Let’s stay with Finland since it worked out so well for us yesterday, but let’s swing the metal pendulum over to the 80’s and a more traditional form. Enter Oz.

Before Finland was embarking on more disturbing and dirty paths of extreme metal, they were rocking it up traditional style in the 80’s and with Oz’s second release Fire in the Brain the Fins claimed that as well. This album is sheer, pure, heavy metal. Undiluted by years of genre inbreeding, Oz just goes for fucking broke. Sure, it would be hard to deny a NWOBHM influence but there’s way more boogie in this band. Way more bite. It reminds me of the rock prowess of Motorhead’s Overkill. That’s huge praise, and while they Motorhead they ain’t, they have managed to use the NWOBHM sound to their advantage and craft a fairly unique style. Nowadays this might sound like a lot of these backwards look new traditional and power metal bands but I can’t imagine how revitalizing a sound like this must have been in 1983 coming out of Finland.

This is heavy metal. Pure and simple. And it fucking rocks. Straight up.