Essentially a repackaging of the Fight To The Last! compilation that came out around twenty years ago, Spirit of the Chateaux rounds up the career of never-were NWoBHM hopefuls Chateaux without adding much in the way of added bonuses or insight into the band’s career.
That said, if you’ve never heard the band before and are a fan of that nebulous concept, the NWoBHM, then there’s a fair amount here that will be of interest to you.
In the early eighties the second tier of the NWoBHM was a murky place, full of talented musicians being taken for a ride by dodgy labels and management companies, all eager to get their piece of the action created by more august names like Iron Maiden, Raven and Diamond Head. It’s here that Cheltenham’s Chateaux lived, duking it out for airplay on the UK’s one national heavy metal radio show with the likes of Savage, Tokyo Blade and Avenger and living on the scraps of encouragement handed out occasionally by magazines like Kerrang! and Sounds.
It was a tough, unforgiving landscape with few rewards, but the bands gave their all, and Chateaux gave more than most. Hitched to the Ebony Records label, the three albums they put out are all hampered by the imprint’s trademark ‘primitive’ production; But, on the first album, Chained and Desperate, especially, their talent – helmed by the vocals of a pre-Grim Reaper Steve Grimmett – cuts through, with tracks like Spirit of the Chateaux, Burn Out at Dawn and The Dawn Surrendered all standing up to modern perusal very well.
After Grimmett jumped ship he was replaced by soundalike bassist Krys Mason and for the next two albums his comparative lack of personality shifted the emphasis on entertainment over to gun guitarist Tim Broughton; This resulted in a sound that tilted slightly away from heads down metal (though superficially the band sounded just as heavy) with more emphasis on flashy axework. To my ears at the time this led to the band falling slightly between two stools, failing to decide whether to stick or twist as metal commenced it’s coalescent polarisation between thrash and everything else with the emergence of Metallica as global players in 1984. In the end they missed both boats, although final album Highly Strung maintained the band’s reputation for the ability to pen a strong metal tune or two.
Heavy metal’s history is littered with the corpses of talented might-have-beens, and Chateaux prove over the course of this interesting set that they were one of the better heroic failures of the NWoBHM period; Grab yourself an earful if they name is new to you but you enjoy the music of this period!
Spirit of the Chateaux is out now/
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