Album Review: Halford, "Halford IV: Made of Metal"

Skipping Halford III, essentially an astute novelty record designed to cash in on the perennial cash cow of Xmas, Halford IV: Made of Metal is the first Halford studio album since 2002's excellent Crucible.

Unfortunately, with Rob's other metal outlet Judas Priest apparently calling it a day with this year's Epitaph tour, Halford IV stumbles slightly in carrying the heavy metal torch.

This being the Metal God, however, there is of course some great music on the CD. The album title track, with its solid, dark riffing set against a Kenny Everett, Captain-Kremmen-style chorus is a classic. The unlikely juxtaposition energizes the song. It is this somewhat camp, kitschy vibe that has often helped The Metal God in the past to leaven the oppressive, ponderous tendencies inherent in metal to create something a cut above.

Undisputed, with its infeasibly long punchline, works in a similar way, with an energizing imbalance.

Elsewhere what stands out is the box ticking and the inevitable Americanization that has crept in over the years: The Mower is mainly a chest-thumping attempt to scale the heights rather than a song; while Thunder and Lightning would be a great track...if sung by Jon Bon Jovi!

C.B.Liddell
ROCK iKON
1st February, 2011

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!