Enya’s first album is different from the others, as her signature sound had not yet been hammered out. But it’s better than the others…maybe because her signature sound had not yet been hammered out.

Where later Enya releases just kind of bulldoze you under a massive wall of pad synths and layered vocal tracks (they’re still good), The Celts sounds sparse and intriguing. It has more active instrumentation than any of her other releases. The melodies are more discernable. The textures are stronger and richer, and it seems to draw on a wider set of influences. You hear some things Enya seems afraid to touch these days: such as lead synths and electric guitar.

“The Celts” and “Aldebaran” are both very nice, and then “I Want Tomorrow” arrives…yeah, this song is just insane. Most Enya songs tend to ride a single big idea around like a pony, whether it’s a chorus hook or a melody or whatever. “I Want Tomorrow” does have some climactic parts but it mostly comes across as a free-flowing experience that isn’t written around any particular moment in the track. It’s hard to explain, but the song sounds like a couple of different songs joined together, all of them articulating different moods, but all of them making sense with each other.

About two thirds of the The Celts has no lyrics. I’d call these songs instrumental, except Enya’s “instrument” of choice has always been her layered backing vocals, of which there are a plenitude.

A few highlights emerge from these wordless songs. “Epona” is compact and efficient, and reminds of Vangelis classics such as “Movement V.” The three sections of “Triad” take the listener through a series of differing moods and atmospheres. “The Sun in the Stream” is the second amazing classic from the album. It’s brilliantly realised from start to finish…just a perfect song.

This is the Enya CD I always come back to. Watermark and Shepherd Moon aren’t too far behind musically, but on The Celts Enya found something very rare and special…and then lost it again. I don’t expect her to ever produce a work of this quality again.

The only word that describes Painkiller is “mighty”. It serves as the last word on 80s metal, an amazing elegy of speed and power.

A lineup change has taken place from the last album. Dave Holland was good at simple AC/DC 4/4 beats, also good if you’re a social worker who enjoys dealing with molested children and wants there to be a profusion of them, but he was, frankly, an alarmingly boring drummer. In his place is Racer-X skinsman Scott Travis. He preserves the punchiness always associated with Priest’s drumming, but gearshifts the intensity way, way up. The one man artillery assault opening “Painkiller”, the fast double bass of “Leather Rebel”, the stadium-filling snare hits of “Touch of Evil”, and numerous other moments reveal that he is good news for the band.

Painkiller is full of songs that listen well on their own, but the correct way to listen to it is in one go, so that the energy builds and transfers from one track to the next. “Painkiller” is a well-known classic featuring amazing vocals and guitar work, “Hell Patrol” is a bit more restrained, and “All Guns Blazing” and “Metal Meltdown” are vicious and thrashing. “Leather Rebel” sports a signature speed-picked pentatonic riff that’s been copied by everyone from Gamma Ray to Bobby Price (“Donna to the Rescue” – Doom OST).

After track 5 the album officially goes from “great” to “epochal”. “Nightcrawler” is “The Sentinel” with a weaponry upgrade – an impressive mixture of heaviness and atmosphere. “Between the Hammer & the Anvil” features my all-time favourite Judas Priest riff and another incredible vocal job from Rob Halford. But the album’s best moment is “A Touch of Evil,” which slows the tempo to a crawl while Tipton and Downing bludgeon a signature 80s guitar riff through your skull. The instrumentation, the vocals, the songwriting, and Chris Tsangarides’ scorching production all come together in a paroxysm of classic Judas Priest greatness.

There’s a bonus track on some version of Painkiller called “Living Bad Dreams” which is an all-out power ballad. It’s good, but not great. There’s a “live” version of “Leather Rebel” (I have a feeling they punched it up a bit in the studio).

This would be the last Halford-fronted Priest album for fifteen years. It seems Painkiller succeeded in burning Halford out. He would go on to explore musical projects more “alternative” (Fight, Two) and his earstwhile bandmates steered Judas Priest’s style away from Painkiller’s ultra-fetishised 80s metal. Even now, Judas Priest has never fully revisited Painkiller territory. Maybe that’s the final proof of the album’s power…it scared off the men who wrote it.

The 80s became the 90s, and the unstoppable steel battle beast called Motley Crue started going into engine failure. A new style of music was “in”, and it was antithetical to Crue’s. The days of rocking out and living large were over. The days of whining about mom and dad had begun. Then, in 1992, the band lost its singer (Vince says he was fired…the rest of the band says he walked out), and Motley Crue replaced him with an unknown vocalist from Pennsylvania.

John Corabi is one of the saddest chapters of the Crue story (excepting the people who actually died, I guess). He was a square peg in a Vince Neil shaped hole from the beginning. The band held on to the news that Vince had quit for as long as possible (it seems Elektra was advancing them $25 million on this album and they thought the deal would fall through if they announced a lineup change). John entered the band amid an atmosphere of secrecy and psy-ops.

His voice was a grave baritone, totally unlike Vince’s. He didn’t command that aura of rockstar excess that Vince wears like a cloak. His stage presence seemed limited to running around and yelling a lot. In all, he was never “the Motley Crue singer”, the idea is a sick joke. He accomplished little more than filling a space in front of the microphone while Vince was gone. And soon Vince would want that space back.

Motley Crue updated their sound a little here. It’s the usual “hair metal band goes grunge” shift, downtuned guitars, grittier singing, more raw and personal lyrics. That’s not surprising, at the time everyone and their brother was “reinventing” themselves to sound like they came from Seattle. What is surprising is that Crue mostly gets it right, and their 1994 self-titled sounds very good in most respects.

I skip the first two songs. “Power to the Music” is a Rage Against the Machine clone, except where RATM swaggers and stomps, this plods. What a boring song. “Uncle Jack” is the same story, kiddy-fiddling lyrics notwithstanding. The music is so dull it almost almost seems to flop out of your speakers.

By “Hooligan’s Holiday” the band has started to wake up. The song’s not a total classic like “Wild Side” but it sports lot of cool grooves and interesting riffs. “Misunderstood” is the best ballad ever written by this band, with John Corabi putting together some really heartfelt lyrics.

Then there’s a few not so amazing songs, although if you liked the fillers from Dr Feelgood you’ll like “Poison Apples” as it sounds a bit like “SOS” and company. I always go right to “Smoke the Sky” which is heavy enough to rival Pantera and Pro-Pain but has the attitude and catchiness of White Zombie. If the rest of the songs had sounded like “Smoke the Sky” we’d be talking about a legendary metal classic instead of just a good grunge rock album.

Nevermind all the changes and updates, if we’re talking quality then this is Motley Crue doing business as usual: 2-3 songs that sound amazing and then a number of others that do little more than manage to exist. The Crue can’t escape their nature: they’re a band remembered for their big hits rather than their consistent albums. Apples never fall far from the tree. Not even poison ones.