#the rods

[metalcultbrigade]

The Rods - Wild Dogs / February 27, 1982

[goatpaste]

Rikiel gets into knitting to help with their anxieties+his lil funny pet froggy watch and its best friends the rods :))

9 days till the end of stone ocean baby!!!! woo!!

[Commission Prices][Etsy][Buy me a Kofi]

[the-young-metal-attack]

On March 20, 1984 Metallica were fully prepared to hit the road along with Anthrax, The Rods and Exciter. One problem. Ticket sales were horrible and the tour is cancelled. According to the band's tour manager at the time: "About two weeks before the start of the tour we noticed to our dismay that our best-selling show was the Newcastle Mayfair where we'd sold a massive 14 tickets. It was at that moment that we thought the tour might not be the success we wanted it to be, so we cancelled it immediately.”

[vinylspinning]

Exciter: Violence & Force (1984)

Think back to thrash metal's Year Zero -- 1983 -- and you might be surprised to realize that legit, undisputed examples of the nascent form were limited to Metallica's Kill 'em All, Slayer's Show No Mercy, and Exciter's Heavy Metal Maniac.

That's it!

Everything else fast and furious coming out of the metal scene back then simply has to be categorized as speed metal, and I honestly wouldn't even argue too hard if you claimed Exciter, too, qualified as that instead of genuine thrash.

But the point is, Exciter were right there on the cusp, and they had an opportunity to consolidate their standing when their sophomore album, Violence & Force, arrived in stores at the top of 1984, all of 40 years ago.

Unfortunately, they took a slight step back, instead, and this LP was marred by inconsistent songwriting, low-budget production, courtesy of Rods drummer Carl Canedy (Anthrax, Overkill, etc.), and the God-awful cover art didn't help!

"Pardon me, Miss, but would you please take my switchblade?"

Indeed with the exception of the rip-roaring thrashers like "Scream in the Night," "Swords of Darkness," and the title track, the rest of Violence & Force sounds repetitive and uninspired -- like a somewhat faded carbon copy of its predecessor.

Or worse, because the seemingly interminable "Pounding Metal" should have rightfully been named "Plodding Metal," and the similarly overlong "War is Hell" was only marginally less painful.

Luckily, Exciter's John Ricci (guitar), Allan James Johnson (bass), and Dan Beehler (drums, lead vocals) could sometimes play their way out of a bind on decent fare like "Evil Sinner," "Saxons of the Fire," and the acoustic-intro'ed "Delivering to the Master."

But these inconsistencies inevitably kept some fans from choosing Violence & Force over a growing selection of classic thrash albums (Metallica's Ride the Lightning, Anthrax's Fistful of Metal, Voivod's War and Pain, Destruction's Sentence of Death, etc.) coming in 1984.

Exciter knew they had to step up their game in order to face this growing competition, and that's precisely what they did with the following year's Long Live the Loud, which still wasn't perfect (no Exciter LP ever was), but probably reached the biggest audience of their career.

More Exciter: Heavy Metal Maniac, Long Live the Loud, Feel the Knife EP, Unveiling the Wicked.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[gotankgo]

1984

[horrid-phantasm]

The Rods