I’m awaiting the arrival of four CDs from rather “under the radar” New Wave of British Heavy Metal era bands which I’ll review after arrival. In the meantime – here’s a band which has a NWOBHM connection and one you may or may not remember.
It’s the latter half of the 1970s and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal is gathering momentum. Running in parallel is another new wave – aka punk rock.
Whilst I didn’t care for the typical frantic three chord thrash of punk, there was one exception for me and that was a band called Penetration.
They came from the NWOBHM stronghold of the north east and were much more rock than punk having a much more ambitious style than most of their contemporaries having the USP of irrepressible vocalist Pauline Murray and a NWOBHM connection as after Penetration split, guitarist Fred Purser joined the Tygers of Pan Tang replacing Jon Sykes and appearing on the Tygers’ 1982 album The Cage.
Penetration released two albums before splitting. Moving Targets in 1978 and Coming Up for Air in 1979. Both cracked the top 50 in the album charts selling well in the days when a band had to shift a good number of units to get that far.
Over the four and a half decades since the late 1970s I’d forgotten all about Penetration until noticing in a recent email from Cherry Red that they’re releasing both Penetration albums together including many bonus tracks.
That necessitated an instant click on the order button and an arrival through the letter box a couple of days ago. Over the two discs a whopping thirty nine tracks for my moullah. Moving Targets has five bonus tracks of the band’s earlier singles and the ten track Race Against Time demos. Coming Up for Air weighs in with three bonus tracks.
All in all a glorious listen of a band who did offer something a bit different and everything sounding fresh all these years later.
Moving Targets bristles with spiky attitude, relentless energy and quite some power pushing it all along with Murray’s relentless monster vocals, the guitars pushing out the riffs and the slightly offbeat quirky drumming.
Future Daze, Life’s a Gamble. Lovers of Outrage, Vision etc. short, punchy and to the point. Well, as is the whole album. They even manage to throw in something of a curve with Too Many Friends with the amped-up reggae style being impossibly edgy.
Moving Targets a tremendous album. And here with those snarling early singles as bonus tracks and the tremendous Race Against Time demos giving over seventy minutes of music it’s even more tremendous.
Here’s Penetration’s version of Patti Smith’s Free Money. Does it not “rock” after the weird intro?
Coming Up For Air is a little gentler in style, restrained if you will, though still a winner as Penetration move more towards at times melodic rock territory such as with Come Into the Open and What’s Going On?
All top stuff all the same with two of the bonus tracks being live demonstrating what a force of nature they mist have been on stage.
If you’re of a certain age you may remember Penetration as I do. If not, take a bit of time to check them out.
>> PENETRATION MOVING TARGETS/COMING UP FOR AIR ON AMAZON <<
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