Here's another one of those 'guess what I was doing today' posts.
Can't wait, can you,to know what inane pointless activity someone you've never met was doing today? I've saved you the humiliation of looking at a selfie of me sucking in my cheeks while I indulge in this aforementioned vacuous attempt to live a fulfilling life experience.
I went to a Vide-Grenier (Boot Sale)in a small town (Lodeve) in southern France near where I live......amazing huh?
I rifled through endless platters of Claude Francois, a bloke called Renaud, and what seemed like hundreds of copies of French Nouvelle Vague band,the terminally awful 'Telephone';when I saw an album cover that makes Spinal Tap's 'Smell The Glove' seem woke.
That was clearly an English Church on the cover,with three or four long-haired chaps in 17th century outfits bullying a few scantily clad maidens wearing some very un-17th century stockings and suspenders,while a couple of dodgy monks look on stood in the graveyard.This must be good...and it got better.
On the reverse of the sleeve, the 20th century Police have turned up and proceed to arrest all and sundry,making sure we all get a good look at the ladies underwear as they are carted off in the paddy wagon.
"C'est Combien?" I asked the kind long haired gentleman casually chatting with another modern long-haired gentleman.
"Cinq" he said rather dismissively,to which I crossed his palm with gold and sloped off with my booty to a waiting car and sped homewards to discover the rare delights that may be hidden inside this hilariously good bad album cover.
Of course this was the second album by New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM)cult favourites, Witchfinder General,...who are also, inexplicably,considered an early example of Doom Metal(?).
There ain't much Doom Metal about this record, I discovered.Rather than sounding like 'Spinal Tap',they had the production values of UK comic strip equivalents 'Bad News'.And rather than a 16 rpm version of Black Sabbath's Volume 4, we get a Poundshop Diamond head.
NWOBHM kind of passed me by,so I was blissfully unaware of Witchfinder General,and many of their cohorts;but I understand that however silly most Metal records were around 1975 to 1988,the new wave of UK bands sub-consciously absorbed the 'Punk' influence to speed things up and add some much needed intensity and relevance to actual real life.Most Punk bands were virtually Heavy Metal anyway,just without the show-offy parts.
Ugh! Those bloody offensive guitar solo's remained for the much part,but slowly edited themselves out by the time Metal got darker and experimental at the end of the 80's.Now it's virtually the only form of the Rock idiom that survives,albeit in a veritable cornucopia of styles and sub-genres.
Is there any group out there called 'Bitchfinder General' by any chance,which seems a more appropriate combo for the cover art on this museum piece.It really is something from another time and maybe even another planet.Forget the past and we will be doomed to repeat it....now where's that cockamamie History Eraser Button?
Love On Smack 4:10
Last Chance 3:50
Music 3:05
Friends Of Hell 6:12
Requiem For Youth 4:35
Shadowed Images 4:15
I Lost You 2:55
Quietus 6:20
Reprise 0:35
