The coming of a second Golden Age?

The 1980s…

The Golden Age of Heavy Music…

But could we be in the midst of a second Golden Age here in 2010?

Take a look at the signs… The 1970s saw the birth of the genre with the original progenitors Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Motorhead, and to a lesser extent, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, Rush, and many other fantastic Hard Rock artists. Also, we saw the rise of punk in the later part of the decade, which brought a new dynamic into the Hard Rock world, and an adversary for the precision of  Heavy Metal

In the 2000s, we saw the creation of several new sub-genres of the form (Metalcore and Deathcore being the most notable) as well as the revival of several older forms of the genre (The Thrash Revival, the New Wave of Traditional Metal [NWOTM] and the revival of Glam). We also saw Metal competing, and coalescing, with new forms of Punk (Emo, Fringecore, Screamo, New Hardcore). Currently, though the new Metal genres and movements are gaining popularity at a fairly quick pace, the new genres and proponents of Punk still maintain a large, relatively dominant base in the music scene at the dawn of a new decade… much like it was at the beginning of 1980.

Now to the year proper… 1980 brought us dozens of Heavy Metal and Hard Rock albums that were, at the time hailed as fantastic new releases breathing new life into Hard Rock. Releases like Judas Priest’s “British Steel“, AC/DC’s “Back In Black“, Black Sabbath’s “Heaven & Hell“, Scorpions’ “Animal Magnetism“, Motorhead’s “The Ace of Spades“, the first Iron Maiden album, Saxon’s “Wheels of Steel” and “Strong Arm of the Law“, and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Blizzard of Ozz” and about a dozen more broke the mold and made Heavy Metal and Hard Rock the new music of the day. 1980 was the year that launched Heavy Metal into the big wide world and sounded the charge of the genre across the Atlantic to North America.

In 2010, major and monolithic events and albums have come about in the world of Heavy Metal. Firstly, we watched Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and a reformed Anthrax, touring Europe with Sonisphere festival and broadcasting the show from Sofia, Bulgaria live all over the world to thousands, if not millions, of fans, and showing Heavy Metal’s remaining, and indeed growing strength. We have also seen amazing new albums both from the old-guard (Accept’s new release “Blood of Nations” coming to mind) and the new-breed alike (Airbourne’s “No Guts, No Glory” being an excellent example).

To summarize, I believe that we are quite possibly on the cusp of a second golden age for Heavy Metal and Hard Rock.

As such, I intend to use this blog as a journal of sorts… both as a journal of my personal experiences with my favourite genre (via album reviews [both old and new], show reviews, opinion pieces on interviews and articles, etc.) and as an analysis and record of continued events, tour information, release dates, and everything else in the world of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. I sincerely hope that you as a reader will use this blog as a tool to connect, reflect, study, and indulge in this musical art form.

I intend for this blog to be relatively interactive, so if you leave me a comment, I will do my utmost to get back to you in a timely fashion, hopefully within 24 hours. Also, if you would like to contribute, drop me a line with some of the material you wish to post. I’ll have a look and see what you have, and if it’s of a good quality, I will re-post it to the blog. Essentially, I will be acting as both the principle writer in the blog, as well as the editor of outside material.

Also, catch my Metal Specialty show, Thunder on AIR on http://www.algonquinair.com from 7-9 PM EST monday nights, as well as Global Metal, with myself and co-host John Sweeney, on http://www.ckdj.net Wednesdays from 7-8 PM EST. I will be posting content from those shows to this blog, and will be occasionally using content from this blog in my shows.

So here we go! A Heavy Metal blog for what is, hopefully, the second coming of the genre. Tune In, Turn Up, and Bang Your Head! \m/