Label: Silver Lining Music
Release date: 11/20/2020
Production: Brian Tatler & Rasmus Bom Andersen
Album length: 60.53 min
Genre: Heavy Metal / N.W.O.B.H.M.
Rating: 9.0/10
“Lightning To the Nations” is considered a cult heavy metal album today. Last fall marked 40 years since its release, and the legendary guitarist Brian Tatler, the only original (and founding) member in the current Diamond Head incarnation, had been toying with the idea for quite a while that, with the 40th birthday coming up, it would be a hell of a lot of fun to record the album again. This time under the direction of the current Diamond Head lineup, which came together around Brian a few years ago and with which he put out two excellent albums, “Diamond Head” (2016) and “The Coffin Train” (2018). Both albums came out on Silver Lining Music, which also backed the revision of this cult N.W.O.B.H.M. classic, first released on October 3, 1980.
Tatler would have had a hard time pulling it all off without the Danish musician Rasmus Bom Andersen, who lives in London, owns a studio there and knows his way around the producer’s helm too, but who otherwise shines as an outstanding vocalist, one Tatler was thrilled to bring into the ranks of the new Diamond Head years ago.
“Lightning To the Nations” comes very close to flawless perfection, at least for the time when heavy metal was just emerging in the early eighties. In 1979 and 1980, Diamond Head had a fair bit of bad luck thanks to some boneheaded moves by their management at the time, so the band put the album out with a hefty delay of months. Instead of accepting one of the tempting offers from the bigger labels of the day at the right moment (at least half a year earlier), they ended up releasing a low-budget album themselves. Diamond Head carved out a name for themselves among the phalanx of N.W.O.B.H.M. bands of the time (also thanks to gigs alongside AC/DC and Iron Maiden in early 1980). They were right at the very top of these new bands of metal’s first era, the only thing missing was an album. Other bands of their time (Diamond Head were founded as early as 1976) had already made a serious breakthrough on the scene by the first half of 1980, like Iron Maiden, Saxon and Def Leppard. Despite great prospects and a fantastic debut, Diamond Head sadly missed the boat. The real train had left half a year earlier. In mid-April 1980.
And then Lars Ulrich showed up. In 1980 he was listening to an MCA Records compilation called “Brute Force”. It featured the song “It’s Electric”, which Tatler, fired up by Angus Young’s phrasing with its stop-start breaks, had written back in 1978. Let me cut a well-known story short. Most of the glory, or let’s say the wider recognition, that Diamond Head got later rests on the shoulders of Metallica (and Megadeth too), who played the classics from “Lightning To the Nations” at their shows throughout their careers. So the importance and greatness of this album, even after 40 years, is much bigger than it seems at first glance. The question is whether Bay Area Thrash metal would have exploded the way it did.
The reissue is titled “Lightning To the Nations 2020”. You guessed it. It’s a revision. A refresh of a classic. This time as a five-piece. With a totally different recording technique and production. Nobody had to count the hours in the studio this time, since the original was recorded in just four days a good 40 years ago. The crew could take their time and obsess over every detail. “Lightning to the Nations” keeps its evergreen quality, embodied by seven classics whose ambitious design is still thrilling, full-blooded. Even 40 years later. The revision brings a seriously pumped-up sonic upgrade, which is to be expected, if not downright a given. Now with two guitarists! Tatler updated the guitar solos and finally lived out his dream of getting some ideas and embellishments into the songs that he’d always wanted to. On the wings of the chameleon-like Andersen it all looks easy. The tandem of this outstanding singer and legendary guitarist is the key catalyst for everything the refreshed, re-recorded version of this album is about. Take “Sucking My Love”, which runs over nine minutes in the original and is now more than two minutes shorter. Still, this song keeps that basic Diamond Head primal DNA too, swaggering all the way back to the indelible influence of Michael Schenker’s guitar playing and his seventies UFO era.
Tacked on at the end of “Lightning To the Nations 2020” are four covers. “No Remorse” is a sort of thank-you to Metallica, and interestingly, in the hands of the current Diamond Head it sounds like a lost but freshened-up classic from the “Lightning To The Nations” album. Exactly what the band was going for in 2020. To conjure up that feeling for the listener. The other three covers are Brian Tatler’s personal picks and neatly tie his growing up on the classics of seventies rock pioneers to the character and work of Diamond Head.
A top-notch “airing out” of the debut by a legendary band, alongside two excellent new releases, is enjoying a new renaissance. The feelings of pure enjoyment and moments of total release that come with listening to the revitalized version of the debut are everywhere. Even though the original is a must in the collection of any true old-school metal devotee, the “reissue”, or let’s say more precisely the release of a refreshed version, can be a phenomenal first step for all the newcomers who are curious but don’t know how to connect with the days of heavy metal pioneering and innovation. It’s incredible how these riffs still grab you today, so intensely and monstrously. With the momentum of huge power, a theater of occult doom, wickedness, epic scale, defiance, fury and a hunger for affirmation. The wings of nobly tempered phrases and ideas keep their diamond solidity and the decisive swing of a diamond cut even after 40 years. Even in their revision and update. Given the devastating face of the current album “The Coffin Train” (RockLine review), which hit number 5 on the “UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart” of best-selling records when it came out in May 2018, it’ll be interesting to see how much of the chemistry from reworking those good old phrases carries over into ideas for the new album. High hopes are more than justified. And Diamond Head are still getting kicked along by their contemporaries: Raven, Cloven Hoof, Satan, Blitzkrieg, Tokyo Blade, Jameson Reid, Weapon UK, Tygers of Pan Tang and, last but not least, because it simply couldn’t be otherwise, Saxon and Iron Maiden. As if those 40 years had never passed.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Lightning To The Nations
2. The Prince
3. Sucking My Love
4. Am I Evil?
5. Sweet And Innocent
6. It’s Electric
7. Helpless
8. No Remorse
9. Immigrant Song
10. Sinner
11. Rat Bat Blue
Line-up:
Rasmus Bom Andersen – vocals, orchestrations, additional guitars
Brian Tatler – lead & rhythm guitar
Andrew “Abbz” Abberley – rhythm & lead guitar
Dean Ashton – bass guitar, organ
Karl Wilcox – drums
