene of that time, but it was a breakthrough for the Soviet rock scene, and it certainly doesn't deserve to be forgotten. Enjoy:

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Voltz - "Knight's Fall" [1982]

Artist: Voltz

Title: Knight's Fall

Genre: NWOBHM, Hard Rock

Country: UK

Release date: 1982

Track List:

1. After Armageddon
2. In a Dream
3. Dorian Grey
4. Badon Hill
5. The Rose
6. Red Eyes
7. Years
8. Knight's Fall

"An album which represented the "screw you, we'll do it ourselves" philosophy of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal - if not its customary sonic blueprint - Voltz' Knight's Fall was a largely independently financed and produced affair, complete with bottom-dollar recording conditions and a charmingly amateurish, hand-drawn cover featuring an armored knight with a swooning damsel in one arm, a sword hoisted high in the other, and a castle looming in the background. But metal fans of the day were in for quite a surprise once they dropped needle onto the vinyl album's grooves; for, as well as generous helpings of hard rock and metal found in the Quartz-like "Badon Hill" and the no-frills "Red Eyes," Knight's Fall was actually dominated by astonishingly mellow and melodious elements. And when combined with the band's template-free songwriting approach for ambitious material such as "After Armageddon" and "Years," these elements produced truly unusual results, arguably closer to progressive rock than metal - although stylistic parallels can be found in fellow Brits Witchfynde and, a little further away and a few years earlier, Wichita, KS originals Manilla Road. Moreover, Voltz didn't even bother to juice up their amps during lengthy, almost gothic-folk ballads like "In a Dream" and the title cut, but struck the perfect balance between their dark and light extremities on the standouts "Dorian Gray" and "The Rose." In the end, Knight's Fall was the sort of idiosyncratic work that had a few wide-eyed supporters embracing Voltz as the second coming, while the vast majority of metal and prog fans were simply left confused..."

...Well, the review quoted above is pretty much spot on, and I too was quite surprised to find this on the Vibrations of Doom archive of classic metal albums. Voltz (initially called Airline) are considered to be an NWOBHM band - however, there's not much metal in their music, even if I'm not saying it as a bad thing. Anyway, this is a very interesting obscure album, just don't expect something really "heavy" from it (although its cover art might suggest so).

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Chasar - s/t [1983]

Artist: Chasar

Title: Chasar

Genre: NWOBHM

Country: UK (Scotland)

Release date: 1983

Track List:

1. Destiny
2. Visions of Time
3. Deceiver
4. Kings
5. Lights
6. Gypsy Roller
7. Underground

Another "atypical" NWOBHM band heavily influenced by 1970's progressive rock and dirty-sounding hard rock. Maybe not as good as Dawnwatcher, but still deserves attention if you like obscure bands of this kind.

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Puhdys ‎- "Wilder Frieden" [1999]

Artist: Puhdys

Title: Wilder Frieden

Genre: Hard Rock, NDH

Country: Germany

Release date: 1999

Track List: 

1. Wilder Frieden
2. Ich bin der liebe Gott
3. Dieser Tag gehört Dir
4. Wut will nicht sterben
5. Normales Glück
6. Du hast schuld
7. Nie getraut
8. Eine Frage der Ansicht
9. Hipp Hipp Hurra
10. Gigolo
11. Höhenflug
12. Wie ein Strom
13. Schieß mich ab
14. Auf in's neue Jahrtausend
15. Leise weht der Wind

Puhdys are one of the oldest rock bands from Eastern Germany (officially formed in 1969, but the band already existed in some form as early as 1965, albeit with a different line-up), and probably the most famous. Their name comes from an abbreviation made out of the names of their 4 founding members (Peter, Udo, Harry & Dieter). Like most other rock bands from the Eastern Bloc, they initially were a cover band, since there was a huge demand for covers in the situation when most rock albums from Western Bloc were impossible (or at least not easy) to purchase. They didn't abandon the practice of making cover albums later on, although they've released numerous albums of their own material as well.

Puhdys also were the first East German rock band to perform in Belgium and Netherlands (1974) and in West Germany (1976). They also have vistited the USSR numerous times during the 1970s, and at least two of their LPs were officially released on vinyl by Melodiya (in 1973 and 1977). Their sound has significantly evolved through the time: while their 1970s stuff was mostly influenced by the contemporary British hard rock acts (Deep Purple, Uriah Heep) and earlier American rock'n'roll (Elvis Presley etc.), they turned to more synthpop-influenced sound in mid-1980s.

This particular album, especially its first few tracks, is significantly heavier than their early works, and shows strong influence of the late-1990s Neue Deutsche Härte scene (particularly Rammstein), even if calling it an "industrial metal album" would be a too big stretch. Puhdys had a great influence on Rammstein in their early days, so Till Lindemann and Richard Kruspe decided to return the favour by collaborating with Puhdys on the track "Wut will nicht sterben". The rest 3/4 of this album is less heavy and closer to the earlier classic/hard rock works by Puhdys, but it's still very good and would be of interest for any fan of NDH (and German rock in general).

All albums by Puhdys, including this one, can be found in FLAC on this forum. I personally would recommend their first two albums as well: even if it's the kind of classic rock I'm generally not very interested in, these albums sound better than many albums of their more famous British and American contemporaries, and there are great tracks such as "Steine" that definitely shouldn't be missed.

Blind Owl - "Lady Of America / Rainbow Rider" [1985]

Artist: Blind Owl

Title: Lady Of America / Rainbow Rider 7''

Genre: Heavy Metal

Country: USA

Release date: 1985

Track List:

1. Lady Of America
2. Rainbow Rider

"Blind Owl was formed summer 1972 in Gardena, California. They won Battle of the Bands at El Camino College, played the Hollywood scene, Trubador, Gazzarri's and Golden Bear. In 1985 they put out the Lady of America single on the Blue Streak label (MCF 2016A). The only member known on this single are "David Jeru" the other members are unknown"

That's all I could find out about this really obscure band. Apparently there's also a dark ambient project from Iran under the same name, which I haven't checked out yet. Speaking of this single, it a very good example of mid-80's US melodic hard rock/metal, shame that during their >13 year-long existence they never released anything beside this. Unlike most other classic metal bands on my blog, I discovered this one not because of Vibrations of Doom collection, but via Strappado Metal Archives (excellent blog, highly recommended!)

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Oxym - "Music Power" [1980]

Artist: Oxym

Title: Music Power

Genre: Hard Rock, NWOBHM

Country: UK

Release date: 1980

Track List:

1. Music Power
2. Mind Key
3. Hot Rain (bonus)

 Looks like this week is going to be a week of 80's heavy metal albums in my blog, and let me begin with "Music Power", a single released in 1980 by a very obscure band called Oxym. According to last.fm:

"Line up -: Rob Rigby (Guitar & Vocals) Phil Lord (Guitar) Mik Wilson (Drums & Vocals) Tolly (Bass Guitar)
The band enjoyed considerable success in the early 80’s with the release of a self financed single ‘MUSIC POWER’b/w’MIND KEY’ on Cargo records & a track on the ‘New Electric Warriors’ LP ‘HOT RAIN’ on Logo records they disbanded in 1982 due to record company appathy for bands not from London, Manchester & Liverpool.
The band re-formed in 2000 for a celebration of Mik & Robs 40th birthday’s in front of 500 people at Accrington Town Hall in March of that year"

Of course it isn't any avant-garde stuff, but it's certainly enjoyable (my personal favourite is "Mind Key"), and I especially love the vocals, which I think fit this kind of music very well. Too bad their vocalist died in 2011 ;_;

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Come To Get Her - "Life So Changing" [2011]

Artist: Come To Get Her

Title: Life So Changing
Genre: Melodic Rock / Punk
Country: Belarus
Release date: 2011

Track List:

1. Be My Dream
2. Life So Changing
3. Can't Let You Go
4. Someone Who Is Not Alone
5. 19.12 (This Depends On Me)
6. Waiting For The Sunrise
7. All But You

Melodic "punkish" rock music from my favourite ex-Soviet country... BTW, the cover art is really nice, isn't it?

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Stra-TG - "Kau Mutiara Segalanya" [1992]

Artist: Stra-TG
Title: Kau Mutiara Segalanya
Genre: Melodic Rock
Country: Malaysia
Release date: 1992

Track List:

1. Kau Mutiara Segalanya
2. Anak Malaya
   
3. Semua Rasa
   
4. Rentak Mat Metal
5. Berilusi

Before hearing this release, I had no idea of how good Malaysian rock can be. Excellent melodies, catchy refrains, nice vocals (although someone may dislike such high-pitched male voice), good quality of recording... what else to wish? Unfortunately it's the short version of the album, with only 5 tracks. The full version contains 11 tracks, but I was unable to find it anywhere.

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Neblina - "Innocence Falls In Decay" [2006]

Artist: Neblina
Title: Innocence Falls In Decay
Genre: Hard Rock/Metal
Country: Angola
Release date: 2006
Size: 38 mb

Track list:

1. Mysterious Sky
2. Holy Angels
3. Alone
4. My Heroin
5. Alphaland
6. Set You Free
7. Stairway to Heaven
8. Mystery in the Dark
9. Memories
10. Filhos da Pátria

Neblina are the only known metal/rock band from Angola, and here's their first (and probably only) album, which is available for free in 128kbps mp3 format. There's nothing really original and innovative in terms of sound, but it's still pretty decent melodic rock/metal with keyboards. Nice to hear such good music from the south of Africa, where the rock/metal scene is almost non-existent... And check out the last track - it's a really catchy tune with lyrics in Portuguese (which are probably of a patriotic kind).

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