Band : Eric Clapton / Faith No More / Him / The Darkness / The Sisters Of Mercy
Album title : 2 in 1 (more details below)
Label : Warner
Distributor : Warner
Release date : October – November 2008
Release : 2 in 1 re-issues (double CD)

Rather than have their over-stock of CDs rot away in storage, the people at Warner have decided to emtpy their cuboards by bringing those CDs to people in a “2 In 1” package! Which means that you can buy two albums (with its original printing on the CD) by one artist, put together in one package, and sold at a price ranging from 6 ½ Euros to 7,20 (that would apparently be tthe price at Free Record Shop, and knowing the difference, you must wànt to get ripped off to go buy àny stuff there!). You don’t get the usual elaborate artwork nor lyrics/ booklet, but each package gives you a website address where you can get more info per release. So, over the next two months, I’m gonna bring you a couple of updates on the “2 In 1” series, bringing together a fivesome of these compiled re-issues each time. Now if you’re wondering why I’ve put thése “2 In 1”s together, I can only answer: see, these all had a catalog number that kinda put ‘em together! No other reason but thàt! Don’t expect me to bring you in-dept reviews of each album...instead I will talk about the relevance of the records in the bands’ history and their importance in the music business at the moment they were first released/ sold. Okay...everybody understand “the rules”? Let’s go!

*Working alphabetically, the first on the list is Eric Clapton, the albums being 1998’s Pilgrim and 2001’s Reptile (both issued by the WEA subsidiary Reprise). Although most Metal and Hard Rock fanatics might look down on this Blues guitarist, fact is that in his time he was a true craftsman, bringing innovative guitar play in a wide variety of genres...whether it be in Blues Rock (John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers and The Yardbirds), Psychedelic Rock (with Cream) or more Pop-oriented Blues Rock (as a solo artist), Reggea (“i Shot The Sheriff”, rendered immortal by the incomparable Bob Marley).
Pilgrim was Clapton’s first album of original material since 1989’s Journeyman (in the meantime Eric concentrating on some movie soundtracks, and the music business filling the void with a couple of compilations and live albums), and was met with somewhat contradicting criticism: Allmusic described the album as “bland”, while David Wild from Rolling Stone gave it 4/5 stars stating, “Pilgrim is the work of someone who has learned in the hardest way immaginable that although he cannot change the world, he might be able to change himself”. We mustn’t forget that it was the first album Clapton wrote since the tragic death in March 1992 of his son Conor (two songs on the album had already been written back then, being “My Father’s Eyes” and “Circus”, which was about the last time he saw his son when he took him to the circus...the 4 year-old boy died the day after), and somehow the guitarist/ singer wanted to bring the “saddest album” to the moment! Clapton fans know they can usually expect a cover of some classic artist’s song, in this case that being Bob Dylan’s Born In Time”. Businesswize, the album got to the #4 position in the Billboard 200, and to #5 in the Top Canadian Albums charts. The single “My Faather’s Eyes” went into several charts, including Adult Contemporary (#2), Adult Top 40 (#7), plus Mainstream Rock Tracks and Top 40 Mainstream (#26 and 21 positions respectively). Second single “She’s Gone” did a little less good, but still got to the #28 position in the Mainstream Rock Tracks charts.
In between Pilgrim and Reptile came two compilation albums (the 2-CD Blues, and Chronicles), a participation to a movie soundtrack (The Story Of Us) in 1999, and the 2000 album Riding With The King, which was a cooperation album with legendary Blues guitarist B.B. King! 2000 also saw the singer/ guitarist inducted into the US Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame for the third time, this time as a solo artist (earlier inductions had been for his participation in the bands Cream and The Yardbirds). As an album, Reptile didn’t really do as well saleswize as the preceding Pilgrim had done (sorry, I have no figures about sales in the US, but like in Holland Pilgrim had gone up to the #7 position, and stayed in the lists for 21 consecutive weeks...while Reptile only got to #9 for a total of 12 weeks), although it still has good material. Besides new original stuff, there’s also covers of songs by Ray Charles (“Come Back Baby”), J.J. Cale (“Travellin’ Light”), and Stevie Wonder (“I Ain’t Gonna Stand For It”).

*Up next are Faith No More with their 1989 breakthrough album The Real Thing and the 1992 follow-up Angel Dust (both originally released on the London imprint. With Chuck Mosely as singer, the  band had already got some minor success with the 1985 US release on Mordam records of their debutalbum We Care A Lot, which led to their deal with London subsidiary Slash for the ensuing Introduce Yourself (1987), a revamped version of single “We Care A Lot” getting some airplay on MTV. Moseley was fired in ’88 due to his erratic behaviour during shows, sessions and at the release party of their latest album. He was replaced by Mike Patton at the suggestion of guitarist Jim Martin, who’d heard an early demo of Mr. Bungle (who were then still in their Death Metal days).
Within two weeks after joining, Patton had written all the lyrics for the songs that would make up his recorded debut with with FNM! The Real Thing had singles releases with “Epic” (the video of which  was shown quite extensively on MTV), “From Out Of Nowhere”, and “Falling To Pieces”, and the bend’s rendition of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” would send rekindled interest in the British Heavy Metal to soaring highs within the more aggressive music community! The album gained Platinum status in both the US, Canada, and South America, and also had big sales numbers in Australia, the UK, and the rest of Europe. It would be sold in excess of 4,0 million copies worldwide! Sales which were certainly aided by the band’s contribution of the (new) track “The Perfect Crime” to the soundtrack of the 1991 popular movie Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (in  which Jim Martin even makes a cameo appearance)! By the way, The Real Thing got nominated for a Grammy Award...which is always an honor in its own right (even if you’re not really gíven the award), and the CD version contained bonus tracks “War Pigs” and piano-driven ballad “Edge Of The World”, not available on the vinyl (I know, because I got myself both...the vinyl àfter the CD though!)
1992’s follow-up album Angel Dust saw the band move in a more experimental mood (mostly brought in through influence by Patton, who’d had no say in the music on The Real Thing), bringing a more complex whole to things (also, a lot of samples were used with sources like stuff by Simon And Garfunkel, Diamanda Galás, Z’Ev, music from The Wizard Of Oz, but also sirens, someone reading a flight announcement at the Rio de Janeiro Galeão International Airport, aboriginal chanting, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s “String Quartet N°8”). In fact, one critic stated that the album was “...one of the more complex and simply confounding records ever released by a major label...”, another wrote that single ”A Small Victory” (which got a nomination for “Best Art Direction” at the MTV Video Music Awards), “...which seems to run Madame Butterfly through Metallica and Nile Rodgers...reveals a developing facility for combining unlikely elements into startingly original concoctions”. What’s certain is that, where The Real Thing was a relatively easy album to listen to from the start, it took the listener several sessions to really get into the Angel Dust material! More singles off the album came for the tracks “Midlife Crisis” and “Everything’s Ruined”. Also including a re-recording of the theme to the film Midnight Cowboy, the album was re-pressed with a cover of The Commodores’ hit “Easy” as a bonus (in some parts of the world that song became the band’s biggest hit!). Although in the US the album didn’t do as well saleswize (“only” some 665,000 copies) as The Real Thing, sales in many other countries (notably Germany, where it went gold, but also Holland, France, Russia, and the UK) were much better, while staying the same in Australia & Canada. Worldwide sales are estimated to around 3,0 million!

*Next up are HIM (originally named His Infernal Majesty, the band switched to the shorter monicker after being associated with Satanic rituals and the fact that the original name was too long to pronounce in the native Finnish language) with their 2005 and 2007 albums Dark Light and Venus Doom. By that time, the band had already completely developed their own “Love Metal” style. In the US (and then also internationally), the 2003 album by that title had began to make some waves after professional skateboarder/ TV personality Bam Margera began using the band’s “heartagram” logo,and promoted them extensively on his MTV series Viva La Bam.
So, Dark Light became HIM’s full breakthrough in the US, debuting in the Top 20 of the Billboard Top 200 at #18, having 2 major Rock hits (“Wings Of A Butterfly” and “Killing Loneliness”, both of which had a video made for), and getting Gold Status by October 2006 (making it the first band ever from Finland to sell in excess off 500,000 copies of one album there; worldwide sales of the album would border 900,000 copies altogether). It also incited US citizens into buying the band’s previous albums. In the UK, the album got the same chart position as in the US, and in Germany the album went to #4! In Greece and their homeland, they did even better, going all the way to the top! The album exists in several versions: a limited pre-release edition [(20,000 copies) in a tin case with a 24 page booklet with hand written lyrics, an authenticity certificate, and a key-chain light that flashes the heartagram...issued some days before the official release date of September 27 (and in the US only)], the regular 10-track version, the Japanese version (with bonus tracks “Venus (In Our Blood)”, “The Cage” – both also available on the Exclusive Heartagram Internet Edition –, and a cover of TheRamones’ “Poison Heart” – also available on the “Wings Of  A Butterfly” single), a Special Digibook Edition (limited to 50,000 copies), and the “Exclusive Heartagram Internet Edition”.
In between Dark Light and 2007’s Venus Doom, HIM released its 2nd and 3rd compilation albums, respectively titled Uneasy Listening Vol.1 and Uneasy Listening Vol.2, the first containing 15 alterate versions of the band’s lighter songs, the second containing rare alternate tracks showing the band from its heavier side.
Many songs off Venus Doom were leaked onto the Internet prior to the physical release of the album in September 2007. Although the album only had 9 songs, this was compensated with the length of the epic “Sleepwalking Past Hope” , whichlastsjust over 10 minutes (on the other hand, “Song Or Suicide” only lasts a mere 70 seconds, and thus the album contains both the longest and shortest HIM songs ever!). The song “Passion’s Killing Floor” (one of the “ripped” songs)was featured on the soundtrack of Transformers. Singles...”The Kiss Of Dawn” (as well as “Passion’s Killing Floor”, “Dead Lover’s Lane” and “Sleepwalking...”)became a regular on most of the band’s live performances from that moment on. Just like for second single “Bleed Well”, the track got a video made for it, directed by Meiert Avis. At the 50th annual Grammy Awards, HIM was nominated in the category of “Best Boxed/ Special Limited Edition Pacaging” for the album. Which brings me to the alternate versions of the album: the Special Edition contaned bonus tracks with remixes of album tracks “Love In Cold Blood” and “Dead Lover’s Lane”...which were also on the limited edition, as well as an acoustic version of “Bleed Well”...and eventually the iTunes edition of the album offered live renditions of “Killing Loneliness” and “Wings Of A Butterfly” (studio version on the Dark Light album). Fans reactions to/ sales of “Venus Doom, which was described by frontman Ville Valo as the band’s heaviest album yet, differed somewhat depending on the country. As usual they noted in the charts best in Finland & Greece (#2 positions, which is still one away from the previous album), plus Germany (#3), and did remarkably better in the US (#12), got into the charts in New Zealand (#38), Japan (#80) and Poland (#48)...but dropped an average 10 positions in Norway, Holland, Spain, Italy, Ireland, the UK, Canada, and Australia, while completely droppping out of the charts in Czech Republic, Hungary, France...and Belgium!

*The success of British band The Darkness was a somewhat controversial one to say the least. Their highly retro styled Hard Rock was influenced by such classic acts as AC/DC, Aerosmith, Def Lappard, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Sparks, Thin Lizzy, .38 Special, T. Rex, Van Halen and Whitesnake, and was highly typified by frontman Justin Hawkins, whose falsetto voice frequently awoke laughter among “true” Metal fans! Nevertheless, British press and their ability to make a hype around a band were not only effective in finally bringing the band to stardom, but also in causing the band’s demise. After all, if the band hadn’t grown so succesful, Justin might not have taken to alcohol and cocaine abuse, and he might not have decided to leave the band following a rehab session in Summer 2006. Although originally started as far  back as 1991 when Justin (lead vocals, second guitar, synth, piano) and his brother Dan (guitar & backing vocals) were still going to High School in Lowesoft, Suffolk, it wasn’t until the end of that decade when the brothers moved to London where they met up with childhood friends Frankie Poullain (bass & backing vocals) and Ed Graham (drums) that the band began to get a firm backbone.
The band made its recorded debut with the 2002 EP I Believe In A Thing Called Love, which was the precursor of the 10-track full-length debut Permission To Land, singles off which were increasingly more successful in the charts [starting with pre-album release singles “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” and “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” which respectively went to #126 and #43, “Growing On Me” went to #11, and the re-vamped version of “I Believe...” eventually made it to #2 in the UK. Interesting detail about the singles is that they all featured prreviously unreleased b-sides, to the amount of 8 non-album songs on the 4 singles! Starting with the “Growing On Me” single, the band also got notation in the US Mainsteam Rock, US Modern Rock, and Australiansinglescharts]. The album itself shot to the #2 position in the UK charts upon its release on June 7, and would land on the top position for four weeks in September, eventualy selling over 1,5 million copies in the UK alone! In between the two albums, The Darkness brought the successful non-album single “Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)”, which rose to the #2 position in the UK singles charts. By the end of 2004 the fact that the band was constantly covered in media had led to a general public antipathy, people feeling the band was no more than a novelty. In contrast, the band toured the UK’s top arena stadions on their Winter-National Tour to mostly sold-out venues!
In May 2005 Poullain left the band during the recordings of sophomore album One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back, the band claiming the usual “musical differences” as cause (Poullain himself would repute that, stating he was “frozen out” and forced to leave!). A replacement was found close at home with Dan’s guitar tech Richie Edwards. In an attempt to find out whom was selling a digitally marked copy of the album, Justin won an e-Bay auction at £350...one month before the actual release on November 28, 2005. What with the album getting somewhat mixed criticism by the press and the public already growing weary of the band, sales figures were beginning to drop [the album itself had entered the charts at #11, dropping to #34 in the second week (it has since grown to Platinum status, but then the debut went to 5 times that much)...singles “One Way Ticket” (issued Nov. 14, 2005)and “Is It Just Me?” (released February  20, 2006)only made it to #8 in the UK’s singles charts, but didn’t even make the US charts. “Girlfriend”, the last single taken off the album and released on May 22, 2006, only got to the #39 position, mainly due to lack of radio play and promotion – this time around, by the way, only 4 previously unreleased b-side songs were recorded).
After Justin’s departure in October 2006, the remaining The Darkness members were left in a daze for a while, but in late December of the same year they announced that Richie would be taking over lead vocal duties and second guitar, with bassist Toby MacFarlaine joining the band (at this point it was left unclear whether The Darkness would still be used as a monickeer) to fullfill the line-up. Late August 2007 it was announced that the band had finished recording an album, and iin early November it was announced that the band would go on as Stone Gods from now on, the new outfit self-releasing their Silver Spoons And Broken Bones album in July 2008.

*To finish off this first 2 In 1 review, a compilation of the albums Vision Thing (1990) and Some Girls Wander By Mistake (actually a double LP sampler of early independent singles, released in 1992) by the now legendary The Sisters Of Mercy (which became the solo vehicle of Andrew Eldritch - being the only constant member in the band – in 1985, a drum machine romantically named Doctor Avalanche being the only constant next to him). The SOM having gone through too many line-up changes to mention here! Vision Thing was the third and last album (issued on the band’s own Merciless Records, distributed by Warner subsidiairy EastWest in the US), and written by Eldritch as a direct attack on US policies. At the time of the recordings, the line-up of the band besides the aforementioned consisted of guitaristsTim Brechino and Andreas Bruhn, and bassist Tony James. Guests on the album included Maggie Riley (backing vocals) and John Perry (guitar). Musically, the album marked a change of direction for The SOM, towards a more guitar-oriented Rock sound. The album spawned 3 singles, two of which only got into the UK charts, “More” getting the best result at #14. The band then launched a world tour to promote the album. In 1991 that would mean co-headlining with Public Enemy in North America. However, fearing riots between the predominantly white fans of Sisters with the black following of Public Enemy, a lot of towns banned the performances, and the tour was cancelled midway! Something which didn’t quite help the already strained relationship with EastWest to which The SOM was assigned in 1989 following an internal shuffle in WEA. To the band’s idea, the company was withholding royalties and further being completely incompetent). Late 1991 James left to pursue a solo career, and shortly after The SOM went on a strike in order to make their point. As a result, the early singles compilation album Some Girls Wander By Mistake was taken off the US market when that part of the deal with WEA was put on hold!
On that compilation one could not only find the material from the independently released (again on the band’s own Merciless Records) 7-inch singles The Damage Done (1980), Body Electric (1982), Alice (1982), Anaconda (1983) and Temple Of Love (1983, also released as 12-inch) and 12-inches Alice (1983) and The Reptile House EP (1983)...but also a new version of “Temple Of Love” with Ofra  Haza on additional vocals, something to which the record company had insisted as a means to promote the album.
The band made their final recordings with the Under The Gun single, recorded to promote the 1993 compilation A Slight Case Of Overbombing...and was eventually let go by Wea in 1997. Nevertheless, they never signed onto another label, major or independent, in spite of the fact that their live set has several new songs in it!

Well, that’s it for 2 In 1, part one...don’t expect me to rate these albums, as they’re all among the stuff of history now, and each and every one a classic in its own right! If any of the band’s are still unfamiliar to you, just check out some of their music at either their MySpace, Last.fm, or Purevolume.com pages! Expect part two in this series in a forthnight, or earlier (depends on how much work the editor-in-chief throws on me next!).

Tony.