Depe Croix Dale I

There are some places so special, so alive that one hesitates to write of them lest it erode their sanctity. There are trees so ancient that they stood before Christ came to these islands. The massive first forests that once covered the land are now slivers of green winding along narrow valley bottoms. They have been grubbed up, tore down and tarmaced over for super-markets, industrial estates and horrible, soul destroying houses but echoes of the past still remain. Not wild but not yet managed, fallen into blissful neglect and allowed to return to self seed and a kind of genteel wilderness in which fallen trees rot slowly back to earth and windfalls form ad-hoc dams over slow lazy streams.

These places are few and far between and when you find one you know it by the rise in the hairs on the back of your neck and the still hush that falls as you enter. They are not new, bright woodlands. They are not easily accessed by the fly-tipper or the casual arsonist. They are hidden away in secret pockets, in folds of the lands protected by stone and water. They can be glimpsed from the windows of speeding trains and entered quietly through fields and forgotten paths but these hemmed-in strips of woodland are time-machines that can call the willing back to the land as it was, doors into Elphame that still open for those who knock though the way is hard and shrinking every day.

The woodland that wraps around Croxdale Beck has this character. A long, thin green snake of mixed broadleaf and conifer that winds along the valley, bordered on all side by farm land and with the busy East Coast mainline running through it for a short distance. In it’s upper stretches, where the beck runs swiftly over small rocky pavements and undercuts banks held in place by networks of ash and sycamore roots the woodland is open and light, a delicate scent of wild garlic just beginning to perfume the valley in the warmth of a sunny day in late March. The paths are broad and clear although seemingly seldom tread, there are no ruts made by mountain bikes, no wayside deposits left by carefree dog-walkers and very little litter, except for the ubiquitous pieces of plastic caught in the waterside branches to show the high water mark of the last flood.

This is an empty and forgotten woodland, a long way from the nearest settlement and on the way to nowhere in particular there is no reason for people to visit, unless they want to walk quietly along its neglected paths and peer into the depths of the pools. Somewhere ahead of me a pheasant is noisily alarming. I look down the trail but cannot see the bird, from the quality of the sound it appears to be too far ahead to have been disturbed by my presence. As I entered the wood further back another pheasant had silently sloped away into the undergrowth with that exaggerated chicken-run gait these birds adopt when they want to make themselves scarce so I know pheasants. Whatever is alarming this bird it seems to be further into the wood. I carry on down the trail, stopping to watch wrens flitting around an old stone wall and to look for the chub and dace that were restocked into the beck a few years ago.

Suddenly to my right, on the other side of the beck three Roe make a break from their cover and run back upstream, crashing through the undergrowth and making small goat-like caprioles over fallen trees. It happens so fast that I barely have time to lift the camera and snap off a picture, hoping for the best as their white rumps disappear into the woods. By now it’s obvious that the path I’m following was once a canalised channel, its high walls overgrown with ash saplings and its stone lined bottom a grassy green lane. As the canal-path continues down through the wood the stonework becomes larger and more impressive showing sluice gates and the remains of a long forgotten mill overgrown by trees and brambles. There is rock everywhere, warm orange sandstone poking through the thin sandy soil. The valley is deepening, the rocky outcrops are becoming higher and more impressive and the beck begins to loop in larger and deeper coils about the flanks of the hill, cutting down to reveal cliffs hung with moss and saplings, the stream rippling and rolling over small waterfalls and rapids.

Depe Croix Dale II

It is here that the character of the wood changes, as subtly yet distinctly as if one had crossed a street. The open sunny rides of ash and sycamore are replaced by a dark brooding wood of ancient oaks, beech and yew and guarding the entrance to this older, deeper valley is an ancient yew tree of such massive proportions it is all one can do to stop from falling to ones knees in front of it. The tree grows out of a steep hillside above the beck, serpentine roots slither out from a thick and gnarled trunk. Slow growing and seemingly immortal this guardian-yew is one of many very old yews growing in the valley bottom of the middle section of the beck, a clue written in elder-ciphers of stone, wood and water revealing the secrets of the Place to those with the Key. The sides of the valley rise and the rocky outcrops become cliffs, cut steeply through the exposed sandstone by the action of the beck over thousands of years. Here the light is dim and diffuse, even at mid-day the bottom of the dale is gloomy and overcast. A forgotten world in which massive trees reach up to the sky above and deep drifts of rich brown beech and oak leaves crunch and crisp below, no matter how quietly one tries to walk through them. Now you are in the Depe Croix Dale of the old balladeer, a haunted valley shunned by good Christian folk because of its reputation as the abode of beasts and devils.

He feared noy ye loute with hys staffe Nor yet for ye Knyghte in hys mayle He cared no more for ye Monk with hys boke Than ye fyendis in depe Croix Dale

Then out spoke Hodge, yt wyghte soe bolde Yt onse on Ferie hye And he hathe sworne by Seynt Cuthberte bys rode Yt this horride brawne shall dye

Here the landscape and folklore combine to form the geomythology of today. The deep, cliff-guarded secret dale is a last pocket of the primal wildwood that blanketed the middle Wear-valley until the middle ages. This lost forest, of which this is a last remaining pocket, was the home of the Brawn of Brancepeth, the monstrous wild boar that was slain by Roger de Feyre “sometime about 1200”, on the hill where Ferryhill now stands and from whom the village takes its name. Roger, or Hodge, is believed to be buried at St John’s Church, Kirk Merrington, which stands on a hill dominating the valley, its 72-foot high tower a landmark for miles around. Ferryhill and Kirk Merrington control the road-ways both north-south and east-west. There are clear sightlines south to the Tees estuary and the North Yorkshire Moors beyond and northwards beyond Durham to the Tyne. These hills were important places of transition and crossing, important enough for ancient churches to be sited on still more ancient hill-tops. Fitting places for the deeds of heroes. Fitting places to cast out devils from deep dark valleys by the erection of crosses and to proclaim the ascendancy of the new god by killing the totems of the old gods.

Depe Croix Dale III

But down in the depe croix dale the passing of the Brawn is as yesterday. The oak and beech mast lie in piles in the boles of huge trees, swift black deer run through the golden carpet of leaves and high above rooks and carrion crows wheel in the bright sun light. The valley is silent and still, walking through it is like entering a vast, deserted cathedral. I climb the steep bank to my right, slipping and sliding in the leaf-drifts until I gain the small ledge at the foot of the cliffs. From here one can see clearly down the dale, the slow quiet stream cutting its way through the bottom, swathes of green rising in the spring of the year. The place is holy and still. I walk slowly and quietly, drinking in the silence of the deep places. Here there is no sign of man, no litter, no footprints, no noise. I am alone in a place that few people know even exists and fewer have troubled to visit. I am off the beaten track, I have traveled backwards and I look on things as they once were.

Picking my way slowly along the base of the cliffs, beneath the overhanging slabs of pale orange stone I wonder, as those who have explored these hidden and secret places have always wondered, what lies above. I find a suitable place in the cliff and begin to ascend, partly climbing partly scrambling I rise further and further until clambering over bramble covered boulders I attain a small shelf of rock. This is the true sanctuary, the holy of holies and a place where one can leap backwards off the edge of modernity into the lost times. I feel safe and enveloped. Deep in a notched pocket high on the cliff wall I look down on the woodland below, I see the silver of the beck reflecting the bright sun, a glittering serpent of shining light 200 feet below me. I hear the oceanic rumble of the wind as it blows through the tree tops level with my eyes, sometimes still sometimes roaring it passes me by without venturing into my cove. Around me the trees that cling high to the beetling cliffs are stunted and bonsied, twisting knotted oaks writhe out wraithlike into the abyss, curling yews slither outwards, their trunks making wild twists and turns.

Here I am suspended between earth and sky. Above and behind me the wind carved rock shows gleaming bands of orange and red, small holes and cracks in the cliff face hide owls and hawks. I have the pleasure of looking down on the woodland from above, out over the tree tops as they sway in the wind. When one walks in a wood it is difficult to appreciate the movement and vitality of trees, up here it is evident and poetic. I watch courting chaffinches as they roll and tumble through the branches beneath me and see a small pack of great tits hunt insects along branches. I sit in still silent solitude for hours. The rock warmed by the sun, the white clouds floating across a blue sky. I am immersed in the life of the woodland. I close my eyes and feel the wind as it blows over me. I keep my eyes closed for a very long time, I focus on my hearing, picking out the calls of birds, the hum of insects and the creak of swaying trees. I hear the stealthy crunch of the deer I had disturbed earlier as they make their way back up the valley below me – if the deep leaf-litter makes it hard for me to walk silently it makes it equally hard for the deer. As I sit with my eyes closed I hear the fluttering whir of a small pale tree creeper as it flies onto the stunted airborne yew to my right. I open my eyes and watch as it inspects me for a moment. I am so close I can see the sharp downward curve of its delicate bill and its wide-splayed toes. It looks at me without moving then satisfied it begins its spiral course along the tree in quick jerky movements.

There is nothing of Man here. No thing. Nothing to recall the modern world. I am isolated in space and time. I have found one of the doors that still open between the worlds and having passed through I am taken away through the heart of the slumbering hills to the Tole Deol. I have glimpsed, like shadows behind reality, the dim shapes and outlines of the land that no longer is. I have heard the beastlike worshippers howling with their heads in the dust. In this High Place I have washed away the present and restored the past and caused even the hills, the forests and the rivers to resume their ancient aspect and to scorn the errors of civilisation.

Depe Croix Dale IV: Stone

Depe Croix Dale V: Wood

Depe Croix Dale VI: Water

Sunny Sunday Afternoon

The first really warm day of the year and a day full of the cracking and squabbling of nesting rooks and the flight of new risen butterflies. Today we visited Barnard Castle and walked along the banks of Condatis’ Tees with its brown peaty waters and the swollen buds just peeping out at the end of Ash twigs. Quite a contrast to last weekend when a trip to High Force and Cauldron Snout was aborted in a blizzard just past Middle-In-Teesdale. Heaven Harvest have been pleased to published a lengthy interview, in which you can read of my admiration for Y&T, what I really think of Black Metal and why you should learn to knap your own flint. www.heathenharvest.com This weekend has also seen the completion of two exclusive THB tracks for exciting compilation projects. “Judah Is A Lions Whelp” has been recorded for a 4-way split on Glasgow’s At War With False Noise, the other bands being Skullflower, Harm and Fordell Research Unit. Also “Secret Overlord” is now complete and will shortly be submitted to a multi-artist project curated by the Texas band Pyramids. It was quite a challenge working with the 4 samples provided by the band but in the end something good was achieved. Both releases are set to be on cassette. More details as and when they are received. www.atwarwithfalsenoise.com www.myspace.com/pyramidsmusic

Metallica + Machine Head + The Sword, Newcastle 3rd March 09

If you had told me twelve months ago that not only would I be waiting, with a great deal of excitement, to see Metallica in a massive arena but that I would also have willingly forked out £45.70p for the privilege of sitting somewhere near the back in the top corner of said arena I would have dismissed your prediction as poppycock. But here I am, or rather there I was and the questions we need to address ourselves to are how did this come to be and was it any fucking good?

There can be few bands in the history of music, let alone heavy metal, who once having got it so right then proceeded to get it oh so very wrong as Metallica. My relationship with the band has been something of a love affair and as with most love affairs the starry-eyed, we’ll-be-together-for-ever stage eventually gave way to mistrust, bitter recriminations, years of indifference and finally a sort of nostalgic curiosity for what might have been coupled with the jolting wake-up call moment when one realises that for all the unfilled dreams and possibilities you are where you are and the past has passed.

The day I bought my first Metallica record I was going through a massive Sammy Hagar/Montrose phase and couldn’t decide whether to buy Sammy’s 1978 live album “Loud N’ Clear” or a new album called Ride The Lightning by a band I’d only heard once on the radio (strangely I already had a record with a Metallica-orientated cover – in 1983 Roadrunner Records had issued a compilation album called Metal Battle, with tracks by Anvil, Mercyful Fate, Battleaxe, Venom, Raven, Jaguar etc and although the record had a picture of James Hetfield’s groin on the cover it didn’t contain any Metallica songs). In the end I bought them both, making a substantial dent in the saved-up dinner money and un-used bus fares that formed my weekly record buying budget in the autumn of 1984. In the conservative spirit of heavy metal Ride The Lightning was an evolutionary step rather than a revolutionary jump and as such it did not question the legitimacy of my Iron Maiden, Saxon, Dio or Judas Priest albums but in subtle ways it was a very different beast. I already had a lot of Motorhead records and Venom were one of my favourite bands but although Metallica were obviously, reassuringly heavy metal and the art, photos and aesthetic of Ride The Lightning did nothing to offend my trad-metal tastes it was different - faster, heavier, younger, fresher and better. A record made by men barely in their twenties rather than blokes in their thirties - it might have been simultaneously the last hurrah of the NWOBHM (recorded by Americans in a studio in Denmark!) as well as the beginning of a new chapter in metal.

I went back a few weeks later, with more saved-up dinner money, and bought Kill ‘Em All. I played those records a lot, back to back, interchanging them with Thin Lizzy’s Live & Dangerous or Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind as I did my homework until the new, fresh sounds became the norm, changing the way I understood heavy metal and the way I viewed myself. I first saw Metallica in 1985 at Donnington, sandwiched between Ratt and Marillion and although at the time I didn’t notice it things were changing, indeed they had changed and metal was running away with itself, new bands making new sounds for new times. By the time Metallica toured the “Master Of Puppets” album and played Newcastle Mayfair in September 1986 they were a big band, fresh from an arena tour with Ozzy and a massive, headbanging challenge to the bands that I been listening to for the last five years. The change had come, metal had splintered and diversified. Cliff Burton may have had a Rush patch on his jeans and worn a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt but it was no longer acceptable, hardly even possible to admit to liking Thrash and the older, safer bands. I was to see Metallica a further 4 times, again at Donnington in 1987 and three gigs in the autumn of 1988 on the Justice tour. They were heady days, drunk with passion and the freedom that only those without responsibilities or cares for the future know. Metallica were a talisman for those who grew up in the ghetto of 80s metal and for a few, bright golden years in the bliss of my youth Metallica were the most exciting band in the world, their young metal attack building on shared metal roots and propelling us forward into new places.

Things change. Love affairs cool and die as expectations are reassessed and realities grasped. Metallica were exploding into arenas around the world, playing second-fiddle to Guns N Roses, making records with the git who produced Bon Jovi. What was happening, what had happened to the band I had loved, the band who had made me care about the here and now rather than trying to live in the 1970s? In the summer of 1991 I went into a record shop and came out with two albums, Metallica’s Black Album and “In The Name Of Suffering” by a band called Eyehategod that I’d never heard before and which I bought on the strength of the cover. I played that EHG album back to back. To this day I still haven’t heard sides 3 or 4 of the Black album. And that was that. It was dead and I walked away, got on with my life and if I ever thought of Metallica it was as a band who once had it all but blew it away on lear-jets and limousines.

Not for the last time I was swimming against the tide. Millions were flocking to them in their stadium years and as they pumped out that same crappy, chuggy, happy-go-lucky riff to Enter Sandman again and again in front of tens of thousands of uncritical Beavis’s and Buttheads, as James went through his rehearsed crowd-swearing routine and burped for the cameras their lawyers were doing people selling fake merch outside the gates. This was business, Lars Ulrich as CEO of his own rock n roll corporation, making public statements that called his fans thieves for downloading a song from the internet whilst making a record with Marianne Faithful and wearing eyeliner in photo shoots. We all laughed at Some Kind Of Monster but we were all entitled to – Metallica were a joke. Metallica – once the most vital, alive heavy metal band on the planet were now crass, childish millionaires who couldn’t write a song, couldn’t take criticism and were falling apart. I would have happily left them there, squabbling over their collections of modern art and fretting that even Jason’s short-lived nu-metal practice band was better than Metallica if it wasn’t for one thing – Death Magnetic is actually a pretty good album.

Somehow Metallica made a good album. But lets not get too excited. At the time of the release of Death Magnetic in 2008 and in the midst of all the media frenzy and coffin-shaped boxed editions I took a look at some of the on-line reviews. They were all very similar; return-to-form this, thrash-metal that, riffs-riffs-riffs the other. Even the “rock critic” of the Sunday Times felt able to pronounce, seemingly with no sense of sarcasm, that Death Magnetic was “the best metal record of the millennium”. Obviously the reality is that Death Magnetic wasn’t even the best metal record released that month but it was, and this is the point, the best record Metallica had released for 20 years. If the production was criticised for its radio-centric sound and gripes were aired about the band releasing an alternate version for the Guitar Hero video game when all was said and done it wasn’t a bad album. Certainly not as bad as some of the dross the band had released during their wilderness years of platinum discs, sell out stadium tours and orchestra collaborations. So, as I began to warm to a few of the songs on Death Magnetic and even began to remember some of the lyrics and riffs I wondered if it might be worth making peace with the past and giving Metallica one more chance, maybe even going to see them again.

Arena gigs – I’ve had a few but then again, too few to mention. There’s only one reason bands play arenas – it enables them to maximise profit. At last nights gig the audience were kept waiting in the foyer of the arena so that opportunities to spend money on merch or sample Guitar Hero were not wasted, maybe Lars was sat in his hotel viewing the sales figures on his laptop and judging the right moment to open the doors? Whatever the retail motive for keeping us penned in like cattle when The Sword came on the seats were half empty and the sound dull and muddy. Anybody not familiar with the back-story of The Sword might be forgiven for thinking that they were average but for all their self-proclaimed allegiance to the spirit of true heavy metal I find them a hollow, unsatisfying experience. It’s all about paying dues and The Sword are very much in debt. Exposed as a marketing-departments master-plan to sell watered down metal to the MySpace generation this is a Potemkin-village of a band who’s financial backers have bought them a slot on the years biggest tour but who, when all is said and done, can’t hold a candle to the bands they are so shamelessly copying. High On Fire, The Gates Of Slumber and Grand Magus sound the way they do because they grew up loving Black Sabbath, Celtic Frost and Venom – not Ween and Smashing Pumpkins. It’s simple really.

Machine Head are an irrelevance, a nasty scab on the arse of metal that refuses to fall off. I hate this music – songs buried beneath a flurry of double-bass, vocals rapped out in staccato bursts of tough-guy angst and woolly-hat nu-thrash which seeks to mask a lack of heaviness with a squiggly mess of bouncy half-riffs. Teenagers, impressed by the swearing and the bands heartfelt idiocy, hop and jump about in safe little huddles, arms pulled in to protect their bodies as they bounce harmlessly off their friends. Machine Head have the audience they deserve.

As Saxon’s Heavy Metal Thunder fades into the Ecstasy Of Gold intro tape and the house lights go out the excitement hits me. The arena is filled with screaming and roaring, lasers carve pyramids and pathways through the darkness and the band kick into their 2 hour set. It’s tight and precise, as it should be – Metallica have been touring this material for months – and I start to get that old buzz, to move from Self 1 to Self 2, to use some Ulrich-approved Inner Game Theory. But I am no longer a believer, not one of the Beavis’ or Buttheads’ down around the stage viewing the gig through the medium of an up-held camera-phone. I am not fodder for Metallica’s stadium-a-thons and I want more before I will be satisfied.

It’s not until the band play Harvester Of Sorrow that I really begin to feel at home – not with the audience but with the band. I look around and take in the audience, they are all ages, from small children to large, matronly women chaperoning their retarded sons and a lot of them are not very metal. To my right a group of women wave a bed-sheet with a message on it, giggling to each other as if it’s a Robbie Williams gig, bending their legs and pumping flabby bingo-wings along to the riffs. I realise many of the thousands of people present tonight have no shared metal roots, there is no common bond amongst the audience, no shared values or passions that makes gigs great and unites audience and performer in something much greater than the sum of its parts. They are along for the ride, glad of the change from a night in front of the telly and unburdened by concerns about the validity of playing heavy metal in vast, corporate arenas. And without those references points, the shared history and disappointments they are happy in their roles of spectator, fulfilled just by being there and quite oblivious to the internal contradictions contained in Metallica’s underground heroes to corporate cash-cow story. But look away from the pop-corn eaters, down towards the stage and you can see a band still capable of playing real heavy metal; Hetfield is an authoritative performer, smiling and relaxed, open and friendly but with a presence and respect that is rare from a multi-millionaire. Lars is still a skinny creep with a fat face whilst Kirk seems to be happy enough now that he’s got solos to play again. The other one dresses like a nu-metal basketball player and I can’t help wondering what they saw in him but looking down on the democratic stage-in-the-round layout, blazing beneath the lights I can see again why I once loved this band even if now I only hold them in fond regard.

It’s not all smiles and applause though, as the stage blasts out clouds of rolling fire and the stark, funereal coffin rig hangs over the band like a skeletal claw they play through the core of a set taken largely from Death Magnetic. The tracks sound crisp and snappy, stadium-filling trade-marked Metallica songs that gets the audience moving but as slick, crunchy and adequate as these songs are I won’t be taking them to my grave; Death Magnetic is a good album and better than anybody had a right to expect from this band at this point in their careers but not one that bears comparison with some of the earlier material, which was not merely good but magnificent. I’ll trade you Cyanide for Battery or The Judas Kiss for Creeping Death and then we’ll see who’s laughing

The highlight of the show is the rendition of “The Day That Never Comes” followed by a furious, up-tempo version of “Master Of Puppets”. Metallica have always been at their most epic and dynamic when they take their foot off the peddle and blend heaviness with melody. Both Kirk Hammet and James Hetfield owe a lot to the Blackmore/Schenker/Roth school of guitar playing and the tension and feeling they put into “The Day That Never Comes”, with it’s slow-burn riffs and blazing twin-lead solos shone through, just as the slower melodic section in the middle of “Master Of Puppets” is the foil for the thrashing rage of the riffs and chorus. When Metallica get it right they are as jaw-dropping and uplifting as arena metal gets.

By the time they played Blackened I was won over, engaged by the passion and performance and encouraged that James and Kirk, at least, still remember what the Metal in Metallica stands for. I still don’t want to hear Enter Sandman again as long as I live and the sight of the crowd clapping its hands and stamping its feet along to that brainless, pop-riff was enough to sicken a pig – especially compared to the bemused look of indifference that seemed to sweep over the crowd when the band knocked out Whiplash but these days frenzied madness is in short supply and leathers and spikes have been replaced by kids in cardigans and hair-gel. If you can tune out the surroundings, forget that you have been herded into a huge shed with 12,000 other consumers and focus on the stage you can, at points throughout the set, also forget the misery and embarrassment the band has been through. Just like bumping into an old girlfriend and finding that actually she isn’t, as you feared, a fat old drunken trollop with a wart on her chin and six kids you leave Metallica gigs in 2009 with a slightly warm, fuzzy feeling and promises to meet up again at some point in the future.

That Was Just Your Life

The End Of The Line

Harvester Of Sorrow

No Remorse

One

Broken, Beat And Scarred

Cyanide

Sad But True

No Leaf Clover

The Judas Kiss

The Day That Never Comes

Master Of Puppets

Blackened

Nothing Else Matters

Enter Sandman

Encore:

Killing Time

Whiplash

Seek & Destroy

The photographs used to illustrate this piece were taken by Drone at Manchester, 26th February and Sheffield, 28th February 2009. Many thanks for his permission to use them here.

Its My Party

Saturday 28th February 2009 saw a select gathering at Cold Spring Records for a double celebration – the launch of the new TenHornedBeast album, “My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth” and also the opening of the new office and retail space for the label. The flyer for the event, which had been rescheduled from 7th February due to the heavy snows, listed “Christopher Walton – Special Guest”, which was something of a surprise and whilst I was disappointed with the absence of dwarfs bearing trays of cocaine and the no-show of Holly Willoughby and Fearne Cotton the event was very a enjoyable, sociable occasion and one that proved just how diverse and interesting people associated with this music can be. I am sure it will be a very long time before I have a conversation with a music journalist about Philipino black-thrash bands, discuss how memory works and reminisce about Swans gigs with a professor of neuro-science and receive an impromptu lesson in knife making all in the same evening. Cold Spring’s new office is in the centre of the delightful village of Long Buckby, in the heart of rural Northamptonshire and is served by a mainline station with quick trains to both Birmingham and London. The labels mail order distro has long boasted the widest selection of post-industrial, noise, dark-ambient and neo-folk releases in the UK and the new space allows customers to browse through their extensive selection of CDs, vinyl, t-shirts and printed material. Please consult the website for opening times and further details. www.coldspring.co.uk I would like to thank Justin and Jo for going to the trouble of organising the party and for extending the hospitality of their home to me for the weekend, particularly the 3am crash-course in Human League rarities. The following albums kept me on the road during the 3+ hour drive to and from the party; none of them are by The Human League. Desolation Angels – Disc 1 Feels Like Thunder box-set Led Zeppelin – Disc 1, How The West Was Won Iron Angel – Hellish Crossfire Hammers Of Misfortune – The Bastard Cirith Ungol – One Foot In Hell Motorhead – Orgasmatron Scorpions – In Trance