I’ve written many times before that it’s often the cover of a record that makes me pick it up in the store, especially when I’m flipping through the used bins. In the case of Chainsaw’s record Massacre it wasn’t the front cover, but the back cover that really drew me in:
There’s a lot to break down here.
- The primary image appears to be a lingerie-clad woman on a chopper, except of course that the head of this woman is in fact a goat-like devil head and she has wings. Oh, and did I mention she’s carrying a pistol?
- The two sides of the record are not A and B. No. They are “Death” and “Destruction”.
- One of the band members is named simply Tribble.
- They thank “our disgusting road crew”.
- The song titles are “Devil’s Daughter”, “Ballad of Mean Street”, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Gambler”1, and “Accident Victim”.
Massacre was Chainsaw’s only 12″ record, though with only four songs and a run time of about 13 minutes it’s definitely more an EP than an album. Their only other release was a 7″ three years prior, back in 1981. While I’ve seen them described online as metal/NWOBHM, I’m not really buying it. Hard rock maybe. I mean, there’s saxophone on “Accident Victim”. Also, I’m not leveling a formal accusation here, but the guitar riff in “Rock ‘n’ Roll Gambler” sounds an awful lot like the infamous riff on Fang’s “The Money Will Roll Right In”, which came out the year prior. “Devil’s Daughter” with it’s refrain of hot metal, cold steel is the high point and a legitimately fun hard rocker.
- This gives further credence to my observation, which is bordering on becoming some kind of fully-formed theory, about the prevalence of bands in the 80s singing about rock and rocking. ↩︎