Plasmatics - Metal Priestess EP

For Fucks Sake, I'm posting something new, and let's face it some additional Plasmatics isn't really a bad thing. As well as mentioning Beyond The Valley Of 1984 below, I have also posted it in tandem on the Dimension Of Imagination blog. Now, stop messing around, Metal Priestess is an EP by the Plasmatics that was a pivotal step in the band's transition from punk to metal, characterized by heavy riffs, impressive musicianship, and Wendy O. Williams' vocal versatility. Critics praised the EP for its powerful sound, high energy, and showcasing a more capable and conventionally talented vocalist in Williams alongside her signature screams. The EP is often seen as a success, though some describe its metal style as "cartoony" or "over-the-top". 

Review by Mark Deming

In the early 1980s, if your goal was international media domination, being a punk rock band would only get you so far, so after toying with heavy metal accents on their first two albums, the Plasmatics finally dove headfirst into the genre of black leather and big guitar solos with the 1981 EP Metal Priestess. While these six tunes simply push the group's music into a direction where they were already headed (as evidenced by the fact two of these tracks are live reworkings of songs from Beyond the Valley of 1984), it's impressive how quickly the band picked up the ropes of arena-style metal bombast; from the galloping drums and neo-Van Halen guitar figures on "Black Leather Monster" and the spooky minor key atmospherics of "Lunacy" to the cheesy keyboard lines of "Doom Song," the Plasmatics take to this stuff like they had been waiting to open for Black Sabbath all their lives. While neither Richie Stotts or Wes Beech were especially imaginative guitarists, they certainly knew the rudiments of their chosen style well enough, and Wendy O. Williams' vocals were a striking improvement over her work on New Hope for the Wretched; here, her histrionics work in the music's favour, and somewhere down the line she learned how to carry a tune without sacrificing her lung power along the way. One drawback of the Plasmatics' new metal direction was that Metal Priestess seems even more cartoony than the band's first two albums, especially more than 45 years on, but if you're looking for some over-the-top headbanging stuff, this disc delivers with more skill than you might expect (and just as little subtlety).

Plasmatics - New Hope For The Wretched

Quality you just can't ignore, with an image you equally just can't ignore...

You can't put an exploding car or a television that's been smashed to bits inside a record sleeve, which sums up the problem the Plasmatics had in capturing their appeal on vinyl -- so much of the band's initial reputation was based on their frantic and destructive live show, and divorced from the images, their first album, New Hope for the Wretched, simply had to get by on the band's music, which was a bit of a stretch. As musicians, the Plasmatics were tight and not without imagination; their attack suggests guys who had been playing metal or hard rock who figured this punk rock stuff was going to be the next big thing, but rather than disguise their roots, guitarists Richie Stotts and Wes Beech were more than willing to let their doom struck metal influences shine through on the instrumental breaks to tunes like "Monkey Suit" and "Concrete Shoes," and parts of New Hope suggest thrash metal arriving a few years early. However, as songwriters Stotts, Beech, and Rod Swenson (the band's manager and idea guy) didn't have all that much to say and not an especially compelling way of saying it. Stylistically, New Hope for the Wretched keeps going around in circles until it finally wears a groove into the floor, and the album's real weak spot is lead singer Wendy O. Williams, who hadn't been singing very long and delivers most of these tunes in a guttural bleat that suggests Stiv Bators with a mouthful of Novocain; she may well have known what to do on-stage, but in the studio her weaknesses were obvious and unavoidable. And while the album's great musical experiment -- the middle section of "Dream Lover," during which the musicians could neither see nor hear one another -- may have been an interesting idea, the results suggest a roomful of college freshmen making their first stab at forming a noise band. A bit like Kiss' first three albums, New Hope for the Wretched is the work of a band struggling to make the excitement of their stage show work in the studio and falling short of the mark, though there are a few moments where the Plasmatics manage to get over on sheer sneering energy, one quality the microphones were able to capture.

ICHI NI SAN SHI

The Plasmatics received a lot of mainstream press compared to most punk bands of their era due largely to their over the top stage show and the provocative attire of lead singer Wendy O. Williams. Wendy often performed topless with only a piece of electrical tape covering her nipples. She had a really butch, gruff voice but as feminine of a body as it comes and the band’s shows were something of legend. A Plasmatics show was visual overload where Wendy would take a chainsaw to anything in reach and cut it up (often guitars) and she’d even blow things up as well. All of this was happening while they were playing their fast-paced punk rock. They took punk rock and mixed it with performance art and there wasn’t really anyone else doing anything like it at the time.

My first exposure to the band came thanks to their ability to get some mainstream press. I read an article about the band and was enamoured with the photos of the band which depicted Wendy destroying things on stage. It was mesmerizing to say the least and I wouldn’t even hear their music for another year or so. When I finally did hear their first album, New Hope For the Wretched, I was pretty blown away by it as punk rock was very new to me at that time and very exciting. Their music was fast and powerful and their songs were mostly on the shorter side of the spectrum and this charismatic lead singer of theirs had such a gruff voice that was delivered in grunts that she almost sounded like a guy. That album has been in regular rotation for me for decades now and it is weird that they don’t get talked about by many people these days in comparison to the other bands of that era. In the modern-day they are overlooked and I’ve yet to see this album come up in any of those “best punk album” listicles you see all over the internet that are written by people who weren’t even born when records like this were released but somehow feel qualified to make a list and try to pass it off as gospel. In a list of best punk albums, the first Plasmatics album would certainly make the cut. I think it has held up well and is pretty timeless. It also beats the hell out of any modern mainstream or even punk music.