A Decade Of Dio

There is a certain charm to an album like this from a historical standpoint, particularly for anybody who still wanted a more flashy and fun style of metal/rock that cut against the "Alternative" ideal of dumbed down songwriting and morose or mundane lyrics about how much the world sucks, because this is about as clear of a rejection of the decade it was born from that one could find. It embodies the same sort of fantastical escapism that would occupy the early days of lighter, fantasy-oriented bands like Freedom Call and Edguy while also being a bit more retro in character, perhaps most closely dovetailing with the somewhat later reformation and restyled incarnation of Domain…

Monteverdi's Sixth Book of Madrigals (1614) is significant for including both traditional polyphonic and stile nuove concerted madrigals. In his booklet-notes, Rinaldo Alessandrini points out that this is also a 'book of partings': many of the madrigals seem to have been written much earlier than the published date, at a time when Monteverdi suffered the loss of his wife Claudia and his live-in pupil, the singer Caterina Martinelli.

Giovanni Battista Sammartini, son of the French oboist Alexis Saint-Martin, was most likely born in Milan in 1700 or 1701; his death certificate, dated 1775, gives his age as 74. Not much is known about his childhood. In 1724 he is already documented as being a maestro di cappella; we also know that he was active as a performer on the oboe and organ, winning admiration for the individuality of his touch on the latter instrument…
Maria Daniela Villa / Translation by David S. Tabbat

Together with their countrymen Kreator and Sodom, Germany's Destruction constituted the dominating triumvirate of Teutonic thrash metal during the 1980s. And even though they ultimately failed to match these peers in terms of commercial success and longevity, at least two of their albums still qualify among the crème de la crème of the decade's speed metal. Heavy metal underwent a worldwide revolution in the early '80s, when the lingering lessons from '70s giants like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest crashed head-on with the D.I.Y. ethos of punk rock and the sheer velocity of Motörhead to spawn the much ballyhooed New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which, in turn sparked a far more powerful and lasting bastard offspring: thrash metal. Of all the nations contaminated by this musical virus as it proliferated unchecked, Germany was second only to the U.S. in terms of widespread infection…