Filed under: NWOBHM Resurrections, Irish Lightning, Pre-Metallica Echoes
You’ve just stumbled into the graveyard shift of metal memory. I’m Buzz Drainpipe, your ghost host through the ruins of riffs long buried and bootlegs forgotten. Tonight’s rotation: Killing Time by Sweet Savage, an album that hits like a pint glass across the face and leaves the taste of Belfast iron in your mouth.
First, the facts—but whisper 'em, like it's sacred gospel passed through dive bar urinals: Sweet Savage were part of the real New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but hailing from Northern Ireland—a place where your guitar solos had to dodge rubber bullets and Thatcherite fog.
This band never made it big, but they lit the fuse for others. Think I’m talking smoke? Ask James Hetfield. Sweet Savage’s original 1981 track Killing Time was covered by Metallica and slid onto the B-side of The Unforgiven, and let’s be honest: that cover alone bought these Belfast bruisers immortality in the liner notes of metal lore.
But this 1996 album? It’s a resurrection spell. A cult-classic reboot. Killing Time isn’t just an archival release of early demos—it’s a full-blown reconjuring. Fleshed out with punchier production, sharpened steel, and post-thrash polish. It's NWOBHM through a 90s rear-view mirror, where the denim has faded but the blood’s still fresh.
The opener, “Killing Time,” snarls with that classic gallop—lean, mean, and loaded with vengeance. It’s what you wish the Load album had the guts to be. “Vengeance” and “Thunder” stomp in with riffs that sound like a pub fight between Saxon and Diamond Head. “Eye of the Storm”? That’s where the ghosts of Belfast howl.
Trevor Fleming’s vocals are whiskey-scarred and honest, like a street preacher who sold his soul for a Marshall stack. Vivian Campbell, before he sold out to arena gloss with Dio and Def Leppard, laid the bones of his guitar legend here. This is his origin story, and it howls.
And the production? It’s weirdly clean for a band that should sound like they were recorded inside a missile silo. But somehow that sheen adds weight—it’s like someone ran the original tape through a 90s grunge processor and gave it new muscle.
Buzz's Late-Night Takeaway:
Killing Time is what happens when you exhume the bones of a lost legend and they come back swinging. It’s a document of “what could’ve been,” wrapped in steel and slathered in resurrection oil. For anyone who digs the true dirt behind the Metallica myth, for the tape traders, the bullet belt historians, and the Sabbath-priest hybrids who never got their due—this one’s your sacrament.
File under: Revenge of the Forgotten Riff.
Drink to it. Bleed to it. Let it remind you that not all legends die… some just wait for side B.
baby.
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