Acid [Expanded Edition]

In retrospect it almost sounds like a Joan Jett-type hard rock album, but Acid's eponymous debut from 1983 was originally conceived (and perceived) under the wholehearted influence of heavy metal (and, of course, England's Girlschool), which was then sweeping across Europe in the aftermath of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. There's simply no doubt about it once one gets an earful of the often amusing lyrics of vocalist Kate, which boast that naïve, subtlety-free directness descended directly from the Judas Priest school of "We're going to rock you!" songwriting. "Acid is the name/Heavy metal is the game," Kate decries on Acid's namesake tune (a textbook example of early-'80s Euro speed metal, if ever there was one), and ensuing numbers like "Demon," "Hooked on Metal," "Five Days in Hell," and "Satan" point even more obviously to the above conclusion. But therein lies part of the lasting appeal of these Belgian bombers' unadorned brand of heavy metal: for a genre that's since become so structurally complex and given to over-thinking itself to death, Acid's unselfconscious, straightforward approach is both euphoric and damn near exotic. It's not all pedal-to-the-floor speed metal, either, as both "Ghost Riders" and the slow-chugging "Hell on Wheels" are more tempered and varied headbangers, the likes of which any band of the period would have killed to compose; "Woman at Last" addresses the still unusual position of females in heavy metal bands; and "Heaven's Devils" bucks expectations with a piano intro and gentle midsection -- when it's not flailing away at hyper-speeds, mind you. Entertaining stuff, and though Acid would cram the next two years with a couple more albums and an EP, none of them quite matched the inspired simplicity of this first effort. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia