THE VIDEO Armored Saint, "Can U Deliver?" March of the Saint, 1984, Chrysalis
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SAMPLE LYRIC "Not romance to mee-eeee / it's just the fever / here's your chance to pleeee-eeeease / can you deliver?"
THE VERDICT I was thinking I'd been doing too many videos lately where everyone is just dressed normal -- okay, either glam LA Guns and Kix normal, or Bon Jovi and Winger jeans, open-shirts and long hair normal. But you know what I mean: No costumes. No wizards, fire, or swords. Not that Kip Winger prancing around isn't hilariously bad, but you know, I was thinking more the stuff that's sort of stereotypically hilariously bad.
My thoughts turned naturally to Grim Reaper, but then I thought no, too easy. And I'm more in the mood for something that's endearingly cheesy. This led me to one of my favorites, Armored Saint. I've never liked the Anthrax albums where John Bush replaced Joey Belladonna, but not because I don't love John Bush's vocals (just listen to "No Reason to Live"! That song is a revelation. This is why Metallica went through a phase where they wanted him to replace James Hetfield, which I actually feel like would have worked). Anyway, in our original, non-alternate universe however, I simply prefer him in his natural habitat of LA-style NWOBHM (NWOLAHM?).
Which, as we see here, indeed involves homemade costumes -- Armored Saint literally "armored" themselves for years. I don't know if they built the cars and bikes themselves, but if I'm going to guess I'd have to say yes. Unless they borrowed them from Grim Reaper. Or Krokus.
Anyway! Out of the smog and smoke come the brothers Sandoval, riding a giant station wagon with the back cut out and a large potato gun attached. John Bush walks out of some shrubs wearing a shroud, and Dave Pritchard is on a foil-bedecked motorcycle. Joey Vera just walks up... umm, ok. One way or another, they all make it to the same place as the sun comes from behind some smoky clouds, and as they stand in a circle lightning strikes repeatedly.
And then this video only keeps getting more awesome. The eponymous iron saint -- basically a knight -- appears in the clouds overhead, and unsheaths his sword. It's like a cross between the Gumby cartoons where they summon the rain spirits, and the Gumby cartoons where they are in medieval times. This falls to earth in a bolt of lightning, and then sticks in the ground all Excalibur style. As it glows and turns purple (and the knight/saint looks on from the sky), all of the band members grab onto it, looking around in disbelief. Did I mention all of them are extremely dirty? Their faces are all smeared with dirt.
The camera falls on John Bush last, and when it pulls back we see that he's actually grabbing a microphone, because the song is finally starting. The band is playing in a club-like set (in terms of size), though the decor is weird (and possibly made of cardboard). There's some kind of maybe goat's head type thing hanging above Gonzo. Everyone in the audience is doing the kind of synchronized, fists-raised headbanging that screams "I've been doing this all day for $4 an hour plus lunch" (i.e., they are extras). Plus some costume designer has put basically the same studded wristband on like half of them, and the crowd appears to be about four people deep.
For the line "do you know what love means?" we get to see a blonde chick in the audience. She looks like a grown-up version of the little girl from that Art of Noise video. Oh wow, as they pan over the audience more, we can see that in the purest early 80s metal video style, they've given the women in the crowd makeup halfway between Les Mis and Cats. Oh wow! That one kid is like 12! Seriously, what is going on here.
I will tell you what's going on: awesome costumes, crazy eye makeup, guitar face, hair flinging, fist pumping; really, if we could just add some fire, and maybe a dragon, or like a monster alien thing, and we'd have everything we could ever want in a video from 1984. Like I said above, the over-the-top-ness combined with the sincerity of it all is what makes this stuff great. All the squatting and synchronized guitar movements -- it's just deliciously camp.
Video aside, the lyrics to this song are dead cheesy -- okay, maybe it's just for everything good I said about John Bush above, I have to say his delivery in this song is a bit cheese. It's mostly just, I can never hear the chorus without thinking about calling a pizza place, or getting Chinese food, and imagining myself singing into the phone, "Here's your chance to pleee-eeease, can you deliver?"
Also -- allow me a bit of a digression here -- it warmed my heart to see this was put out on Chrysalis. Remember back when there were more than three major labels? I always remember being fond of the Chrysalis logo, with the little butterfly. Who knows what happened to them. (Okay, I looked it up, they were sold to EMI in 1991 and folded in 2005. EMI, of course, is one of the four major music companies still in existence.) Lucky for us, we still have Metal Blade (albeit as a subsidiary for one of the big boys), who discovered these lads in the first place anyway.
This leads me to a second (brief) tangent -- why on earth haven't the Metal Massacre albums been rereleased in some kind of super deluxe boxed set? Those are simply screaming for it. There's one from 11 years ago selling used on Amazon starting at almost $200, but come on, make a new one, throw in a DVD or something like that. A book!! Pleeeease a book. I would buy it. And if you're reading this, chances are you would too. Or you know me in real life, and know this would make a great gift for me. Let's do this.