By JAY ROBERTS

It’s sad but true, the 9th year of The Cassette Chronicles has come to a close. I’ve continued to have fun writing the series.

There were another 22 new articles produced for the series this year. Some articles were produced just because I wanted to write about a band or an album. At least two pieces came about as tribute to a fallen musical icon.  But whatever the reason I had for picking a particular album, I love getting to discover or re-discover the albums from the viewpoint of here and now, even when I’ve been listening to some of those albums for decades.

Thanks to the continued support of Jay and Katie from Limelight Magazine.com, The Cassette Chronicles will be returning for a 10th year in early 2026. And if fortune smiles upon the production schedule without out real life getting in the way, we may just hit the magic #300 later next year.

I just want to say thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to read these articles whether you come directly to Limelight Magazine.com or you have seen one of the links I’ve posted on various sites across the Internet each time a new piece goes live.

Here’s to another great year in 2026 but until that starts, here’s the ten albums I’ve chosen (in no particular order) to spotlight for 2025.

See you next year!

(Please click on the cassette title to read the article)

#1 – SAVATAGE – STREETS: A ROCK OPERA

#2 – COUNTING CROWS – AUGUST AND EVERYTHING AFTER

#3 – BAD COMPANY – BAD COMPANY

#4  – BILLY IDOL – REBEL YELL

#5 – OZZY OSBOURNE – THE ULTIMATE SIN

#6 – DIAMOND HEAD – BORROWED TIME

#7 – D.A.D. – NO FUEL LEFT FOR THE PILGRIMS

#8 – STONE FURY – LET THEM TALK

#9 – DIO – SACRED HEART

#10 – LOUDNESS – THUNDER IN THE EAST

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

(WRITER’S NOTE: This is the final Cassette Chronicles article for 2025, closing out our ninth year. Next week, there will be a recap piece with links to ten of the pieces that were written this year. It’s a chance to check out some of the album’s spotlighted in 2025 on the off chance you missed reading them the first time around. Thanks for continuing to read the series and I look forward to kicking off our 10th year of The Cassette Chronicles in early 2026.)

ARMORED SAINT – MARCH OF THE SAINT (1984)

March of the Saint, the full-length debut album from Armored Saint, came on the heels of their 1983 self-titled three song EP. While this debut release did yield what is described as a minor MTV hit with the song “Can U Deliver”, the album didn’t exactly set the sales charts on fire. It peaked at #138 on the album chart and so you might think that this album would have faded into some sort of obscurity given that it is now more than four decades old. 

But you’d be wrong. And it isn’t just the metal diehards that likely remember the album either. Armored Saint is still around and turning out great album after great album. And when they tour, songs from March of the Saint still find their way into the set list and get huge crowd reactions.

While it is not the album I turn to regularly enough, besides the title track and “Can U Deliver”, whenever I think of this album, I also eagerly recall the songs “Mad House” and “Mutiny on the World” as well.

Of course, that does mean I need this refresher listen to dig into the other songs all over again.

On Side One of the album, the title track opens things up and I still find that I love the way Armored Saint kind of slow rolls the intro with a kind of pomp and circumstance overture before the full-on metallic roar of the music kicks in full. From that point, it’s a pure driving rocker. If it was the first time anyone heard singer John Bush’s voice, they had to be blown away. He sings straight out with power but when called upon to do so he can kick things up and unveil a metal scream that will rival anyone else’s screaming ability. And the fact that he’s still doing that even now is all that more impressive.

I mentioned the track “Can U Deliver” previously and it follows the title track. There’s no holding back on this one as it delivers a wallop right from the start and doesn’t let up. I can see why it got to be a “minor” hit with the video.

Giving the March of the Saint album a killer trio of songs to open up the album, the song “Mad House” is another frenetically paced rocker. The guitar work is phenemonal and you get a killer vocal take from John Bush. I also liked the way the band constructed the chorus. With Bush singing the regular lyrical content, they added a big backing gang vocal when the song title was sung. It enhanced the chorus and while I’ve loved the song since first hearing it, I found myself with a new appreciation for the track.

I would’ve liked to know who wrote what for the ten songs on the album but all the songs are credited to the band as a whole.

The song “Take a Turn” is pretty interesting. In the main lyrical passages, the music is slow and deliberate but as the track goes into the chorus, the music gets more in-your-face and faster. And the vocals get a more intense delivery.

The first side of the album closes out with the song “Seducer”. Right from the start, the song bursts out of the speakers with a fiery delivery that captures your ear pretty fast. What I noticed most is that along with “Take a Turn”, the track is definitely from the “album track” side of the musical ledger BUT both songs deserve far better than to be written off with that designation. Both are solidly entertaining songs and help shine a light on just how well the band started out with this album. The songwriting is there with every track on the first side and I can’t help but love that Armored Saint seemed to know what they were doing even in their earliest days.

For the album’s second side, the band kicks off with the song “Mutiny On The World”. I don’t know what it is about this song but I really love it! It’s got a killer rhythm to the music and I dug the way the vocals came through. The vocal phrasing in the chorus, particularly when the song title is sung, grabbed my attention each time through.

The remaining four songs on Side Two of March of the Saint are lesser known tracks in comparison to the rest of the band’s catalog but don’t let that fool you into thinking that they are somehow lesser lights.

For example, “Glory Hunter” is a monster track. I think I’d forgotten about this one a bit. With a kicking delivery, the music gets you amped up pretty quickly. This song hit me a lot different and made a bigger impression on me than I remember it having done in the past, which is just a bit strange to me.

Keeping in mind that I’m far from a musical expert, but I have to say that the way drummer Gonzo Sandoval gets to provide the intro for “Stricken By Fate” will really draw you into the song. Once his ear-grabbing intro blends into the full musical score, you can still hear how his drumming ties the rest of the music together. Midway through the song, which is a stomping kind of uptempo number, you get this cool little guitar interplay with Bush’s vocals that had me drawn in all over again.

For “Envy”, there’s a slow burn intro that steadily grows until the music is playing out in full rocking glory. The song is the shortest one on the album but it manages to provide plenty of sonic thunder to keep your heart rate rising throughout.

The album closes out with the song “False Alarm”, another uptempo number. It rocks pretty much from the start and I dug the way Bush performed vocally on this song. I think Side Two is probably very underappreciated by even some Armored Saint fans but I’ll be damned if I didn’t find myself rocking out as if this was the first time I’d heard the song.

A few months back, I was hanging out at the record shop and a discussion of our favorite albums came up. And surprisingly, one of the other customers in the store at the time said that March of the Saint was one of his all-time favorites. I was a little surprised considering that another band is his personal favorite. I figured it would be one of their albums that he mentioned first. But that’s what makes this album still resonate with me all these years later. It’s so good that it still gets chosen as an all-time favorite by those metal fans in the know. Is it any wonder why I am such a fan of both Armored Saint? Does March of the Saint deliver the goods? You bet your ass it does!

NOTES OF INTEREST: The March of the Saint album was reissued on CD in 2006 via Rock Candy Records. That version of the album comes with three bonus tracks which are demo versions of “March of the Saint”, “Seducer” and “Mutiny on the World”.

Reportedly, singer John Bush and bassist Joey Vera do not like how the production and mix of the record came out. They were frustrated with the producer and according to the info listed on the album’s Wikipedia page, they claim to still be in debt over how much the album cost to make. Though I’m not sure how old that particular quote from them might be.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

STEVE PERRY – STREET TALK (1984)

It is a good thing that Steve Perry’s solo debut opens with the song “Oh Sherrie” given that it became his biggest solo hit. It also helps me in the construction of this article because I get to talk about it first and then focus on the slightly lesser known tracks that comprise the rest of the album.

“Oh Sherrie” is an amazing song. Written for Perry’s girlfriend at the time, the song was released as a single in March 1984, nearly a month ahead of the album’s release. And it was a monstrously successful song. It would go on to hit #3 on the singles chart, and #1 on the Rock chart. The video had heavy MTV airplay as well.

And man, I remember rocking out to both the song and the video back in the day. The track opening with the slight musical intro before Perry’s booming a capella vocal comes in for the opening lyrical stanza. It’s almost haunting the way the song starts and then Perry comes in on full attack. As the rocking soundtrack kicks in, the song grows even more powerful. That guitar solo is immense and the way it fades out in the same kind of slight musical tone that the song began brings the track full circle. It’s a true classic song and while it galls me that it is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a Journey song, I still get a chill every time I happen to hear the opening strains of the song on the radio.

I should note that Steve Perry co-wrote all of tracks on the album. But he had an extensive list of co-writers as well. Most prominent among them were Bill Cuomo, Randy Goodrum and Craig Krampf. They also performed musically on the album. Perry produced the album and came up with the cover art concept as well.

Now, I mentioned that the other tracks on the album were slightly less well known than “Oh Sherrie” but that’s actually not quite strictly accurate. The Street Talk album actually had four Top 40 singles come off of it.

One of those “other” singles is on Side One of the album. “Foolish Heart” is a ballad but not one the kinds of ballad that is so slow as to feel as if you aren’t moving along in the song. The backing music has a slight uptick. And Perry’s performance here makes it a real classic track of his discography. I still hear this song a lot on the radio. The video for the song is pretty interesting for being a one continuous shot concept performance. And there’s an alternate ending to the video that is seen as him basically announcing he’s going back to Journey at the time. This was the fourth single from the album and it hit #18 on that chart. It’s also been covered at least four times by other artists including on Sheena Easton’s 1997 album Freedom.

As for the rest of the songs on the first side of the album, the song “I Believe” initially gave me an old time rock and roll vibe when I first heard it. It may not actually be the intent of the song but that first impression has always stuck with me for some reason. It’s an uptempo number and the way Perry’s vocals come through on the song is actually kind of cool. The vocal gets very plaintive in the delivery at points and yet while his strong vocal presence within that delivery could seem a bit out of place given the vibe of the music, the two parts of the song actually combine to give you one heck of a listening experience.

The song “Go Away” has a bit of an uptempo delivery. That pacing keeps it from being what would you could call a ballad track, but I think if the musical had been slowed down, this would’ve been a cool ballad tracking. Still, as originally performed, this is a killer track!

I love the way the percussion and bass have such prominence in the song that even I can pick them out in the song throughout. I think it is that rhythmic foundation that grounds the song and lets everything you hear over it that makes the track “sing”. Speaking of singing, the way Perry has this kind of stop/start stutter step in the way each line is delivered in the main verses was pretty interesting. Despite the song not being more in your face, I think it’s an understated bit of pop elegance.

The first side of Street Talk closes out with the song “It’s Only Love” and it is another strong rocking number. While there’s plenty of synthesizer used in the song, it is the drums and guitar threaded into the music that really raises the song. The lyrics are very cool and the phrasing of Perry’s vocals given them added heft. I love the way he delivers this particular passage: “Opened up your letter / I can’t believe my eyes / You said I should know better / But I have no alibis”

Side Two opens with the song “She’s Mine”. I have loved this song from the first time I heard it. It hit #21 on the singles chart and in the main portions of the song there’s a sense of melodrama that gives off a slightly creepy vibe at times. The chorus of the song finds the tempo jacked up to full rocker status and the switch back and forth is pretty compelling. The song has another killer guitar solo and you know how The Police song “Every Breath You Take” is not a love song? There are times when I think that “She’s Mine” is a spiritual companion to that track. By that I mean that this isn’t Perry inhabiting the role of someone telling an interloper to stay away from his woman or anything but rather he’s singing from the viewpoint of the interloper themselves. I’m not saying that I’m right about that, just that I think the song could be interpreted that way. Over the course of the song’s outro, whomever is playing the guitar is providing some incredible playing as well.

Michael Landau is credited playing the guitar for the song “You Should Be Happy” and I gotta say, he really shines here. The guitar parts help fuel the overall sense of urgency that comes through on the the song. Perry’s vocals are the star of the show of course, but even with all the other instrumentation, it is the guitar that lets this song rise above itself and go from a standard track to a full on driving rocker and yet another example of why I find this album such a standout.

From its first notes, the song “Running Alone” has something special going for it. It has a dramatic immediacy to it in the intro and then Perry’s vocals come in and the lyrical content becomes an uplifting kind of track. Slower in tempo than a lot of other tracks on Street Talk but not quite a ballad, I dug the way everything came together with this track. I’m usually on the cranky and bitter side of things but crazy as it seems I always seem to feel “better” after listening to this song. Okay, sure maybe the feeling doesn’t last but for those few minutes, even a miserable SOB like me can feel “good”. Maybe lines like the following are why I have this momentary lapse from my standard grumpiness: “I believe that every soul / has a song to sing / The spirits locked in every man / Waiting for a wing / Oh so much wasted / And so little used / The trick of the dreamer /is keeping yourself from the blues”.

Strangely enough, Street Talk keeps up the incredible run of great tracks with the song “Captured by the Moment”. It’s another song that has a kind of haunted feeling, which is only further emphasized by the opening stanza’s lyrics that reference Martin Luther King, the Beatles and the JFK assassination. Maybe not the lightest subject matter but I get what they were going for here. The delivery in the main passages are delivered in a slow almost hushed way and then as you hit the chorus, the music explodes into a bright blazing furious rocker tempo. It’s very dramatic and feels like a showpiece number. Something that would’ve made an amazing visual to play out on a stage or something. In an album full of amazing tracks that continually renew themselves to me upon each listen, this might be the most intense track of them all.

The album closes out with the song “Strung Out”. It hit #40 on the singles chart and man, did Perry know how to bring things to a rousing flourish to close things out or what? It’s uptempo throughout but you can hear the song waiting to burst out in the chorus. The song is one grand performance after another. Guitars are providing major riffs, drums are crashing through everything and Perry is once again delivering the vocal goods. The way the song comes to an immediate halt right there at the end was a great choice as well.

As you’ve been reading along, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I really didn’t have anything negative to say about this album. And that is because there really isn’t anything to say on that front. This is an absolutely stone cold classic album in every respect. The songs, the performances. Sure, Steve Perry is always going to be more readily identifiable as Journey’s singer but never let anyone forget that with Street Talk, he delivered one the singular greatest solo albums of all time! 

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Street Talk album went double platinum and established Steve Perry as a bonafide hit solo artist as well as from his time with Journey.

The 2006 CD reissue of Street Talk has five bonus tracks. The first three are demos from his pre-Journey project ‘Alien Project’. The fourth song “Don’t Tell Me Why You’re Leaving” was the B-side to “Oh Sherrie”. The final bonus track “If Only For the Moment, Girl” was originally released on the We Are The World album/project.

Guitarist Waddy Wachtel plays the guitar solo on “Oh Sherrie” and also appears on “It’s Only Love”. He’s had a wide and varied career but has done work with two of my favorite artists in Warren Zevon and Beth Hart. Bassist Kevin McCormick appears on the song “Running Alone”. His extensive credits list included a long term collaboration with Melissa Etheridge.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

WARLOCK – HELLBOUND (1985)

The second studio album from Warlock, following their debut release Burning the Witches, raises a question right from the first time you see the cover art.

And that question is…who thought it was a good idea to release an album with a cover art photo of the band that looked like a smoke machine had run amuck?

Seriously, you can barely make out two of the guys in the photo and the smoke pervades the entire picture.

Granted, everyone knows that everything about Warlock came down to powerhouse vocalist Doro Pesch but even she is at least partially obscured by the smoke. And while she’s never been one to trade on her looks to get ahead in music, who wants to cover up the fact that besides being a great singer, she’s a smoking hot blonde German goddess?

Maybe nowadays, that’s the less politically correct thing to think, but in 1985? Come on now!

Looking up the credits online, I noticed that besides the band getting writing credits on every song, album co-producer Henry Staroste was credited as a co-writer as well. Rene Maue got three co-writing credits. The liner notes aren’t specific as to who did what, but I looked forward to the band’s True As Steel album and saw that Maue was credited as co-writing lyrics so perhaps that was their role here as well.

Anyway, that’s a look at the behind the scenes credits. Let’s turn our focus to the music now. I’m a HUGE fan of Doro Pesch and Warlock. I have been since the Warlock album Triumph and Agony. I loved seeing her perform that whole album when I FINALLY saw her live for the first time in 2017. And seeing her again a couple years later where I got to meet her (my pic with her is my profile pic on my Facebook page). But when I first discovered the band and learned about their earlier albums, I was able to track down copies of them on cassette and here we are forty years later and I am going to write about this particular release.

The album opens with the title track and I’m not sure if the live crowd that you can hear in the opening part of the track is real or an addition in the studio. But you can’t deny the fast and furious nature of the song and how it carries you along through the length of the song.

I should point out that while I do love the production sound of the album, you can clearly see how the much rawer sound of these early days would later give way to the more polished sound you get as the band’s career would progress, then end and would continue on with Doro’s solo career.

With Doro’s vocals exploding forth from your speakers and the drums from Michael Eurich forming a pounding foundation that allows Rudy Graf and Peter Szigeti to perform a solid six string duo attack over the rest of the soundtrack, “Hellbound” gets the album off to a pretty solid start.

The song “All Night” follows next and it is a track that has a different tone and tempo to it. There’s a much more mid-tempo design to the music, so you get a slow ride across the musical landscape as compared to “Hellbound”. I like the slightly more dramatic tone that the music invokes in the song.

One of the things I like to hear when I go back and listen to these earlier Warlock albums is how I can hear the way Doro’s voice started and progressed to the point where she is now after a successful four decade career that is still going on. She has an incredible scream ability here but it always is done in an under control way, if that makes sense.

The faster pace returns on “Earthshaker Rock”, which features the title words in the chorus giving the song an anthemic feel that also comes through in the full song lyrics. This is a song that you have to pump your fists into the air if you hear it.

For “Wrathchild” (not the Iron Maiden song), you get a pretty cool sounding guitar line in the song’s intro and then a full uptempo (although not as blazingly fast at the start as other songs on the album) kicks in. As the song hits the midpoint, the pacing kicks up as it heads into the guitar solo and then is pretty much a full on explosive rocker until the song ends with a brief reprise of the same guitar line that was in the intro.

The first side of the album closes out with the song “Down and Out”, which briefly features Michael Eurich behind the drum kit before the guitars come in and you get a solid thumping intro before the song settles into more of a groove rocker. But what makes this song pretty cool is how you can hear the progression from that groove in the very early going to it blooming into a far faster rocker for the chorus. Doro’s vocals are intense here. The tempo alternates back and forth from main lyrical passages to the chorus and that makes the overall listening experience pretty cool.

Side Two of Hellbound opens with the song “Out of Control”. Which is a bit funny considering the rather, dare I say, gentle way that the song opens. That brief intro almost immediately gives way to a furious sonic attack that better resembles the song’s title. And man, I love this freaking song! I can’t say for sure but “Out of Control” might just be the song that sounds most like how Warlock would sound on the Triumph and Agony album.

There’s no soft-pedalling going on for “Time To Die”. Right from the first notes, Warlock is on fire throughout the track. Eurich’s drumming plays a huge role on this song and I love the way Doro is just attacking the vocals here. There’s the rapid fire delivery of the main lyrics and then she adds in some kind of unearthly scream at points in the song for added emphasis. It all works so well. The frantic and frenzied delivery of the solo in this song catches your ear as well.

I love the riff that kicks off “Shout It Out”. It sets the tone with a sense of urgency before a small scream from Doro and the full musical score kicks in fully. It’s an uptempo number but like “Wrathchild” isn’t quite as blitzing as other songs on the album at the start. It sure as hell gets much faster over the course of most of the latter half of the song though.

The last track on Hellbound is the song “Catch My Heart” and it is the song that would qualify as the “ballad” track. What I found most interesting at the start is how the guitar line that fuels the intro is really cool. If you’ve followed Doro’s career for any length of time, you know that despite her ability to just rock out like a BOSS, she always has at least one song that shows off the “softer” side of her vocal abilities. Of course, even here there’s little that would really make you think, “UGH! Not a damn ballad.” While the music is slow and deliberate, Doro’s performance of the song lyrics doesn’t make her sound like she’s trying to be anyone but herself. Her vocals are readily identifiable and despite the overall feel of the song, Doro still brings plenty of vocal fire as the song rambles along. And like a lot of ballads, that depth of feeling later combines with a more intense musical score over the song’s latter half, combining for quite the powerful track as the song and album fades out to its end. I will say the final strains of how the album ends is a bit weird but one small “defect” isn’t enough to ruin the track or the album for me.

I know that this early Warlock stuff was a lot rawer than what people might remember given everything that came later but I know I still enjoy a lot of what is going on with the album and as someone who is a devoted Doro Pesch fan, any material that she’s a part of is always going to hold a strong place in my music-loving heart. So while Hellbound may not be an album that will be the first one you think of when it comes to Warlock and/or Doro, it is certainly a strong release that deserves a much wider audience.

NOTE OF INTEREST: The 2011 reissue of the album contains two bonus tracks. One is a studio track from a different time period than the Hellbound album. The other is a live version of the album’s title track. The album peaked at #53 on the German album charts.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

W.A.S.P. – W.A.S.P. (1984)

If you had told me when this series started that I’d write more than two hundred seventy-five articles and had still not written about a W.A.S.P. album, I would’ve called you a liar.

As it turns out, you would’ve been more prophet than liar. Because it is true, I have never covered a W.A.S.P. album until now. I had to go and check my master list and then much like Ol’ Saint Nick himself, I had to check it twice. I was floored!

That cinched the decision about what album to write about for this week’s installment of The Cassette Chronicles and it’s a good thing because I’m not sure how often I’ve listened to the debut album in full lately.

The first side of the cassette opens up with the song “I Wanna Be Somebody”. It is the first official single from the album and it retains its incredible ability to grab you even more than four decades later. The pacing is hard-driving and Blackie Lawless instantly draws you in with his memorable vocal style. While he may not be the greatest vocalist of all-time, once you hear him you will always know his voice. I love the song in this form and it has made for some great live recordings across the band’s career as it has been used as the crowd sing-along track in various shows. 

The funny thing about this song for me as I listened to it for this piece, I looked up details on the song. The chart position stuff was kind of bland, but learning that the title was taken from a line of dialogue in the Barney Miller TV show from the 1970s (according to the album’s Wikipedia page anyway) was extremely fun to discover. The dialogue was spoken by the character “Detective Ron Harris”. The reason I’m including this is because the actor Ron Glass, who portrayed Harris would go on to play the character of “Shepherd Book” on one of my all-time favorite TV shows Firefly. I’m a devoted fan of that franchise and any new tidbit of info that ties to the show is always great.

For “L.O.V.E. Machine”, there’s a mix of both uptempo pacing and a heavier feel to the music as well. The chorus is pretty simple in that you can pretty much sing along immediately after hearing it the first time in the song or at least after you hear the song in full for the first time.

While I didn’t discover W.A.S.P. for myself until I saw a rock magazine ad for their album “Live..In The Raw”, Blackie Lawless instantly ingratiated himself with me both with his vocal style, lyrics that could be both pointed and just a blast that will always remind you of the “80s Metal Years”. On the song “The Flame”, the music is fast paced but it is the way his vocals come off just a bit more strident than usual that kicks the song up a notch for me. Some of the line run-throughs you think he just might blow his voice out.

Oh, I should mention that besides singing and playing bass on the album,  Lawless co-produced the release and wrote most of the songs by himself. He co-wrote “The Flame” with guitarist Chris Holmes and J. Marquez. And he co-wrote the Side Two track “Tormentor” with Holmes.

The song “B.A.D.” is a bit of a weird track for me. I like the song but it is probably the song that would rank the lowest of the ten original tracks. The thing is, I can’t explain exactly why I feel this way. It’s got a decent vocal, and good music with a solo that at the very least grabs your attention. But the song just doesn’t quite get my juices flowing as much as other material on the album.

The closing track of Side One is the song “School Daze”. The first time I heard the song the intro cracked me up. It uses a group of children saying the Pledge of Allegiance and when they are done, the music cranks up and Blackie Lawless explodes at the school system. Given that I was about thirteen-years-old when the song came out and pretty much hated school, you can imagine how strongly lyrics like “A juvenile’s jail and I’m here locked up in their cage” or “A homework hell-house screams at me “Make The Grade” resonated with me back in the day. And wouldn’t you know it, the song still gets me fired up even now. There’s mid-tempo feel in the early part of the song but it quickly gets far more of a lively rocking beat.

The second side of the W.A.S.P. album opens with the song “Hellion”. As with the rest of the material, the pacing is an electrically charged explosion of metallic riffs. I love the mid-song lyrical bridge a lot but what really got me going for this one is the way the song’s title gets sung in the chorus. It starts off a tad lighter and then grows as the word is stretched out. I like the way that comes through as I listened to the song in the here and now.

I mentioned before that while Blackie Lawless may not be the most technically gifted singer but I still have loved his vocals all these years. So when the band’s power ballad track “Sleeping (In The Fire)” kicks off you might think it would be a mismatch of vocals versus material. But you know what? This ballad actually ages a LOT better than many ballads of the 80s era. It’s not overly sappy, or at least it isn’t delivered that way. Hell, most of the song is more power than ballad so it might be a mistake even including the word ballad in the description of the song. But I love the music of the song and the guitar solo is fantastic!

“On Your Knees” is pretty much a sex-soaked rocker but weirdly it’s less of a erotic romp and more of a dark side of a life gone way off track. Or I could be reading way too much into the song as I read the lyrics while listening to the track this time around. Fast paced, it catches your ear but it’s definitely not one you would play for your grandma. 

I mentioned “Tormentor” earlier in the piece because of the writing credits but as the song plays out, it has a mixture in the music. There’s a definite uptempo style to the music but at the same time there’s a stomping thump to the score as well. It makes the song that much more interesting to me. And the sound effects used at the start definitely sets the mood to match the song title as Lawless proclaims, “I′m a liar and I’m a cheat / I have no morals and I′m a thief / Pillage and plunder, curse those who enter /I am a killer and tormentor” as the opening verse.

When I was in the 10th grade, I managed to BS my way into convincing my English teacher into letting me write a term paper on W.A.S.P. though I’m not sure how I managed to pull that off. Thing is, she was an ardent feminist (and there’s nothing wrong with that) and given some of the lyrics I quoted in the paper, I was sure I was going to get a failing grade. Either she was grading easy or I wrote a pretty damn good paper because I got one of the highest grades in the class. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t include any lines from “Tormentor” but I am reasonably sure I had stuff from “I Wanna Be Somebody”. Of course, the most red mark comments I had were about other sex-drenched lyrical passages from songs on other W.A.S.P. albums I quoted in the paper. But hey, she liked my writing so who am I to look askance at a rare good grade, right?

The closing song on the original album is called “The Torture Never Stops”. Right from the start, there’s a sense of musical adventure to the music. At times it feels like I’m on a wild ride on a horse gone loco. Much like “The Flame”, the vocals from Lawless get a bit more strident than usual but it still works. And I love the line “And hope’s the rope that keeps you tied in knots”, but in the here and now that line takes on a different meaning to me than was likely intended when Lawless wrote the song. 

In the interest of giving the fullest picture of the album, I also checked out the extra three songs they put on the reissued version of the album. The song “Show No Mercy” was the B-side to “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)”. It’s fast paced and I think it is even more raw sounding than the music on the original album. Though that could just be my ears playing tricks on me.

I have a friend that LOVES The Rolling Stones. They might just be her favorite band. So I’ve got to ask her if she’s ever heard the W.A.S.P. cover of the song “Paint It Black”. But I’m also wondering if she’ll like it or be horrified. W.A.S.P. definitely gives it a far more metal feel. The thing is, while the song is “fine”, I just don’t know that covering the song was necessary. 

And of course, we can’t have a complete picture of the W.A.S.P. album without acknowledging the grand grimy majesty of “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast). If I’m being honest, I can at least acknowledge the WHY of this song giving  so many of the so-called “Washington Wives” the vapors. I mean, you kind of know where this song is going when the opening two verses are as follows:

“I got pictures of naked ladies 

Lyin’ on their beds

I whiff that smell and sweet convulsion

Starts a swellin’ inside my head

I’m makin’ artificial lovers for free

I start to howl, I’m in heat

I moan and growl, and the hunt drives me crazy

I fuck like a beast”

But as a thirteen-year-old who hadn’t quite matured into the semi-responsible person I am now (I think), this was a song that said the “F-word” a few times in the lyrics and pissed off a lot of people. It was practically guaranteed I would love it. And it still doesn’t give them the right to censor or label music they didn’t like.

And there you have it. Revisiting the self-titled debut album from W.A.S.P. in full was a freaking thrill-ride for me. There’s so many great songs on the album that I still see people proclaiming that this is their favorite album from the band. I wouldn’t go quite that far because I have other albums that I like more, but damn if this one doesn’t have everything going for it now that it did back in the day.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The song “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)” was originally supposed to be on the debut album. But after it was designated one of the “Filthy Fifteen” by the handwringing crybaby political group the PMRC, the record label pulled it from the release. It got released as a single in the UK, making it an automatic collector’s item. I have a cassette edition of that single. The song was restored to the album when it was reissued in 1998 with two more songs added as well. However, that reissue put the “Animal” song as the lead track changing the track listing from how it came out originally.

The debut album (which achieved GOLD status in sales in the US) may most often be considered a self-titled release but according to what I read online, there are two other album titles that were printed on various editions including ‘Winged Assassins’ and ‘I Wanna Be Somebody’ (which as you read in the main part of the article is a song on the album). 

At least 14 different bands have covered various songs from the W.A.S.P. album over the years.

Drummer Tony Richards left W.A.S.P shortly after the release of the band’s debut album. Prior to joining the band, he was a member of Dante Fox, the forerunner band to Great White.