Fighting for the Earth is the debut album by Warrior from all the way back in 1985. It is one of the finest heavy metal albums you may never have heard of, though certainly should hear at least once.
Randomly roaming through my collection the other day looking for something to listen to I’d not played for a while I pulled out Fighting for the Earth and it soon came back to me how good it is.
Sure, it’s coming up four decades old yet sounds big, powerful and fresh today. I recall seeing them doing the title track and (I think) Defenders of Creation on an old music show here in the UK (may have been one on Channel 4?) and going out the following day to buy the album.
The lung-busting vocal of Parramore McCarty is something to behold. So monstrously powerful and rangy delivered effortlessly.
The big, booming, muscular crisp riffs and nifty interplay between the two guitars when trading off each other abound all the way through as do the thumping bass nicely up in the mix and the steady machine gun drums.
Oh: and the huge, catchy choruses of fist-pumping, anthemic standard.
The title track opens up the album in astounding style. Huge, heavy, booming stuff and instantly accessible and memorable. Same goes for Only the Strong Survive on which McCarty delivers an even bigger thumping chorus.
Here’s Fighting for the Earth:
Defenders of Creation is relentless as is Day of the Evil before Cold Fire comes in next as a bit of a surprise being a sort of moody, brooding heavy ballad.
PTM1 is a weird half minute of a McCarty speech then Welcome Aboard shuts out this most fine album spectacularly.
Despite Fighting for the Earth being so good, perhaps it came along at the wrong time for Warrior given the “hair metal” scene at the time, (you know, Poison, Ratt, Motley Crue etc.) and Warrior not slotting in to that niche.
Warrior didn’t release a second album for over a decade and have only been sporadically active since.
A pity they couldn’t build on Fighting for the Earth given how good it is. It’s a stone cold classic from first note to last and can deservedly be bestowed with the “forgotten gem” tag.
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