Gaskin's World

I haven't done a great job keeping up with my New Wave Of British Heavy Metal collection. In fact, I haven't picked up a single one since the great NWOBHM Chase Of 2022. There are still some crucial records from bands like Samson and Satan that I need in my collection, but I've just been so obsessed with hardcore lately that I haven't been listening to much NWOBHM and therefore I haven't been buying it. However, spending time with Jeff the past couple of weekends, on late night drives to New Hampshire and Boston, the NWOBHM playlist has been ripping and it's had me thinking of chasing those records again.

So it was perfect timing when the first Gaskin album, End Of The World, came up in my blog backlog for this post. This has been a weird record for me... strange because when I saw it available from Tim's collection, I was fairly certain that I already owned it. I asked Jeff to set it aside so that I could double check, but I was like 90% sure that I already had a copy. I got home and checked my record shelves and didn't see it. That's odd. Maybe I filed it incorrectly and it was stuck in a different section. I checked Discogs and my record database tool, sure that I would see it marked as owned there. No and no. I was shocked that I didn't already have this album. Thankfully it was fairly cheap to pick up from Tim's collection, but at least now I know that I own this.

Gaskin are one of those classic NWOBHM bands. Their sound and songs are not really at the level of the bigger bands from that era, like Iron Maiden, Raven, Angel Witch and the first Def Leppard, but goddamn, the youthful passion for this music and the conviction behind it is so endearing to me... I can't help but love it.