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Warlock: Triumph and agony
08/12/10 || Habakuk
Some things about the eighties are so wrong that they just need to be right. A German, denim and leather-sporting heavy metal band fronted by a roaring blonde chick with a testosterone overdose? Count me in!
Look, I’m actually too young to know (not all of us are Fuck Metal Dinosaurs), but to me the eighties spell out Top Gun, Rocky, Cold War, cheese, terrible hair, too many guitars and/or synthies and melodies that have been banned since. Well, this album doesn’t feature synthesizers, but that aside, I’d probably accept this list as a pretty apt description of “Triumph and agony”. We have a German power ballad with marching snare rolls, an actual boxing entrance song of the not-so-subtle kind, tunes that could be featured in your F-14 Tomcat’s battle radio alongside “Danger zone” and “Mighty wings” with their stomping full-frontal rhythms, and lyrics … – oh, the lyrics:
“When East meets West – it’s gonna be one Hell of a mess”? Yeah, should have told that to Apollo Creed. I’m not sure if I spotted a fire/desire rhyme, but it sure wouldn’t be out of place next to the likes of “Stronger than a mountain of steel / Faster than Hell on wheels”. Man, I’m really starting to dig this.
Sure, there are some stinkers: “Make time for love” and “Metal Tango” come to mind. Those song titles scream “SKIP ME!”, I know, but I decided to take two on the team here. Most of the time however, the sheer amount of awesome, retardedly catchy songwriting and at times quite sharp-edged riffing makes me smile at youthful follies like those songs, go out and get myself a mullet.
I can even disregard that Ms Doro Pesch pushed her frantic, and definitely unique vocal delivery over the top at some points, and that she seems to have turned into a total joke after her time in Warlock. Which, by the way, ended with the bands disbanding after “Triumph and Agony”, although the album sounds fresh and hungry like a debut. As fresh as it gets with stuff that has been covered in dust for over twenty years, at least. It seemed like a logical move for her to continue under her own name after that, but the result is that the band – as in “the dudes playing the instruments” Warlock don’t really get the credit they deserve for a simplistically heavy and decidedly German nod at the NWOBHM, and will forever be doomed to sidenote status. And they will have to live with the fact that Doro with her ridiculous has-been antics still manages to deter people like me from touching this even with the proverbial ten foot pole. Until now.
You definitely need an absurd fascination for evolutionary jokes like this (or Rvminq Wild), but once you get over the initial shock, it’s actually kind of worth it – just don’t tell anyone. I’m German, so that’s cool.
- Information
- Released: 1987
- Label: Mercury Records
- Website: Warlock at Metal-Archives
- Band
- Doro Pesch: vocals
- Niko Arvanitis: guitars
- Tommy Bolan: guitars
- Tommy Henriksen: bass
- Michael Eurich: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. All we are
- 02. Three minute warning
- 03. I rule the ruins
- 04. Kiss of death
- 05. Make time for love
- 06. East meets West
- 07. Touch of evil
- 08. Metal Tango
- 09. Cold, cold world
- 10. Für immer
