THIS WEEK I’M LISTENING TO...ROXXCALIBUR – NWOBHM From The Vaults (Limb Music)

After ten years in the MIA folder (the musicians all have other bands, after all) loveable rapscallions Roxxcalibur are back with their fourth album of New Wave Of British Heavy Metal covers. As ever, the band – vocalist Alexx Stahl, guitarists Holger Zieger and Kalli Coldsmith, bassist Mario Lang and drummer Neudi – have eschewed the obvious and thrown their spotlight on fourteen more obscure releases from the period, with the most best-known probably being Alien’s ‘Could have Done Better’ (originally on the Neat Records’ ‘One Take No Dubs various artists 12”), Shiva’s ‘Wild Machine’ (from their ‘Firedance’ LP) or Prowler’s ‘Gotta Get Back To You’ which saw the light of day on the MCA ‘Brute Force’ compilation.

As Neudi once pointed out to me, “the big names within the NWOBHM are great bands, no doubt, but we don´t want to bore people with version number 548 of ‘Running Free’ on a CD. Also Metallica did some good jobs with many NWOBHM songs, so there´s no need to repeat these.” So, with that in mind, this time around the lads turn their hands to the likes of Blazer Blazer’s ‘Cecil B. Devine’, 100% Proof’s ‘Tight Rope’ and Sweet Revenge’s ‘Hawks Of Cairo’ with a great degree of reverence and a desire to do justice to the material, updating the sound with 21st century recording technology without straying from each song’s individual heart and soul.

Roxxcalibur-band

Given that some of these songs are the cornerstone of the formative years of so many of us it’s hard to pick highlights, but I’ve always been a sucker for Liaison’s ‘Only Heaven Knows’, the spirit of which Roxxcalibur capture beautifully, and, as Shiva could never do any wrong in my eyes, ‘Wild Machine’ is a corker: Stahl captures John Hall’s vocals exquisitely, and the original’s (rather annoying) vocoder is thankfully kicked into the long grass and replaced by a vocal line. But then there’s the hair-flailing work-out that’s Chain Reaction’s ‘All Over The World’, Denigh’s ‘Lean On ’Em Hard’, and so it goes on. Highlight after highlight, bang, bang, bang...

As with its predecessors, ‘NWOBHM From The Vaults’ starts off with a spin on something quintessentially British – this time a take on the ‘Dr Who’ theme – and once again the artwork comes from the drawing board of Rodney Matthews, whose paintings adorned so many great albums from the period. The choice of songs is great, the performances are spot-on, and the profound love and respect the musicians have for the music is there for all to see.