Customer Reviews

Earth Shaker Rock

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Earth Shaker Rock(1998). The first compilation which covers all four of Warlock's studio albums plus several tracks off of the first Doro solo cd.

For the last few years, I've been a fairly huge fan of Vixen, a late 80s pop metal band consisting of four talented female musicians. I have always enjoyed their style of blending catchy pop hooks with their ability to rock hard, also given the fact that Vixen was the only female heavy metal group that I knew of at the time. Lita Ford was alright, and of course I give my props to Pat Benatar as well. I'd always heard a little bit about Warlock, a female fronted band, but I didn't actually give them a listen until fairly recently, so I finally decided to buy this compilation. Upon popping the disc in, I was BLOWN AWAY! Warlock was no sappy pop metal or glamourous hair metal act. No, this was REAL, balls-to-the-wall, in-your-face HEAVY METAL, something akin to Judas Priest, but with a female singer. And what a powerful vocalist Doro Pesche is! This German female vocalist can really belt out some shouts to absolutely GIANT anthems. I always love a good heavy metal album that can make my ears ring, and Warlock has no trouble getting the job done. Other than Judas Priest and maybe Accept, Warlock is perhaps one of the heaviest 80s heavy metal bands I've heard (not including thrash metal bands). They've replaced Vixen as my favorite female fronted band, and I consider Doro Pesche to be the official "Metalgoddess". Of course, she's not the only one that makes Warlock a great listen. The twin guitar attack of Rudy Graf and Peter Szigeti shreds through the songs with ease, and both bassist Frank Rittel and drummer Michael Eurich both keep up with the rest of the band decently, though they aren't really all too notable. So how does this compilation fare? Here's the lowdown of each album's representation in order of their releases:

BURNING THE WITCHES(1984)
TRACKS: Burning The Witches, Metal Racer
COMMENTS: These two raw, heavy-hitting rockers are the perfect way to start the compilation, and really grab your attention right off the bat. Still, as great as these two tracks are, I really would've liked to see more songs off the blazing debut album, such as 'Sign Of Satan' and 'Dark Fade'.

HELLBOUND(1985)
TRACKS: Hellbound, Earth Shaker Rock, Time To Die
COMMENTS: Warlock's heaviest album gets slightly better representation than the debut, but I would've still liked to see more songs like 'Wrathchild' (NOT the Iron Maiden song) and 'All Night'. Hellbound is a very fast and hard-rocking track, as is the equally excellent and fiery arena anthem 'Earth Shaker Rock'.

TRUE AS STEEL(1986)
TRACKS: Love In The Danger Zone, True As Steel
COMMENTS: Like the debut, this excellent album gets little representation. Where are 'Love Song', 'Mr. Gold', and 'Fight For Rock'? The two cuts are actually great songs though.

TRIUMPH AND AGONY(1987)
TRACKS: All We Are, Three Minute Warning, I Rule The Ruins, Metal Tango, Fur Immer
COMMENTS: Thankfully, there is plenty to show for Warlock's best and final album. 'All We Are' is a HUGE pounding anthem, and 'Three Minute Warning' is a short, yet frantic rocker. 'I Rule The Ruins' is Warlock at their commercial melodic best. The other two tracks, 'Metal Tango' and 'Fur Immer' are unique in style with the latter track being a ballad sung in German set to a military drum beat. I'd say that Triumph and Agony was represented very well.

FORCE MAJEURE(1989)
TRACKS: Hellraiser, Angel With Dirty Faces, Under The Gun, Something Wicked This Way Comes (NOT the Iced Earth song)
COMMENTS: With the exception of the last track, these are some great rockers, but WHY is there material from Doro's first solo album on here? This is a WARLOCK compilation! There should be a separate compilation covering Doro's solo years. Getting rid of these tracks would make room for more great rockers from earlier albums. With this album, Doro starts treading into pop metal territory, although I suppose that this album sounds close enough to Warlock to warrant inclusion. 'Hellraiser' and 'Under The Gun' both definitely sound like they belong on the earlier albums.

For the most part, Earth Shaker Rock manages to cover most of Warlock's notable material well, though because they didn't include enough earlier material and decided to randomly throw on Doro's solo material at the end, I'm only giving ESR four stars. Still, don't let that discourage you because this disc is definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of straight forward heavy metal music. It serves as a perfect introduction to the band if anything. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Other band albums to check out that sound like Warlock:
-'The Very Best Of Vixen' by Vixen
-'Metal Works 73-93' by Judas Priest
-'Best Of Doro' by Doro Pesche
-'Beware The Heavens' by Sinergy
-'Be My God' by Lullacry
-'Mandylion' by The Gathering

Some great pieces by Warlock in the mid 80s can be found here. If you only really want to buy one album of hers/theirs, then consider this one. But if you want to be really exposed to some amazingly beautiful music, have a listen to Burning the Witches, Hellbound, True As Steel, Doro, Force Majuere and every other thing she's ever done. The Holy Dio album has an incredibly well done cover version of Dio's "Egypt (The Chains Are On)" I'm a big Dio fan too, but I would buy that album just for that one song!

This is a comilation CD. IT ROCKS. In true and simple words....THIS ROCKS. From the first track to the last, you will not be disappointed.

This CD will give the new listener a view of the early days of WARLOCK with awesome tracks like "Burning the Witches" "Hellbound", and "All We Are".

For the true DORO fan, Earthshaker Rock will give you over 6 years of DORO on one CD. It doesn't get any better than that...unless of course your watching DORO live.

RECOMMENDATION: BUY IT

If your hankering to find out about this band then this is probably your best bet. That's why I rated it at four stars. Musically speaking it's possibly wandering between 3 & 4 stars but for value for the newcomer, then I've gotta give it the four star treatment.

Anyway, Earthshaker rock is a Warlock retrospective with liner notes by rock scribe Malcolm Dome, which are a little out of date now but are still a handy primer for someone wanting a little background regarding the Warlock story.

Personally, the committed Warlock fan would be better off buying the Rare Diamonds disc as it has more curiosity type tracks and some live versions of tracks which make it an enjoyable listen even if you have all the studio works. However where this disc picks up extra points is the fact that it's done in release order. Why aren't more band retrospectives done like this! You can hear the band alter through time.

Given a choice between this album and Rare Diamonds the newcomer should buy this. It's also a very handy buy for anybody who is interested in the history of female fronted metal which is a hot topic (at the time I wrote this). It's also a good buy if your into 80's metal. Not the hair metal poser boy stuff, but just the sort of metal that was around then.

Some purists might not like the inclusion of tracks off Doros first solo album but from memory that was credited to 'Doro & Warlock' so I guess it's a logical thing to include them.

Once again, a very good buy for the newcomer.