Getting started can be the hardest part.
Success is earned, one step at a time. One of the most invaluable skills a person can have is being able to clearly express what it is they want.
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Bobbie Dazzle
Meet Bobbie Dazzle
Interview and story by Kira L. Schlechter, Heavy Hags
In these heavy, gloomy, dangerous times, boy, could we use some joy. Enter Miss Bobbie Dazzle, a k a Sian Greenaway, from Birmingham, England, who trails wafts of incense, clouds of glitter, and blazes of psychedelic color in her wake on her debut album “Fandabidozi,” just out on Rise Above Records.
Given that her previous gig was as frontwoman for the stoner/psych/doom band Alunah (she left that outfit in August, but does appear on their just-released album, “Fever Dream”), the throwback glam rock of this record is a real 360.
And just as she’s brought the carefree, groovy good times of ‘70s glam to us, the music serves the same purpose for her as well. After the loss of her sister, Coralie, to cancer in 2023, she says she needed an outlet for her grief – but as she said in the album bio, “you don’t have to sit in a dark place when you’re going through a dark time.”
“Growing up, glam rock had always been played in my household,” Greenaway said in response to emailed questions. Her dad loved the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop; her mom favored Bowie and T.Rex. “As a child, I remember it being fun, joyous, uplifting, and that nostalgia has always kept – it’s always been something uplifting for me to turn to.
“As a musician, there’s ways we feel like we need to create during different times in life. I decided to use all of the positivity I felt within listening to that music into creating it. This album started off as an escape from grief, but ended up being the most cathartic experience I’ve ever had in my life. I’m so thankful to this genre of music because it’s taken me through the toughest time in my life,” she added.
With a potent, rippling, burbling voice (and some mad flute skills, too), she’s definitely absorbed her glam education, creating a host of catchy choruses and music laden with spacey, trippy effects and confidently-played instrumentation, courtesy of her crack band.
She spoke of how they came together.
“A drummer (Eddy Geach) (and) I started chatting in a smoker area of a dive bar and we had a drunken conversation of doing a glam album,” she said. “About a year after that, I contacted him and he brought in the keys player (Chris Dando) and bass player (Leon Smith), who he’d worked with in previous bands.
“The guitarist (Tadhg Bean-Bradley) was a good friend of mine through the retro scene here in England,” she added.
Greenaway’s aggressive, percussive flute chops are displayed frugally and to great effect on tracks like “Merry Go Round” and “Lady On Fire,” slipping perfectly into the musical mix – you realize quickly that they’re exactly what the tunes need.
“I’m a big ‘70s progressive rock fan – bands like Jethro Tull and Focus I’ve always enjoyed,” she said. “I had no rules or restrictions, and so I decided to combine some prog elements in there. I (pay) homage to all of the music I love, but making it my own.”
She started playing the instrument as a child, but hated it, she says, because she found it “restrictive” and was “only playing classical pieces and there were so many rules.”
“I remember the first time I heard jazz prog flute and it was messy, gritty, dirty and I LOVED it,” she said. “I thought, wow, that’s how a flute can sound! So I decided to pick it back up as an adult and I really enjoy playing now.”
Aside from Suzi Quatro and the Runaways, glam was predominantly done by men back in the day – albeit very androgynous ones, like the aforementioned Bowie, Marc Bolan, and David Johansen. Greenaway feels she’s carrying on the tradition of the genre’s “freedom of expression.”
“I feel as though the visual and audio are fully intertwined – they have to be,” she said. “You cannot have glitter rock performed by a dude wearing a T-shirt and jeans. This is theatre, darling! It’s a complete experience of the unusual, the over-the-top, the otherworldly.
“I think a lot of outcast people were drawn to it back in the day because men wearing makeup and shiny catsuits whilst singing about loving women was so backwards to what a man was expected to be back then, and isn’t that fabulous!? I think it was bravery and it opened up doors, broke barriers of what was expected from gender roles,” she added.
Speaking of those “shiny catsuits,” they are a Bobbie Dazzle trademark. She boasts an impressive collection in photos and videos.
“I have a few amazing designers who I’ve worked with on my stagewear,” she said. “Obviously, conveying a certain style is important to me, but (they have) to be practical too, non-constrictive and durable. There’s (going to) be collaborations with either buying the creators’ designs or coming up with my own.
“I have MANY catsuits,” she added ruefully. “It’s becoming a problem and I need a bigger wardrobe!”
The album’s title, she said, is “a very British 1970s slang term based off the word ‘fantastic.’”
“It’s a nonsensical, whimsical descriptor which embodied how I felt about the album – I just thought it was the perfect way to describe what was inside,” she added.
It sure does. The tracks pulse with authenticity and modernity at once, respectful to what’s come before without being derivative or slavish. Her lyrics follow the glam rock handbook in terms of imagery and phrases (like “pick the flowers that are growing up on Mars, planetary child”), but they are also full of her take-charge, modern woman philosophy (like “I’m no space cadet, I want to be the commander”).
One set of lyrics, though, those of “Lightning Fantasy,” has an interesting origin. She found them in one of her father’s old Bob Dylan albums while cleaning out her sister’s house following her passing. They were among several sets of lyrics he’d written when he was a teenager, “all varying very much in lyrical content,” she said.
“For example, one song was called ‘Castrator’ … maybe I’ll save that for the next album!” she cracked. “‘Lightning Fantasy’ is a song about difficult love, a woman who has toyed with his heart. Is it about my mother? Probably!”
There’s a couple of pretty personal lines in “Revolution,” like “I finally found my way to make you sway” and “Rewriting the story the way it oughta be told.” This is a woman happy in her self determination.
“‘Revolution’ is definitely a message to anyone stuck in a rut who needs a way out, just encouraging anyone to get out of an unhappy situation because there’s joy to be found elsewhere in life,” she said. “Don’t waste your life sitting in a place that doesn’t make you feel good!”
And like many other spots on the album, there’s musical hints of great glam tracks of the past – here it’s a solo section reminiscent of Gary Glitter’s “Rock n Roll Pt. 2.”
“Throughout the album, there are nods here and there, little homages to great songs or artists who have influenced the record, whether that’s in a name of a song, a lyric in a line, or a stylistic choice of the music,” she said. “It’s also a little bit of fun for the listener to look out for these things.”
She muses about traversing the eons in “Antique Time Machine”; of course, she’s doing that right now when you think about it.
“I definitely have musically gone back to 1974 and I’m having a great time,” she said. “If anyone wants to come and join me, you’re more than welcome!”
If she could time-travel, aside from going “back to the 70s and enjoying the incredible music it had to offer,” she says she’d rather take a peek into the future.
“Instead of seeing what people have already experienced, I’d rather go and see what’s yet to be,” she said. “Slightly terrifying idea, but I think it would be far more interesting. I hope I see some aliens!”
“Flowers on Mars,” though, is firmly in the present, this new frontier, this “home on a new world.”
“‘Flowers on Mars’ was the first song I wrote as Bobbie Dazzle, so (it) will always hold a special place in my heart,” she said., “It’s another song about escaping and (experiencing) a better place with better people. In life you’ll always find there’s good people in the world who will welcome you with open arms.”
Greenaway has already been playing a host of live dates as Bobbie Dazzle, and those will continue into 2025.
“I have a UK tour right after the album is out,” she said. “Then next year, I’ve booked a few festival slots so far, like Desertfest London, HRH Prog, and Call of the Wild, all in England.
“(In) 2025, I’ll be doing a European run of the tour and then (my) next plan is spreading the glitz and glam all over the globe!” she adds.
You’ve been warned. Pick up your platform boots, crushed velvet scarves, and bellbottoms now before it’s too late!
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Fleshgod Apocalypse
Fleshgod Apocalypse, “Opera,” Nuclear Blast Records
By Kira L. Schlechter, Heavy Hags
“Life is a wonderful thing. Even when everything around us seems to be falling apart, we must find a meaning for existing. And unexpectedly, sometimes second chances can be way more exciting than the first ones.”–Francesco Paoli, Fleshgod Apocalypse, from the Nuclear Blast bio.
And he ought to know about second chances. The singer/guitarist has devoted the entirety of the Italian symphonic death metal band’s seventh album to his very personal experience with them. “Opera” is inspired by his near-fatal 2021 mountain climbing accident, which left him with internal bleeding, a host of broken bones, and nerve damage in his left arm (he now has a prosthetic elbow and has lost movement and sensitivity in that arm). He had been scaling the Gran Sasso mountains in Abruzzo when he slipped and fell.
So the album subsequently is a journey through Francesco’s ’s life immediately before the accident, as it happened, and afterwards, including the long healing process and the reassessment of his life to date.
Singer Veronica Bordacchini takes on several commentary roles in the story, including Fate (“Pendulum”), Life (“Bloodclock”), Francesco’s own soul (“At War With My Soul”), pain-killing drugs (“Morphine Waltz”), his mother (“Matricide 8.21”), Resilience (“Per Aspera Ad Astra”), and Hope (“Til Death Do Us Part”).
The rest of the band is Francesco Ferrini (piano, string arrangements), Fabio Bartoletti (lead guitar), and Eugene Ryabchenko (drums). Bassist Paolo Rossi is on hiatus.
The suitably operatic opener, “Ode to Art (De’ Sepolcri),” is somber, hushed piano and Veronica’s delicate, restrained singing, exquisitely tender. A gentle swell of strings leads her to her superb high register at the close.
The thickly layered “I Can Never Die,” dense with choir vocals, orchestration, riffing, and blazing blast beats, is a brief but detailed insight into Francesco’s personality – cocky as he pursues excitement and thrills (“Free from fears, I smile at death/As I become immortal” … I burned my nerves/I ripped my heart out/To feel alive”), reminiscent as he recalls his past (“Outcast since birth/Mocked by everyone”), and grateful for the Art that ultimately saved him and gave him purpose (“With no respite in this war/Against mediocrity/Art crusaders/True believers of this only religion”). As Art personified, Veronica reminds that through her, we live and truly become immortal: “Carving your name into eternity … Enclosing the existence in timeless words.” There’s a hint at what’s to come – and a look back – when Francesco prophetically roars, “So when my time will come/Don’t grieve for me but raise your glasses/And in my honor play this music loud.”
“Pendulum” then describes the actual accident in horrific detail, the singer himself becoming said pendulum, swinging sickeningly from dizzying heights (he said in a story on Louder Sound that he hung for an hour and a half, veering in and out of consciousness) and cursing himself for his screw-up. Set to a jagged, foreboding tempo, Francesco acknowledges that his “Love for the unknown is what brought me up here,” and he warns himself, “don’t look down,” but his mistake is soon apparent as Fate (Veronica) taunts, “This time you went too far.” He knows he’s taken chances – “Dreams made of lead fill my barrel .. Like Russian roulette” – and Fate has no sympathy – “You get the end you deserve,” an “inglorious end.” It’s a harrowing ride, especially knowing it’s a true story and not a metaphor.
“Bloodclock” is the immediate aftermath of the accident, its detail gruesome (“Wounded, swollen, bleeding/I’m hanging on this wall like a crucifix … Drop by drop/All my blood/Turns this granite to red”). His initial shock is replaced by a whispered section where he knows the trouble he’s in – “And the wind/Plucks a harp/While my soul disappears” – but the chorus rages his defiance despite the odds (“I don’t want to leave this earth today”). That chorus continues the vivid, heartbreaking observances of someone who’s lived every minute of this horror – “I can hear my wife yelling my name in vain,” Francesco remembers, “While my son holds a shovel and is digging my grave.” The end is slower; he’s holding on, determined to survive. It’s wonderful and awful, again when you remember it actually happened.
So call “At War With My Soul” the “I told you so” moment, where Francesco argues with that soul, who’s trying to tell him this is what you get when you push yourself too hard and him saying, basically, fuck you. Its big chug and thudding chords are perfect accompaniment. “I’ve spent my whole life trying/To get rid of you” and your judgments, he says, while Veronica, as his Soul, taunts in a mesmerizing serpentine progression, “Sail over the high seas of regret/Climb up the mountain of fame,” and he counters, “No I don’t have any regret … And I’m not seeking fame.” The chorus is a harrowing back-and-forth between him and Veronica, these “Victims of ourselves,” these “bastard brothers … born with my worst enemy inside.” “Pain is the price for respect,” he snarls, “I just don’t care for your respect.” After a lilting solo section, the rhythm becomes erratic, chaotic, the music atonal, echoing this ongoing internal struggle.
Arguably the most classically-inspired track with its blazing baroque flourishes, “Morphine Waltz” (indeed in six-eight time but you’d kill yourself trying to dance to it) is an unhinged, maniacal love song to the drug “that can make you forget the past and dance till dawn.” Veronica does a wonderful job imbuing the character with a crazy seductiveness, while Francesco helplessly gives in, begging “Take me where the pain is just a bad memory,” where he is “inebriated by this wonder of science.” But he’s also aware of the risk to himself when he wryly roars, “And I lose the last shred of my dignity.”
The heartbreaking “Matricide 8.21” (that being the date, August 21, that he was injured) is Francesco’s apology to his mother for his mistakes, for making her suffer, for “(going) too far” and “cross(ing) the very thin line.” His technique of using Veronica as a character foil to himself on this album is supremely effective here – she tells him to “Walk the earth with no regret/Don’t let your fears hold you back,” but he castigates himself for doing just that. “My ego led me astray,” he admits, “I just felt this fire inside” — “How could I do this to myself/How could I do this to you/And still deserve your love?” he cries. But she remains steadfast in her understanding, repeating her refrain throughout. This is a slower, more measured track, laden with lead guitar, including a dramatic solo on the “Mother” melody.
“Per Aspera Ad Astra” (“as above, so below”), back to the dense, massive instrumentation, is a summation of what he’s learned from all this. He begins with where he is now, wanting to “Save the world with one hand” (of course referring to his limitations, as does “titanium will give me new strength”) and realizing that “a second chance must be deserved.” Veronica, as Resilience, gives him a pep talk in the chorus. But the real key to what this near-death experience has taught him is conveyed in one revealing line: “I’ve accepted the worst humiliation and turned it into deliverance.”
The striking, powerful closer, “Till Death Do Us Part,” has Veronica as Hope leading the way while Francesco swears to her that he will never lose hope. Slow and stately, with terrific overdubbing, she states her devotion to him, even knowing that at this moment, “The future is buried by the past and its epitaph recites, ‘Nothing will be the same.’” She remembers what’s happened – “the time standing on top of the world … when we were just invincible” – lines made even more meaningful now that he knows he’s not (“I need you, Hope, like never before”). And when their voices intertwine, it’s so moving, as is the modulation at the end and the soloing on the chorus melody.
The title track is also a piano-based instrumental that showcases Francesco F’s formidable skill. Gorgeous, for certain. Necessary? Maybe not, but it does dovetail nicely back to the opening interlude.
The only thing I’d wish here throughout is that the volume on the music would be toned down and the vocals brought up so you could better hear the lyrics and themes. Because “Opera” is a stunning character study of a man coming to grips with his shortcomings. I don’t think it’s to say Francesco will never climb another mountain (literally or figuratively), but now he knows the risks. And he wants to inspire others with his story, as he says in the bio:
“People need motivation, need examples that can make them restart believing in themselves,” he said. “And for me, this is part of the game – this is the best way I can give them something back after all these years of loving support.” This album, with its intense vulnerability and soul-searching, does exactly that.
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Hammerfall
Hammerfall, “Avenge the Fallen,” Nuclear Blast Records
Review by Kira L. Schlechter, Heavy Hags
After 30 years in any career, it’s natural for one to pause and reflect – on what’s accomplished, on what’s next, on one’s eventual end, even.
The Swedish band Hammerfall is rather at that point with its latest, “Avenge the Fallen.” While it’s still the cheery adrenaline rush of all their albums, singer Joacim Cans, guitarists Oscar Dronjak and Pontus Norgren, bassist Fredrik Larsson, and drummer David Wallen are definitely thinking about this particular moment in their lives – being middle age – on this, their 13th album. And a solid bunch of tunes they are: tight, precise, to the point, and built on a bedrock of some truly memorable riffs.
Like the title track, whose deadly simple, but deadly effective, riff melody – one they bring back before the chorus and abbreviate before the end – sets the mood for the song’s fist-raising, defiant sentiment. Joacim poses some interesting rhetorical questions to open: “What is the worst, be the one who died/Or be the one who survives/Better be saved or forever young/Or forgotten, erased by the tide?” His high tenor voice –that most classic of metal instruments – is supple throughout; he’s totally comfortable with himself vocally. By midway, his warrior character has shaken off his inertia and realizes, “this is the mission, I must carry on,” vowing an “eye for an eye for the fallen ones.”
“The End Justifies” is one of those odes to our genre, an ode to the band themselves, and an ode to their fans – a “yay all of us” for holding the hammer high, if you will. Set to David’s crisp, spotless drumming, the tip of the hat of the first verse begins with the band – “Here we go again/Chapter 13 has been penned” (get it?) – and their acknowledgement that they are like us: “Judged by fame and fortune, bigotry/The fuel to feed the fire.” The second verse is the audience, who “came to our side” and found a place where all are welcome (“The road we paved is free/Free for all, for you and me.” And so the theme, “the end justifies,” is that the result is worth all it takes to get there, to this mutual place of bliss that is metal.
“Freedom” makes nicely subtle commentary on self-determination and science versus the shackles of religion. Some will stick to the old ways: “Fear divine damnation and its sacred wrath/Chart your moral course to steer your path/The blind will lead, excuse of perfect ignorance,” Joacim notes. And some will evolve, himself included: “On the gleaming wings of science, we proceed.” The second verse becomes more pointed and is completely timely: “What is this, the future or repeated past/Faith instead of reason, it will never last/Rise and be the master of your destiny/Without anyone’s permission to be free.” Resonant, manly “Ohs” separate the verses and, together with the twin guitars echoing the melody, bring the track to a ringing close.
My first listen to the truly majestic “Hail to the King” was the first of many, it’s just that good (and it translates terrifically live, as it did on Hammerfall’s recent tour with Kamelot). It’s a beautifully poetic eulogy to this fallen ruler – “Ravens in mourning, all crying out loud/Sending the message of death through the clouds/Now as one life ends, another begins/Again, the sun is rising” – the king is dead, long live the king. Fredrik’s stately bass lines in the chorus give depth and heart to Joacim’s poignant thoughts. Its call-and-response chorus is a headbanger, a fist-raiser … everything you want in a metal chorus. The transitional riff after the chorus is almost folky, and the way they revisit the chorus at the end – first only the melody, then the addition of the vocals, then the melody only again but downtuned, somber and reflective – checks all the emotional boxes.
So if you were connecting any dots, “Hero To All” might be the next chapter in the “Hail to the King” saga, this next inspirational, salvational figure who draws men to fight for him – “He brought the light, made us prepared to fight,” and is a hero for one and for all. It may be quicker in tempo than its predecessor, but it maintains that theme of honor and brotherhood.
As any of my readers from other sites knows, I’m not much for sappy, syrupy ballads. But “Hope Springs Eternal” is neither of those, for one, and for another, Joacim’s voice is eminently suited for it. And for yet another, it speaks not of romance or love, but of the fleeting nature of life (“Here today, gone by tomorrow, my friend”) of wanting to leave a legacy (“I wish to live before and beyond my death”), but realizing the best legacy is to live day by day (“I’m not immortal, I’m just a man/Raised to live and do the best I can/Life to the limit, every day’s a brand new start”). All of us at this certain age start thinking about our own mortality, but Joacim’s damn well not done, as he says, “Without dreams, you will cease to exist.” Hammerfall continuing to actively tour and make new music is proof of that.
“Burn It Down” is one of those typical songs of epic battle, of fighting a nameless evil, of bringing justice – “We must fight and defend to make it right” – you know the ones. But in the Swedes’ hands, they never get boring, with little cinematic lines like “Here we are, the mighty opponents/Here we stand with the wind in our hair/You promise heaven, we give hell” to sweeten the pot.
A thematic reprise of “Hope Springs Eternal,” “Capture the Dream” is a message to all using himself (or themselves) as an example. It’s a look back at the past (“Been trying to shut me down since the beginning … They’ve been trying to undermine me right at my own grounds”) and a suggestion of how to move on (“When the future seems too bleak, don’t look there for answers/Look inside yourself, be true to you alone”). This one really benefits from their favorite call-and-response chorus technique – a very slight tempo change beneath the final choruses shakes things up a little. The fadeout is Joacim/the band reiterating that they remain, “still reaching for the stars … through the winds of change.”
“Rise of Evil,” through its juxtaposition of “the devil and the maker,” of “Jesus Christ … and Lucifer,” of those who “scream ‘Your soul is mine’,” is an observation of how everyone fights that battle between good and evil within themselves all the time and how you can’t rely on either one – “I dial the number 666, but no reply/I knock on heaven’s door before I say goodbye,” in a clever rejoinder – so the only solution is to “uprise and precede ‘em.” That guitar flourish before each line of the chorus is ear candy, as is the switch of the band doing the call and Joacim doing the response in the final chorus.
In keeping with what has become the album’s de facto theme, “Time Immemorial” gives us no happy ending: “One day, your dream/Will be gone without a warning,” Joacim sings, so you’d better “Try to cherish every morning” and keep striving, because “not a soul ever wins by playing small.” To drive home the point, the verses are hectic and the chorus is lengthened out, slower, almost in an attempt to slow time while all the while knowing that it is “standing still for no one, constant is its chime.” The ending is somber, just Joacim, orchestration, and wordless backing vocals.
So “Avenge the Fallen” becomes noteworthy for capturing a band who’s totally not done – not even close – but who knows the future is finite. It might even be the first metal album to address aging, and horns up to them for doing so.
About Me
Sometimes the hardest part of finding success is gathering the courage to get started. The most successful people don’t look back to see who’s watching. Look for opportunities to lift others up along the way.
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“Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in few.” – Pythagoras
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