Artist: Armoured Angel
Country: Australia
Label: Hell’s Headbangers Records
Formats: LP
Year: 2024
Before the band would go on and gain some cult status as one of Australia’s first Extreme Metal bands with quite some demos that influenced the first generation of heavier bands in the land down under, Armoured Angel wasn’t all that extreme. Well, for today’s standard, that is. The first demo the band came up with in 1985, ‘Baptism In Blood’ displayed some elements of what could be called proto-Speed Metal, but mostly this is just a hard-hitting piece of classic Heavy Metal.
Completely different from the “classic” or “cult” recordings that would follow, ‘Baptism In Blood’ musically fits best somewhere in between Angel Witch, Jaguar, early Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy but bears some resemblances with some of American’s first Heavy Metal bands like Attacker or Liege Lord and German bands like Living Death. Yet, those American and German flavors are very much less prominent from the evident cornerstones of classic NWOBHM or Thin Lizzy’s Hardrock. Especially in the pretty heavy riffing Armoured Angel has much in common with a band like Jaguar, who also were praised for the (for the time) extremely heavy riffs and accentuated textures in the guitar tone.
With the not-so-melodic vocals singer Rick Wayy adds so much to the NWOBHM-spirit. He really knows how to propel the music into even more stunning heights than the fabulous guitarists already did. Wayy definitely had that same sort of shouty Witchfinder General sort of antics, giving it all a more rough and raw edge, something that Heavy Metal was lacking at those days. You have to keep in mind that 1985 were years that Heavy Metal sounded way more polished than at the heydays of NWOBHM around the late 70’s and very early 80’s. By 1985 Iron Maiden had already released ‘Powerslave’ and bands like Saxon and Raven were clearly on their decline as well as Canada’s Anvil and many of their American peers. Little did they all know that down there in Australia this pretty demo was doing its modest circulation in the local scene…
This line-up would last for only a couple of months and eventually split not too long after the recordings of ‘Baptism In Blood’, leaving only bassist Glen “Lucy” Luck to carry on the band and leading it into much more extreme musical territories. I remember the first I read about these recordings, way before I ever got to hear it, stating it was a generic piece of redundant rock music. When I actually heard these recordings some years later, I wondered if this was really the demo people were shitting on, as this was, and still is, a wonderful piece of Heavy Metal. For European standard ‘Baptism In Blood’ came late as the NWOBHM-hype was already dead and dying and the Americans already jumped on the Slayer and Metallica train. Still, this fine demo is stuff for the lovers of obscure Heavy Metal and those who like to dig into historical scenes.
