Metal Mythos: W.A.S.P.

I am the one and only Blackie Lawless and this is Chris home speak for them Chris sometimes he has to stop [Music] the subject of today's metal mythos is a band utterly apart one that seemingly subverts every label thrust upon them not quite hair metal but not quite heavy metal but not quite hardrock either with a bang of Blackie Lawless thundering at their head their one unifying principle seems to be first and foremost right killer fucking songs and worried about genres goddamn later and that they fucking do more than three decades distant from their debut this band are still sending up scorching screens to stand beside any single note of their classic material and American original so Savage they were the only other band famed manager rod smallwood who you may have heard from Oh a minor metal outfit called iron fuckin Maiden ever saw fit to recruit otherwise much like Dokken before them if you've ever dismissed Blackie and the boys as mere hair metal consider today's mythos my official righteous rebuttal the bane of politically correct Puritans the band Tipper Gore still suffers night terrors about it's time to crank those speakers bang those heads and dive dick fucking first into the world of wasp say I'm intense I should have been born triplets I got three times intensity three times the sex appeal beat ton of macho any man live you know why the guys all come to these shows you never see girls cuz all the guys got the girls home locked up they don't want to come home soon you see us cuz you're going home getting Vaseline thinking about it that's why they never come out here anymore [Music] even many non-fans are well aware of the wasp New York Dolls connection however tenuous but fuck that shit this is metal mythos let's get to the fucking music we were looking for a way to make a living I mean some people would do anything to keep from working you know what I mean we started out oddly enough as a recording band and all people don't know that we never really had any intention of ever playing live you know we're sitting in the recording studio all this time we're in front of a 24 track machine and the Machine doesn't plot for you when you do anything good so we thought what we got to go out and get some instant gratification so crema Nana really you know nothing was happening as if the needles are going like that so we chose a name that was controversial without really being controversial so that's to say if you know what the name means fine and if you don't that's fine too it's a bug right after passing through the Ellis Island of hair metal known as London shacking up with Motley Crue main man Nikki Sixx and ultimately fallen the fuck away from each other a leaning tower of unbridled motherfucking metal known as Blackie Lawless along with ax man Randy Piper decided it was time to tear the fuck into the fray with a sound entirely their own initially a mere studio concern comprised of lawless and of course Piper on rhythm and lead guitar respectively glam journeyman Rick Fox on bass and Tony Richards on drums they laid siege to the Sunset Strip marrying the make up Layton look at the New York Dolls with the blood guts and gore of the almighty Alice Cooper wasp was Motley Crue on crack flinging raw Mead and spewing blood into the crowd as Blacky beat the silicon out of some slut bag drenched in blood and torture wreck it was basically Manson before Manson but it all started with a single so he was asking me the other day how I got the idea for the song animal I said I hooked up a video taped my bedroom rolled it back I made it rhyme [Music] the we wanted it on the album but there was a problem with EMI in England and they there was a huge controversy that the local government there had threatened the EMI officials that if they put that single on the record they were gonna go to jail and to the band's manager a name familiar to the mythos faithful a man as legendary as he is unfortunately named rod Smallwood the brains behind the immortal Iron Maiden record company will drop the record UK government is threatening to throw you all the fucking jail if you arrest the fucking thing to fuckin go indie rod kind of was like over the top of it he could see where it needed to go cuz he had already walked this path before with Iron Maiden so he knew where to take it and where to put it and it was rods idea to do the single for the 12-inch for animal for fuck like a beast because when EMI said they didn't want to release it I thought well then that's it that's not gonna get buried and rod said oh you know life gives you lemons you make lemonade the single was a smash and the album that followed sadly sans the animal track that was intended as the album opener was not far the fuck behind so massive a debut the band was even featured in an 80s fantasy be classic the dungeon master [Music] [Applause] congratulations Excalibur 8 but it was in musicality of a metal act in question that shined infinitely brighter than the theatrics I mean how many fret men do you know that sound this much like the record within a live context [Applause] Blackey fucking flawless is more like it but when the time came to move from droppin demos to cutting an actual album the revolving door of lineup changes had already begun Rick Fox was out the fucking door to join Steeler yes the very same Steeler we've already established launched a young Yngwie Malmsteen and so blackie tapped his former bandmate and sister the platinum blonde Bombardier Chris Holmes to sling the axe once more and sling he fucking did I was thumbing through a copy of Hustler magazine for the section in the back called beaver hunt which is where all these voyeuristic mints and these somewhat less than professional snapshots of their wives and what have you and they always have one for the ladies usually this is for ladies only well I looked at here's this blonde thing standing there and real funny call me up he says well I hear your guitar press yeah play guitar and first thing I said to him was how tall are you he said six five I said how long is your hair you guys about halfway to my room this is you got any zits he goes no I said come on down [Music] best track throw a dart worst track don't make me fucking laugh hair metal glam shop rock fuck call it assless chaps metal for all the fuck of me this record particularly the 1998 reissue with animal fuck like a beast included as it always should have been is one of the greatest heavy metal records in the entirety of the 1980s top five fucking easy get it some things on the inside of the album sleeve that you'll see this time which is called the last command which will be out relatively soon where it's you slide out the inner sleeve and it's a picture of our foreheads on stakes and you'll see those heads on the stage and the eyes light up red and the fog comes out of the mouth and plays little things like that creates lasting images when a kid tries to go to sleep at night [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's real that you put aside any message and that your music no we've never done hey listen if I wanted to do something like that I would put it right on the cover of the album ah the last command what would a raw pork liver debut be without the impossibly overproduced follow up the Blacky Brigade Ivan conquered the world with the self-titled wast the frontman naturally assumed having produced a gold goddamn record he might be afforded the courtesy of producing the follow-up evidently in their cocaine-induced turbo stupor they neglected to account for the fact that it was the eighties and good goddamn if the record companies didn't have the world by the huevos the record company EMI insisted that we use an outside producing because I did the first record largely myself and it gave it a polished sound one that I wasn't ready for I was not really happy with it was just a little too polished sounding for where we were somebody said later it sounded like you went from your first album to your fourth album sure there may be a bit more pomp and polish here but that's this bullshit at your fucking peril because the last command as a standalone work of Metallica might will suffer no slings and arrows whether its inebriation anthem blind in Texas or the Bulldog ballad ball crusher added polisher no this is a merciless motherfucking classic and a must purchase right alongside its mandatory metal predecessor most bands can't one-up their classic tune in five records wasp with the haunting wild child did it in exactly one [Music] but whatever melodic progression there is here shouldn't be confused with an outright severance from the band's roots as proven by cries in the night being a recycled standard for the pre wasp project circus circus entitled mr. cool [Music] [Applause] look is there some filler here fucking sure but even that is a cut above the rank-and-file fucking by this goddamn record of course it was on the subsequent tour that wass support act would be a young Metallica and thus the shows that followed became ground zero for the burgeoning conflict between real metal and her metal rant rant Oh comparing Metallica and wasp how can you even make the comparison wasp it's just her metal first and foremost when the fuck actually is hair metal any metal band with hair so I Dave Mustaine douchebag Darrell and doll hey well you're right that genre really does blow more to the point who the fuck does it disqualify from being metal but Kerry King cover killer and Bret Michaels alright fair enough if teasing up your hair and wearing that scare I made you hair metal Olivia newton-john was hard fucking core in the eighties and you know what so is everyone the fuck else it was the 80s it was the look get the fucked over it I seem to remember Slayer rocking the runny mascara in the mid 80s yet for some reason that doesn't stop fairy King from flapping his five chins about how and I quote wasp is it metal it's a Punch and Judy show with chains for decorations ohoho con fuck and Trevor you bitch titty bed-wetter I'd sooner spin any wasp record than listen to that talentless twinks read aimlessly away while the melody of the metal tune in question stops for fucking cigarettes thrash was neat at the time a necessary counterpoint to fluffy fag Alone's like extreme and enough Sanath but it's time is done now blackened death metal left it in the dust for sheer extremity long the fucking go leaving these limber dick losers shredding away at music marginally heavier than their hair metal counterparts but outright puss bagger e when paired against the legitimate metal underground if thrash fans were fucking honest they'd admit that for every razor or heathen bands who don't sacrifice melody the altar of aggression there's 15 fuck loads of interchangeable ass canyons who think a diminished fifth is when your bassist hogs the Jack Daniels you would leave this task bags can take your camo cargo pants and the battle jacket your mom sewed for your fat ass and fuck right the hell off some thrash rules sucks after a straw deal with a dick knob next new LP is called inside The Electric Circus once you tell us about the title inside The Electric Circus is a compilation of ideas of things that have happened to us touring the last three or four years 1986 the sound man in the middle Arina said he felt the explosion and knocked him back and actually picked me up off the floor bubbly a foot I mean I was there but Mikey's crotch rocket had exploded and said his legs on fire I've got hair missing on my legs now that's he never grown back I mean it burnt me pretty bad up there's the firework it's very spectacular in fact there was one case on record when it exploded the wrong way with I think he had to be taken off to sort of not quite intensive care but care anyway [Music] with three albums in as many years and three world tours to match it follows the wasps faithful would soon find themselves inside The Electric Circus and a more aptly titled release there never was because by this point an electric circus is precisely what wasp had become you know I'm standard and there's no lights on I can barely see anything and all of a sudden the next thing I remember I was looking at the ceiling and my roadie drugged me off stage and I was looking at my answer if somebody had carried a rough road how about about this big around and this kid had going up onstage and smacked me in the face that's like getting hit with about its power rock but the real circus wasn't even on stage here having replaced their drummer in the previous record it was now and coming upon Blackie to replace an outgoing guitarist Randy Piper and while his signature sound was certainly missed it turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise with Piper's setting off for splitsville Blackie was allowed to return to his original tool of the trade Randy was gonna be leaving the band we knew that already so it was a perfect opportunity for me to go back and play guitar so I told Chris I says I really don't want to play bass I called bass a tool of ignorance and so I said well I let me go back playing guitar because I'm a guitar player by trade the results is admittedly something of a holding pattern in the wasp discography not bad not by 22d fucking miles but a step down from its forebears Farah fuck enough this is an absolute exorcism of the juvenile exploits of their earlier repute but what I found personally is that of the entire output of the so called classic wasp era it's inside the electric circus that appreciates with every listen whether it's the ravenous Ray Charles cover I don't need no doctor sloppy blowjob anthem shoot from the hip or the atmospheric 9/5 nasty if you're looking for a dud look fuckin elsewhere Chris Holmes guitar tone in particular savages through the speakers here perhaps never fuller or more heavy than right to fuck on this record but if you want a true three-ring fucking circus look no further than Congress namely the formation of a subcommittee replete with which trial hearings to determine the propriety of music lyrics largely - heavy metal bands like wasp known as the PMRC and right about that time there was this a wonderful organization that cropped up called PMRC and the PMRC stands theoretically for the parents music Resource Center they're an evil organization and sense that whenever you dictate to someone how to live their lives between now and 20 years ago things should be left to the individual as to what they think they should or should not listen to if you don't want to listen to what we're doing or you don't want to watch it and don't buy don't go see you do you think Tipper Gore his kids are listening to wasp albums now as a result of these changes oh yeah an honest-to-god story this is true story I was Frank Zappa about a year ago and he told me he says you know where this whole thing got started I said no we had this infamous song still do by the way call an animal fill in the blanks yourself which God knows I've tried we've all heard accounts of the ensuing congressional battle from Dee Snider and painstakingly rehearsed an exaggerated fashion might I had on vh1 what many don't know is Blackie Lawless was originally scheduled to testify at the very same hearings but upon advice from his publicist and ban gave the pussy posse a pass no Blackie's war with the PMRC would be every bit as savages Dee Snider's only it would play out in public and in musical form about an organization you might have heard of them before they call the PM off scene they can shut me up we eat me raw this is [Music] [Applause] [Music] but for all his defensive the band's excess and innuendo Blackie himself was a man in personal flux dissatisfied with the innocuous lyrical content of his earlier albums not to mention the album tour album tour cash money carousel unlike oh so many metal stars who careened out of fucking control and crashed and burned Blackie slammed the fuckin brakes crank it out the exceptional live in the raw to fulfill contractual obligations replete with my personal favourite wasp attuned scream until you liked it from the soundtrack to 80s be horror cult classic the Ghoulies - he devoted the better part of the next year to stepping outside of the spotlight to figure out just what mary fuck he actually wanted to say with wasp as far as wasp were concerned now wasn't the time to cash in it was time to strip down dry out get their skulls firmly affixed to their fucking shoulders and incidentally crank out perhaps the defining album of their fucking career that was the biggest pile of crap ever recorded by any band and a history recording industry now it was a tired record done by a very tired Dan because we've done a record the tour in America tour and at the end of it we didn't know what our names are so we did that record aggravator there's a lot of people because it was so stinky and then we said okay this madness is gonna stop you're done I'd record the tour and record and until we record the tour and pretty soon you know you're bouncing off the walls like Daffy Duck you know they you know it's like trying to figure out who you are [Music] [Music] I don't want to get to the point where we're so serious that we've lost sight about having fun anymore but why can't you still have fun but say something along the way and that's what we're trying to do with us I mean you you come up with an album called the Headless children and immediately everybody's gonna think out of us well wasp the headless - what are they doing now it's not that at all the headless well the title track is an anti-nuclear Warsaw heavy-metal music in general you may have noticed tends to follow a tried and true formula the first album exists to establish credibility while the second is for makin moolah it ain't always pretty and it doesn't always work out that way least of all in a modern day music industry that's all but extinguished the final victims of their own boundless avarice but look that's the way it goes and for the most part it gets the job done so perhaps you can understand what a supremely rare occurrence it is for the credibility album to pop out 5 albums and several gold records down the goddamn Road which is precisely what happened with 1989's harrowing headless children pivoting from their pussy grabbin exploits and drug paraphernalia to geopolitics social issues death and war for fuck's sake the title track is about nuclear war down beat dark and heavier than mechagodzilla's motherfucking nuts the headless children is eminently addictive from the introductory seven-minute epic The Heretic to the breakneck refrains of rebel in the FDG [Music] [Applause] [Music] the mixed times some cotton camouflage cargo pants derisive Lida strives wasp is and I quote or her middleman pissed and kick him in the prick and drop this record and the riving fat ass frame as Blackie is rectly discern in the intervening years it was this album that not only brought this scalp of what wasp encompassed but it also inoculated them from going up with the rest of the hair metal Hindenburg in the early 90s not at all unlike previous mythos luminaries Dokken if you actually think about it but as we all know the only world famous story about wasp at the time came courtesy of Chris Holmes and his drinking habits you consider yourself a piece of crap why well because you know I work for job and I'm a piece of crap do you think rock and roll lifestyle turned you into an alcoholic yes it does how much of that do you drink a day about five points and why drink is cuz what look much has been made about have a single interview as some manner of death knell for the doomed hair metal subset and well I break fucking wind at that hyperbolic horseshit it certainly did have a declamatory effect on the band he represented Blackie to put it bluntly was fuckin furious here he was mid pivot from the party hardy half with festivities of his former repute to a more serious sincere offering about sweeping societal issues his habits by then well in fucking harness and here's his guitarists willing what was decades later revealed to be fucking water play acting like a drunk douchebag so some sloppy titted shrew canned have an excuse to launch the her metal killed hair metal narrative we'd all slurp like fucking go-gurt for the duration of the 90s thanks Chris when you saw the Chris Holmes part he's just guzzling in the pool I saw that and what was funny all of a sudden became very sad after seeing the movie I was kind of like man there are a lot of creeps in Los Angeles hunter I said he didn't care where it was gonna be interviewed as long as he could be drinking vodka the result exit Chris Holmes and just about everybody fuckin else the headless children comes out and then you're no longer in the band well what happened I mean were you fired was it an incident why'd you leave oh we do the headless children album some information found out about Blacky charging the proof scene sees on the other albums and he said he didn't and I found out from somebody that he did and I asked him about it and he goes where'd you get your information you're full of shit he told me okay and that was during the tour of that band of their children and Ana almost left in Germany there was some dissension in the band I mean I gotten to the point of the last band where we were on tour we had four guys occupying force up or dressing rooms and that doesn't make for a rosy situation at any point so you know I mean basically it was a situation where everybody was hating everybody you know and enter a bunch of hired guns including Bob kulick from Blackthorne which you may have heard from my graham bonnet interview Blackie was effectively all by his lonesome for a fact but as we'd soon learn his creativity was anything but exhausted I understand that this is kind of taking a little turn a little something different than what you've been doing well I get an S one question by the fans over and over and I said give me some advice how do I get from moron to where you're at it's on the same thing over and over again I say you know you really have to want this badly and the one thing that they all say is yeah yeah I wanted I wanted I want it but they don't really understand what they're saying so I thought I'm gonna tell them the story and paint them a picture and I'm gonna show them the worst possible side of this business and then once they've seen this and heard this they still think they want to do for be my guess go for it [Music] [Music] look we all know what happened in 91 the flannel funnel cloud touchdown and the grunge NATO that followed laid waste to all the Aqua Net quaff cunt flaps in its path for some it was justified for far fucking more it was a needless baby with the bathwater scenario the record buy in public would regret before the decade was even done yet standing among the rubble somehow unscathed by the Seattle siege was wasp rather at that time Blackie Lawless with his band all but obliterated the lawless one set to songwriting for what at that time was intended as a solo offering an ambitious high concept affair he since explain was in no way autobiographical but rather informed by a lifetime of experience watching rock royalty rise and fall the tale of a drunken fumbling fuck out those spots a guitar in a music shop window appoints himself a metal God and upon finding no fulfillment and the spotlights glare hangs himself with his own guitar strings no less striking Moody and miles beyond what the band had attempted previously it wasn't until consulting with fans he realized it was properly conceived as a wasp release and what a fucking release [Music] [Applause] [Music] holding its own perfectly alongside recent queens reich masterpiece operation mindcrime this was a part of a two-fisted volley of voracious heavy-metal concept albums to bookend the 80s and usher in the no fun allowed 90s but while a hair heavy on the ballad side there's an unmistakable edge here that it's Queens right counterpart lacks [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] strangely enough a full-fledged crimson Idol tour meaning one in which the album was performed in its entirety would not be forthcoming for 15 fucking years when Blacky did just that in 2007 and again in 2017 to commemorate a rerecorded version of the album in question but better late than never because this record is a beast gonna be straight-up about this I would sooner pierce my balls with a butter knife and listen to a concept album but by God if you must have one make it the Crimson Idol I'm going to do what I want to do and I don't care about pressure from the label and I don't care about when I'm supposed to go on to her and and all the time this is going on you've got the fans in the back of your mind you keep thinking if I'm gone for a year and a half or two years are they going to forget me then I'll see all these paranoia's creep into you and they become demons that visit you in the night [Music] the solo album turned wasp record gen continues and while still not black enough is nowhere near as strong as the immortal Crimson Idol it's no fucking slouch on its own terms suffering from a lack of promotion after all it was 1995 this is a record that should have done infinitely better than it ultimately did from the catchy is the clap title track to heartbreaking ballad keep holding on this is a sincere savage work that deserves infinitely more attention than it received at release but for a queen fan like myself the standout came in the form of a cover [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] still smacking of a solo project but somewhat more confident in its wash status it never ceases to amaze me how obscure this album is never mind under the radar this fucker is cloaked if you dig the production of the Crimson Idol and some of the darker material therein you owe it to yourself to track this fucker down you will not regret it with a band somehow maintaining their relevance if not necessarily their sales after all it was the 90s there was no question wasp would re-emerge but no one could have predicted the absolute mind fuck that was to come the coming year is gonna be a good year for us but it's also gonna be highly controversial yourtube to make an omelet you got to break some eggs and if that's the case we're going and raping the whole damn henhouse after we're done with this and the next year - all bands are gonna have to become hippies because they ain't gonna be nothing we are the ultimate we are snuff rod [Music] grunge man gatecrashed the heavy metal menagerie but they weren't alone between groove metal pop rap and boy bands there was a bounty of bullshit to go around my friends and foremost among them was the onset of industrial metal now you can say what you like about the sub-genre certainly it's aged like Angie Dickinson's neck but at the time this was it Marilyn Manson was gonna mother fuck your entire family and that's all the fuck there was to it folks raising the bar for unbridled offense Alice Cooper's bastard baby boy haunted every American parents waking nightmares and wasp newly reunited with guitarist Chris Holmes no less wanted in on it but for those dateless eye-rolling already assuming this was a matter of me2 aimed at cribbing Marilyn's style gonna be blunt about this nothing Manson has ever done will ever touch this album or stage show for sheer obscenity and before you fire back did Manson ever crucify a shred of face nuns player pussy why to the public and fuck her right there on the cross with a knife dick did Manson ever murder a motherfucking pig on stage and waved the decapitated head through the audience this is show business we're not curing aids or or trying to present world peace here unless you're the pig [Music] the live show then you debase women I believe that you rape a nun with a knife they're in a different category well you know what it is is like I said we didn't want to be a trip down memory lane we said if we're gonna do this it's gonna be intense we're not doing anything that you're not seeing on TV as it is we're coming to a wasp's yo is like watching the news for 55 minutes or an hour we're just givin people exactly the decadence that the world is in right now we're only reflecting it that's it that's pretty sick in fact in what was either tribute or a massive fuck you to Manson on the 98 leg of the tour Blackie replaced the nun with a life-size mannequin of Manson himself that's right folks Blackie dragged Manson's lifeless body around by a noose decapitated him remove this but fuckin brain and night fucked the shit at a Manson on stage inspired by personal tribulations like both Chris Holmes and Blackie Lawless divorcing their respective spouses kill fuck die was as dark and raw as industrial metal got in the 90s yet somehow without once forsaking the core hard rock roots brooding beneath all the fuzz and fuckery [Music] for all the sonic ornamentation these riffs are still quintessential wasp strip away all the compression and computer bullshit many leaf songs would be right at home on still not black enough or the Crimson Idol and that's perhaps infinitely more impressive than merely one up in Maryland's flabby alcoholic ass let not the reviews deceive you kill fuck die just plain fucking kills we did an AMA call kft and we brought that show to Europe here and a lot of people that show really bent a lot of people out of shape more so than what we had done and in the first few years that we came out I thought it was the best piece of rock theater I had ever seen not just wasp just anybody I thought it was well choreographed it was designed to make people real uncomfortable it was a major major political statement about what was happening in America at the time the metaphors that we used people did not understand the the relationship or the correlation between some of the imagery that was going on so can you take it too far if there's something to be said from an artistic point of view no from the general public's psyche or their collective mentality point of view we found out that you can [Applause] [Music] this was to design to be the anti kft because we had done kft and you also have to remember when we did KF d Chris and I had gone through really bad breakups he a divorce Lita Ford and I had been in a relationship for three years that had come to an end that was really ugly and it's just I wouldn't say we were anti women at that point but we were anti relationship at that point you know with the band having got about as far into profane fucking extremity as humanly possible it stands to reason the follow-up would be a brighter affair instead wasp returned to their fist-pumping coke-snorting roots with a party metal record to rival even electric circus inexplicably released somehow in the year 1999 if you want that classic waft sound and nothing but songs about drug abuse ramen groupies and testicular hygiene Helldorado is precisely what dr. rocker ordered [Applause] [Music] [Applause] designed to be the vaccine for the vacuous pseudo artistic 90s it simultaneously succeeds and stumbles somewhat in the execution of precisely that aim with a stage show nearly as jaw-droppingly offensive is the one that preceded it the album did serve to reestablish the winged assassins at least in Europe a region that was by now ravenous for the return of classic 80s metal Helldorado is just that an orgiastic expulsion of all things masculine and metallic can it be a hair on the repetitive side yes sure but he'll dourados valleys are higher than most other bands Peaks but after every orgy there comes the morning after I heard that you guys had a lot of debating from the album title whether it shouldn't be unholy terror or not so well why was that because when you start dealing with religious subjects you have to be very very careful to make sure that if you're gonna make a statement that people understand exactly what you're trying to say this album is not an attack on personal faith it's about my experience and Chris's experience or growing up in the church and how the church teaches you to think the way they want you to think but it's not just religion that doesn't either governments the famous for doing it to people I mean what you see on the news on television is really what the government wants you to see [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and so the discord within the wasp experiment began to show unholy terror was an infinitely more earnest work than its predecessor but despite what the year of release and the title would suggest was actually dedicated not to the 9/11 terror attacks but to dissecting the laundry list of neuroses that drives young Christians away from the church in adolescence a subject that was particularly close to Blackie Sartre as he'd recently become a born-again Christian Holy Terror is ostensibly a darker more mature wasp work and then Chris Holmes tears into wasted white boys buried at the bottom of the tracklist by Blacky and a move that doubtless lodged in Chris's craw it's no mystery why Holmes wasn't long for this band here Blackie was clearly embracing a more socio politically aware aspect that didn't jive with Holmes's rock out with your cock out inclinations when this record shines shit does it ever the whiplash locomotive man the ruthless let it roar but it's a 5 and 1/2 minute mini epic by the name of charisma that both Lampoon televangelists of the era and as Blacky later admitted himself priests aged the rise of personality cults like the one that later arrayed around us certain presidential candidate either around the year 2008 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with straight-ahead rockers cohabitating with more contemplative passages unholy terror is a sleeper standout in the more recent wasps discography and the last proper release to feature that full fucking killer Chris Holmes guitar tone throughout albeit bracketed by performances by session guitarists such as Halfords Roy C initially regarded as something of a departure today unholy terror is appraised by many at the last gasp of vintage wasps and while it's not an opinion I personally share it sure shits on 90% of the modern metal in the shelves today but world events were soon to transpire robbing New York City of thousands of lives in an instant and inspiring Blackie Lawless third perhaps the most furious period of creativity in his entire career dying for the world another political album I mean the September 11th incident made you make this well yeah well I'd been down there a week before it happened you know I mean literally was looking at those buildings and I thought well I'm gonna be back in a few weeks and the Yankees were gonna be in the Baseball World Series I was gonna be back and I had no comprehension of what I was gonna not see when I got back there and that the day I got back I went down to Ground Zero on this there's nothing you will ever see in your lifetime that can prepare you for what that was you know and it was just had a dramatic effect on me [Music] to me this album represents the birth of modern wasp somber melancholic compositions cohabitating with classic headbangers but eternally arcing toward the omnipresent darkness of the Bands late 80s efforts 2002's elegy to the felon on September the 11th dying for the world is a staggeringly sincere work Blacky you must remember was NYC born and raised and while he wasn't present when the attacks went down I can scarcely comprehend the psychic effect of seeing two structures that provided the mental backdrop for the entirety of your adulthood reduced to a Brier of smoldering steel like a medal if risk infant dying for the world came screaming to the world scarcely nine months after the event in question and in its most haunting passages such as the harrowing hallowed ground it's virtually impossible not to be moved in some manner [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] but it wasn't just a couple buildings that was missing this go-around by the time wasps laid waste to the Western Hemisphere on the unholy terror tour Chris Holmes was well on his way out of the fucking band I was told I was written in as one of songwriters okay and and found out about five years ago I was written in as a session player you know but my name is on the record as the songwriters Wow now in the past I've taken a decisive stand on infighting within say Gorgoroth Dokken and beyond but frankly this is a rare case where I lacked a fucking position and for one perfectly rational reason we've only really heard one side of the story while Chris Holmes hurls epithets at his former bandmate with some regularity [Music] Blackie himself has remained all but mum on the subject for the last 16 fucking years never even formally addressing the topic until a rare press conference last year and even that didn't come within nine miles of addressing the impetus for Chris's exit look I did Chris Holmes he has a killer guitar tone and it's absence while not unforgivable is absolutely noticeable and missed even as recent ridiculous solo records have a guitar tone that's thicker than freeze-dried rhino spunk and his presence provides a much-needed fuck deficit for a band that otherwise lapses into terminal seriousness but wasp their killer with or without him Blackie's voices still superb the songwriting still slaves and if you get a shot at a show do not hesitate fucking do it and the same goes for this fucking album next the latest CD is the neon God can you tell me a little bit about this CDM well it's a two-part work really when I was talking about common denominators a while ago I'm looking for ideas that like I said what links us together you know what are we thinking about the most and when I was writing that that's really that was in the forefront of my thought you know Who am I where am I going is my life had meanings it got no meaning is there God is there no God what's this all about why are we here you know so the very first lyric that you hear in the record it says Oh tell me my lord why am I here what does any of this have mean [Music] the crimson idols darker longer veiny earth rot room younger brother arrived in 2004 under the eye-catching title of the neon God the concept here in lieu of a fictitious rock biography with elements of fantasy is instead more of a religious horror story with elements of biography and even sci-fi a more sprawling and ambitious work in the crimson idol it follows that the neon God would span two albums or rather it would after the retailers got their way retailers won't take double records anymore they'll take historical double record sets like the wall or something like that you know but they don't want to take new double records anymore their argument is is it takes up too much rack space and it's like you know hello that's that's a lie you know if they've got two or three centimeters and the width of a CD and you're telling me that that's that much extra space I'm not buying it that you know that's just another way for them to try to rip off the public and while it's two albums I hold in my hands I'll be reviewing this as intended a single cohesive work relying the story of Jesse's slain whose drug-addicted mother abandoned him at eight and left him in an orphanage that doubled as an asylum alarmingly similar in physical description and concept to the shale bridge cradle from thief deadly shadows which was released the scene here is this record coincidentally as the nuns assumed responsibility for the child he bridles at their authority and finds himself imprisoned tortured and sexually violated by the demonic sister Sadie whose SS initials black uniform and silver cross necklace I'm certain are just a coincidence in a harrowing sequence that nevertheless yields one of the truly killer choruses of Part 1 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Wow [Applause] upon sister Sadie's mysterious death he escapes the asylum falling in with a street magician and telepath who teaches him to harness his mental abilities and manipulate the masses into giving them both money at the to delve deeper into the occult and imbibe and orgies and other assorted bacchanal bullshit with they're oblivious disciples his flock begins to form a fucking billion dollar industry and as he addresses his faithful his face emblazoned upon a screen in Times Square he's christened you guessed it the neon god but when the main characters estranged mother falls in with the flock the neon God realizes the depths of his depravity and deception and attempts to leave the cult at which point his bishops decide he's more useful as a martyr than a leader but shove the fucking concept for a beat folks because as a simple metal record the neon God is no goddamn slouch issuing a wanky winding compositions and noodling guitar goat shit of lesser concept offerings for simple direct metal tunes Asylum number nine the raging storm sister Sadie resurrect or come back to black tear down the walls even if you read not one word of the accompanying booklet or the website devoted to the neon god narrative this is vintage wasp regardless much like the Crimson Idol before it the neon god is that rare concept record that works just as well when consumed casually as a heavy metal album as it does as a story get it next [Music] I can describe Dominator for you in a solitary fuckin word and femme ik having slaved away over a double concept album doubtless consuming untold creative bandwidth in the process it was all but a foregone conclusion the follow-up would be a much more immediate affair and that's precisely what this pound in ass album happens to be dominates is a one fucking right from the monolithic mercy to the ODA ACDC deal with a devil dominators spits anthem after a strip and anthem with only the briefest respite - crap perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful ballad of the Bands career the heartbreaking heavens hung in black [Music] [Applause] [Music] a song so stark in atmospheric they even afforded an acoustic fucking reprise two tracks later it's that fucking good of course Blackie made Lindbergh baby headlines in metal media around this time for purporting that he would no longer be playing classic cut and I'm all fuck like a beast in concert due to his renewed religious beliefs and we'll have big butthurt bitches are still belly aching about this bullshit ten years later I have to ask am I the only one who gives less than a fuck it's a great tune sure but Blackie's written better folks and I don't remember Yuri Ruiz Rima that Iron Maiden when they refused to play any fucking hits on there a matter of life and death dog and fairy show in fact as I recall metal media were all but thrown on a fucking parade as a matter of fact so what's the deal you have to be a self-important wangster from work stuff to get a pass on this piss in winery it's one fucking song of the hundreds wasp and then pound in your thankless assholes with for decades it's a great tune and all but a taint is fucking best not even almost so let it goddamn go already you fucking ass bees suffused with savage screens but American foreign policy and politics with particular attention to the rampant police actions we suffered under the outgoing Bush administration Dominator is an album with a social conscience of unholy terror but the songwriting of the headless children and the self-titled debut [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] if you prefer the in through the sternum out through the spine direct as a dick and a throat version of wasp but steeped in a spectacular modern production give this album a spin it will dominate your asshole next [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] enter Babylon without question wasps most topical eminently political work to date which considering a previous album dealt with the World Trade Center attacks is goddamn saying something and when I say political fuck black EU tell them if you could tell us a little bit about Babylon steam right at the end of Bush's last year in office we were experiencing what a lot of people politicians were referring to as a global financial crisis crisis and political terms is code for watch out for your wallet and I was also watching what was happening in the EU at the same time in Europe and there was guys meeting and Brussels and discussing what was going on over there and the European community and one guy was describing the supposed global financial crisis as a time for action to maybe create a new one-world government like a one-world system and then another guy says well you know you're gonna have a one-world government then we should have a one-world currency and then a third guy spoke up and he says that they believed that they could have all of the EU microchips and I'm standing there with my mouth open listening to all of this thinking to myself do these guys not understand what they're suggesting I mean this is potential 6ik fix what they're talking about here so eagle-eyed Michael Jackson fans may notice some slight similarities between monolithic monster ballot into the fire and a certain classic MJ tune [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] upbeat and eminently fucking heavy current events evidently imbued Blacky with renewed focus and vitriol as Babylon would be my personal pick for best of the Latter day wasp Records this shit just does not goddamn quit [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and if you spotted those twin images of Barack Obama and Hitler you wouldn't be alone when asked about the apparent conflation Blacky shot back like a fucking howitzer outright admitting Barack Obama reminded him of Hitler and saying the comparisons were eminently fucking intended after which the irrelevance police over at metal sucks net weighed in with our usual model conglomeration of buzzwords and bullshit and I quote number one Blackie Lawless it's still alive number two did blanking lawless just compared a black guy to Hitler number three seriously didn't Blackie Lawless died a few years ago number four didn't Hitler propose health care reform shortly before committing mass genocide or where his death pedals unrelated number five because it only gets funnier the fifth fuckin time you repeat it Blackie Lawless fulfill alive hey Harold hacky sack never mind Blackie Lawless metal sucks is still alive seriously didn't you all die a soy poisoning 15 fucking years ago suffer a whiplash injury in a portland poetry slam birdy bumper sticker mishap remove the top five layers of flesh but now I'm just fucking fantasizing I guess that's what happens when you isolate that key demographic who are too big of pussies to compete in a free market but just mettle enough to bum the black nail polish off their fucking sister incidentally Hitler's Germany did have health care and domestic reform in fact one of the only remaining institutions from the Third Reich is Germany's Child Protective Services Department which is itself an extension of their national welfare programs well that's almost like their name was shorthand for National Socialist German Workers part of you're some shit or like it was derived from Italian fascism or some fucking noise you know Italian fascism run by Mussolini who was later quoted as saying fascist government will seize the means of production when incentive is lacking or matters of the state are involved seizing the means of production no socialism there am i right incidentally if the ironic t-shirt Brigade over at the athlete's Idol medal sucks had done their goddamn homework for once instead of stealing carlin punchlines Nino Blackie's been commenting on politics and society since the ass fucking 80s but back in 87 Blackie Alba predicted the fucking future the PMRC has been a plague that has hounded us for the last two years in America the PMRC has been nothing more than a political platform to put Albert Gore 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue but tipper gore who is Albert Gore's wife has written a book she is the head of the PMRC she has written a book called raising PG kids in an x-rated society to fuel the fire for his presidential campaign and was using me in that as well to pick on me is one thing to make money off of me is another than the buck stops here literally on that I don't want to see this ever get that far where a man like this gets put into the White House first of all I don't trust a man that sleeps with a woman like that and if they get control of the FCC which is our federal communication then you're going to have a state that if people think America is conservative now haven't seen anything Blackey uninformed about politics find a fucking mirror you gluten-free faggots and maybe spin this record a few times while you're at it cuz Babylon is bitchin next we're about three weeks away from finishing the next one so it will be out next year and it will be called golgotha what when the message on the album B this time will Gaga pay is Hebrew for place of the skull and it's the hill where Christ was crucified but it's interesting when you see a lot of bands going on using satanic images or images of death and things like that and I'm thinking all they need to do is look at the source cuz it's right there I mean there's more if you want death which is enough to go around there [Music] after a soul sapping six-year way Blackie last bombarded us with another helping of heavy metal and while I didn't find this one quite as immediate and affair as say Dominator or even Babylon disappoint it most certainly did not from the opening salvos of scream y'know were off to the races [Music] that you love [Music] to run but the material is uniformly good - excellent here from the soaring anti-globalist cannonade slaves of the New World Order to the repentant religious borderline striper s Christian strains of title track Golgotha it may be a bit heavy on the acoustic intros but the meat of the songs is fill lame and fucking yon folks myself I do believe my preferred cut is a choice fuck you to the outgoing commander in chief [Music] [Applause] [Music] bottom line Gaga tha's got the goods Meteor than Brock Lesnar's neck and fifty times is fuckin listenable this record would justifiably hit the Billboard Top 100 for the first time since the headless Children that's right sob all you like hipsters metals back bitch as you've no doubt noticed given the lack of utter shit in this retrospective you can't go wrong with wasp and yes sure as shit can't go wrong with Golgotha that tears it for this retrospective rageaholics and rivet heads from the mythos faithful to the wasp nation i'm razörfist god fucking speed [Applause] [Music] you know everybody said I heard another joke the other day that I practice here about San Francisco how do you separate the men from the boys in San Francisco oh no nevermind low bar right [Laughter]

Channel: The Rageaholic

Views: 450,914

Rating: 4.7741461 out of 5

Keywords: Blackie Lawless, Hair Metal, Metal Mythos, Glam Metal, Chris Holmes, W.A.S.P., W.A.S.P. Retrospective, Album Review

Id: YVjYs_NDoV8

Length: 61min 15sec (3675 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/buckie_mcBuckster]

Very nice post, had not seen this one, but looks like someone took all the wasp clips and made a very cool movie.

[u/CrimsonCassetteTape]

Oh yeah man, this is a great retrospective of the band’s entire career. There’s some other cool ones that this guy did as well. Thanks for sharing!

[u/nuttmegx]

never heard of metal mythos, but this was great! I'm going to check out this dudes other stuff.