It was probably way back in 1988 when I was attending college at Oswego State
University in upstate New York that the band “
Piledriver” was first introduced
to me. A buddy of mine and I were getting ready to go on a road trip to the
infamous, “House of Guitars” in Rochester, NY. (It’s a haven for all kinds of
great, hard to find records, tapes and cd’s as well as instruments). Since the
trip upstate would take about an hour and a half, we grabbed some music for
the long haul. He kept nudging me to listen to this band, “
Piledriver”.
One look at the cover (a guy dressed in bondage gear “piledriving” his victim
with a flying V guitar), the names of the songs, (
Sex With Satan, Alien Rape,
Sodomize The Dead), made me think twice before playing it. But, being the
open minded, objective person that I am, I decided to give it a try. I’m glad
I did. To this day this album ranks among one of my favorites.
Piledriver hailed from “The Great White North”, or Canada if you prefer.
It was a project put together to make a quick buck around the time
Kiss decided
to unmask themselves. A guy at the record label wanted a band of mystique and
anonymity that could try and fill the void that
Kiss left.
Piledriver
was a heavy metal/thrash “band” who used aliases instead of their real names.
A majority of the music and lyrics were written by Leslie Howe. Gord Kirchin
was brought in to lay down the vocal tracks. The lyrics were comical in nature.
PILEDRIVER’s brand of sick and twisted humor was all about sex, violence,
alcohol, drugs and anything else vile and repulsive. Think of
GWAR but
not as outrageous or technically talented. Even touches of classic
VENOM
seem to be there both lyrically and musically. What started out as a joke and
recording only project turned into somewhat of a success. They sold 250,000
copies in 1985 alone! (There is a very complicated but interesting back-story
to this album, so go to this
link
to read all about it).
The title track, “
Metal Inquisition”, is a classic anthem about a modern
day heavy metal lynch mob in search of prosecuting those who didn’t listen to
heavy metal. Lyrics like “so if you’re in a disco, or in a country bar, you
better get the hell out, we know who you are” and “if you’re not a metalhead
you might as well be dead”. The sampled sound of a guillotine speeding down
to decapitate its victim is what you’ll hear numerous times after the lyrics,
“we’re the Metal Inquisition, we sentence you to DEATH ------------by guillotine!”
The second track, “
Sex With Satan” is funny. It’s a bit thrashier with
lyrics like “sex with Satan, excommunication” and “degradation, humiliation,
thrusting, shoving, animals humping”.
”
Sodomize The Dead” starts off with sounds of screaming, puking and
a fart to boot. It’s basically some crazy soloing around chainsaw like guitar
riffing with the lyrics “Sodomize The Dead” repeated over and over.
The best track on the album is “
Witch Hunt”. ”We're roasting her on
the stake, she’s gotta burn, she’s gotta bake”. The sounds of fire, wood crackling
and the Piledriver, High Priest of the Metal Inquisition, sentencing a witch
to death. There’s lots of guitar soloing played with much feeling on this track.
I really like the use of the EMU “Drummulator” drum machine, combined with some
simple but steady bass guitar thumps.
“Who Am I? You ask yourself. I'm a dirty rotten son of a bitch! I just want
to rule your mind... but first everybody get pissed!” These are the lyrics to
“
Piledriver”, the theme song for the character. I could really see this
being played before the
Piledriver’s entrance at a WWF match; that’s
if he was a wrestler!
Another classic track is “
Human Sacrifice” with lyrics like “I smell
like a dead animal's rotten guts, think that I've been to hell and back, kicked
in the nuts”.
“
Alien Rape” starts off with a spoken introduction by an alien recapping
the events that led to their conquest of Earth. The effect used for the voice
of the alien is just some simple speed and pitch control adjustments to the
tape. This gives the voice a slow, deep almost baritone sound. Space like sound
effects, screaming and detonations add to the atmospheric “War of the Worlds”
like setting.
The first CD pressing of this album was released on Kraze Records, now out
of print. This version of the CD seemed to be mastered from a cassette tape.
The quality is quite good. However, another release by Full Moon Productions
would be a 2 for 1 deal, with
Piledriver’s second album “
Stay Ugly”
included. The thing I must warn people about is that this version is more of
a bootleg. This version of “
Metal Inquisition” was mastered from a record.
My taped version from my original LP sounds better than Full Moons. As for “
Stay
Ugly” (Dave DeFeis and Eddie Pursino of
Virgin Steele helped with
the writing), it seems it was mastered from a cassette tape, so it doesn’t sound
as bad.
Kerrang Magazine at the time voted this “Best Album of 1985” calling it “genius”.
If you like
GWAR and
VENOM, then you’ll love
PILEDRIVER!
tags: piledriver, metal inquisition, 1984, flac,
