Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Running Wild
Label: Noise Records
Released: 1984
Rating: 3/5
The debut from these German heavy metal legends, “Gates To Purgatory”, gives precious little hint that this obscure band would one day grow into a big, important group, one that would become most famous for inventing the notion of ‘pirate metal’. The Hamburg foursome, led by charismatic singer and guitarist Rock’n Rolf (real name Rolf Kasparek), swore by classic, Teutonic-style heavy metal from the early days of their long and successful career, built on dual guitar harmonies, aggressive riffs and the marching rhythms of the drummer’s double bass pedals. Some people at the time also labeled this style speed metal, though it was still markedly different from the later American version out of Florida.
Alongside singer, guitarist and band chieftain Rock’n Rolf, the original lineup also had the enigmatic Preacher (real name Gerald Warnecke) on guitar, who later, after leaving Running Wild, became a preacher in the literal sense (a Protestant vicar), which sounds downright shocking for a member of a band that was known throughout its whole career for its sharp anticlerical and antipolitical philosophy. It’s worth noting that almost all the lyrics on “Gates To Purgatory” were tinted with themes usually associated with black metal, so some people at the time branded them Satanists, even though that was never true. The truth was much closer to this: before discovering their pirate mission, they expressed their anticlericalism and anti-conformism toward the ruling institutions in a pretty radical way, one that the metal-crazed crowds of the day could understand best.
Despite a few solid cuts, led by the closing classic “Prisoner of Our Time”, the whole album suffers chronically from poor production, which gives the individual tracks a slightly muffled sound, as if they’d been recorded in some village boiler room, and you can feel at every turn that the band was still searching for its recognizable sound at this stage of their career. To be fair, though, the recognizable sonic foundations that would mark future Running Wild achievements were already laid down here: Kasparek’s sarcastic, bleary-eyed vocals, which even back then sounded like a pirate with a head cold from too much grog, the melodic sequences of sharpened riffs, and the rolling rhythms. A nice example of that style is the opening “Victim of States Power”, their first single, which has the typical Teutonic metal stamp, and if Rolf’s distinctive vocals weren’t on it, you could easily pin it on sonically related bands like Grave Digger or Rage (then still Avenger).
“Black Demon” showcases the band’s knack for crafting melodic choruses, something that would also define their future, far more polished pirate anthems. “Preacher”, inspired by Rolf’s aforementioned guitar comrade, is marked by a slow, rolling rhythm, irritated riffs and a black metal lyric about demons, which, as already mentioned, recurs on most of the album’s tracks. “Soldiers of Hell” would be a seriously boring effort if it weren’t followed by a cunning, epic-flavored unfolding of triple guitar harmonies, with which Running Wild prove that big potential was already hiding in them back then. The rhythmically wound-up “Diabolic Force” doesn’t stand out in any particular way, apart from the unusually screeching backing vocals in the background. “Adrian SOS”, named after the demon Adrian, the band’s mascot, is marked mainly by the brutal drum fills of Wolfgang ‘Hasche’ Hagemann, who ended up becoming a cook after his music career, while Rolf, in his vocal attempts to sound scary, comes off as merely funny, which is still a plus. It’s probably no coincidence that “Genghis Khan” and the rebellious anthem “Prisoner of Our Time” are by far the best cuts on “Gates To Purgatory”. Part of the reason is surely that, besides an epic chorus, their lyrics are steeped in historical themes instead of demonology and the rest of the black metal clutter, themes that would later define their best pirate metal achievements.
“Gates To Purgatory” was, in the end, a relatively modest but still decent start to a long and successful pirate-metal career, even though Rolf’s crew, who at this stage preferred throwing the devil’s horns to a wooden leg like good old Long John Silver’s, still had the tough job of somehow patching up an identity crisis. Luckily, in the charismatic Kasparek, future captain/dictator and still the band’s only original member today, they had a personality who knew exactly what he wanted, who would pull them out of the mud countless times later and lead them toward metal stardom at the end of the eighties.