Artist: Dr. Steel
Label: RTB
Released: 1986
Length: 35:52
Rating: 3.5/5
Yugoslavia in the second half of the eighties was a hotbed of lively politics and, even more importantly, bloody great music. Bands were popping up like mushrooms after rain. There was hardly a town where people weren’t getting fired up about the sound of damn good guitars. Hardly a village where the lads weren’t dreaming of the sweet sensuality of the real rocker life: naked girls, money, partying and the glitz of living fast. One of the key hubs of the scene in the shared homeland of the day was the Croatian port of Rijeka, where the recipe for that mindset was multiplied by ten, and where there was no shortage of creative hunger or of bands craving success and their slice of the glory pie.
In 1983, the ballistic core of a new band came together out of various local lineups, sprouting from pure heavy metal seed and feeling in its veins the urge to settle scores with Divljih Jagod and out-decibel them with priestly energy and leather. They started out as Nož u leđa, with vocalist Boris Sarljić, guitarists Miro Klarič and Dalmo Tomin, bassist Davor Vučetić and drummer Željko Pajić, but under pressure from the morality and persecution authorities’ censors they renamed themselves something far more harmless: Dr. Steel. Barely a year after forming, the homeland called them up for military service, but by 1985 they were ready to plow into virgin musical territory, full and uncompromising. They recorded their first demo at Top Ten studio in Ljubljana to land the backing of a bigger label, and meanwhile spread the word about this new NWOBHM fantasy on Yugoslav stages, at festivals and at guitar-band contests. The circle of fans kept growing, and the positive reviews from listeners and journalists didn’t let up either, so success was within arm’s reach. After winning at Gitarijada ’86 in Zaječar, they got the chance of a career: instead of a single, on Pece Popović’s advice they recorded a full-blooded debut, released in a run of 7,000 vinyls and 3,000 cassettes, which, with a whiff of self-production, serves up nine honest, hard-hitting metal classics. And so the legendary metal record of former Yugoslavia saw the light of day: Čekam na noć.
The album is a raw, sex-soaked missile of testosterone-fueled macho energy, with Željko’s lyrics woven tightly into the musical contours of devout metal in the vein of Saxon, Judas Priest, Accept, Scorpions and the old patriarch Black Sabbath, while the music is penned by the holy trinity of Miro, Davor and Dalmo. The wild ride through the world of hellish debauchery kicks off with the title track, Čekam na noć. A rather obscure guitar solo right at the start throws the music into top gear in one go. The lyrics are a chapter all their own: minimalism of words, plowing virgin soil out of Boris’s throat, organic, Maiden-precise and convulsively sexual. Dr. Steel are simply not poets; in their sermons they deliver their vision of vulgar, sweaty fucking and a paradise full of magical nymphs. Bitanga, in its rebellious pose, sings about how at their core they’re rotten, dangerous and evil, but what can you do, pretty girls love, or at least back then loved, rogues, barbarians and Neanderthals, not whiny, romantic fakers …
The guitar sounds stick to your ears, and after that arena-rock and metal mantra comes more unraveling of the threads of decadence and Whitesnake-style glorification of busty, willing and above all naked girls in Sve što želim. No more love, just sex as the supreme imperative of a life lived right now, with no dreams of a distant future, is what the dangerous, cliché-packed missile Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’roll offers too, while the biker-anthemic Divlji anđeli pours kerosene on the bonfires of debauchery. The only change of language on the record is the English-sounding, phenomenal Darkness, which Halford’s alliance of hellish riders Judas Priest would undoubtedly be proud of too. Then comes the softer, gorgeously guitar-driven and erotic metal ballad Istočno od raja, but since Dr. Steel work best at high revs and in high vocal registers, the heartbeat quickens as the foot hits the gas and the faster tempo of Oko za oko drives a destructive stampede to its inevitable, cataclysmic end. Kraljica, as the grand finale of the first studio masterpiece from Rijeka’s metalheads Dr. Steel, bows out with a Coverdale-esque aesthetic, leaving plenty unsaid, and, sadly, the hopes for more went unfulfilled.
Some critics hail Čekam na noć as the best heavy metal release of the eighties on the soil of the former Yugo, and even if you disagree with that verdict, there’s no doubt that Dr. Steel were one of the brightest moments of Yugoslav metal. The old vinyls have faded and the cassette tapes have gone missing, but the legend of the Rijeka phenomenon called Dr. Steel, a non-punk alternative to what was going on in the world at the time, lives on. The memory gets passed around on countless subversive forums and in the diary scribblings of aging (ex-)longhairs who caught one of their notorious, outstanding gigs (Dr. Steel toured Yugo from Celje all the way to Svetozarevo, at least), while the baton of their greatness was carried on (and sonically echoed) after the band split by Bombarder, Legija, Heller, Pergament and plenty of similar acts. During the break, Miro Klarić turned to punk sounds in the band Grč, and after a few years’ hiatus Dr. Steel tried to reach for the stars again with their second record, Heaven Or Hell (Učini nešto). They recorded it at Radio Pula’s studio in Pula, but what followed was a cold shower and a fiasco, as the world no longer lent a friendly ear to old-school metal. Times had changed. War came, and with war the destruction and vanishing of monuments of the past. Dr. Steel ended up on the scrapheap of history, and we bow to the memory of a time that once was, at least with a mention on our forum. Who knows? Maybe, if only out of curiosity, if not out of a genuine memory of times you might not have lived through, you’ll dig a rare and precious copy of the record out of the dusty corners of the attic or cellar at home, the one your older brother or dad once bought, put the vinyl on the turntable and, through the needle, feel at least a little of that hunger for authenticity, music and good old heavy …
Lineup
Boris Sarajlić – vocals
Miro Klarić – guitar
Dalmo Tomin – guitar
Davor Vučetić – bass
Željko Pajić – drums
Production
Dr. Steel
Tracklist
1. Čekam na noć
2. Bitanga
3. Sve što želim
4. Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll
5. Divlji anđeli
6. Darkness
7. Istočno od raja
8. Oko za oko
9. Kraljica
