Episode #9 - Broxit

After a week in which we celebrated the work of Ronnie James Dio in his spells (see what we did there?) with British outfits Rainbow and Black Sabbath and the best of his work with the eponymously-titled (and largely American) Dio, the boys decided the ninth instalment of the podcast should have its roots in continental Europe.

How, then, to make it clear that it was an episode from which they had deliberately voted to exclude the UK?

The obvious answer was to take inspiration from another process that had deliberately voted to exclude the UK from Europe, so the lads pushed the envelope of punnery to its limits, swapped an ‘e’ for an ‘o’, and the Broxit episode was born.

The next decision facing the sad men of the Enter Sadmen podcast was to choose the albums they would each bring to this Eurocentric show.

Steve boarded a ferry at Harwich and headed to Germany. Mark crossed the Irish Sea to Dun Laoghaire in search of Thin Lizzy. Richard went on a mystery tour of his own making - a journey that turned into an odyssey in more ways than one - and headed to Scandinavia.

They returned clutching their treasures and then huddled together on a video call and started squabbling.

Thin Lizzy - Thunder and Lightning (1983)

Okay. So Mark cheated a bit, given that by 1983 the only Irish thing about Lizzy was the band’s founder Phil Lynott. To misquote the late, great street poet, maybe Thin Lizzy really did need a little more Irish in them to really hit the brief. Mark argued that the band is formally recognised as being Irish and therefore counted, and no one was in the mood for a fight.

Thunder and Lightning was Lizzy’s final album and quite apart from some absolutely cracking tunes is also notable for being the album that really introduced erstwhile Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist John Sykes to the wider world. Sykes gets only one writing credit on the album, but the talent that would bring the likes of Still of the Night to global recognition was already there to see.

Accept - Balls to the Wall (1983)

Anyone who assumed the obvious - that Steve had gone to Germany in search of the Scorpions - immediately proved to themselves what journalists have always known: that to assume makes an ass out of u and me.

With several big albums released in their career to 1995, Steve could have come up with anything. But he ignored Restless and Wild, Metal Heart, Breaker and the rest and plumped instead for their fifth studio album. The big question that the boys needed to answer was whether he’d bet the house on the thundering title track alone, or whether the rest of the album was up to the very particular standards of the Enter Sadmen Hall of Fame …

Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force - Odyssey (1987)

Having arguably the longest band title in rock isn’t enough to garner the kind of critical acclaim that guarantees a lasting spot in the Hall of Fame. Neither does having the longest guitar solos in living memory (listen to the episode and find out just how much of Odyssey is Malmers simply noodling away like a lost soul in his own little world). And neither does having Joe Lynn Turner on vocals - a presence that proved surprisingly polarising.

When the lads finally close the ornate and heavy door on the Hall of Fame, the albums that are still inside will be the ones that are consistently good and contain absolutely no fuck-ups.

So just where, exactly, did that leave YJM and his motley crew?