Spider - Classic NWOBHM

Anyone heard of these guys?


Although lumped in with the NWOBHM movement of the late 70's/early 80's, they don't seem to garner much attention, even though they released 3 quality albums.
-Rock n Roll Gypsies
-Rough Justice
-Raise the Banner

They lean a little more towards hard rock than heavy metal by today's standards, but back in the day, they would have, or should have, held their own with other bands of the time.

They have a brief synopsis on Wikipedia, but otherwise I couldn't find much info on the band.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_(rock_band)

I did recently pick up a 4-cd anthology of the band for fairly cheap on Amazon. It's all 3 of their studio albums with bonus tracks and a 4th disc of rare, early day recordings.

If you like high-energy, hard rockin' melodic, NWOBHM music, I'd recommend them. Go for the box set. It's probably cheaper and easier to find than tracking down the individual albums.

Enjoy!!

I've heard of them before and they are mentioned in Malc McMillian's amazing NWOBHM Encyclopedia.  I always thought of them as being in the same league as Nutz - an old boogie rock band that strayed into NWOBHM later in their career.  I will add that box set to my list of stuff to get.

Witchfinder wrote:

I've heard of them before and they are mentioned in Malc McMillian's amazing NWOBHM Encyclopedia.  I always that of them as being in the same league as Nutz - an old boogie rock band that strayed into NWOBHM later in their career.  I will add that box set to my list of stuff to get.  

They drew comparisons to Status Quo and while I'm not expert on them, I'd say that isn't too far off the mark in the boogie-rock category. The cool thing I'm noticing on listening to their 3 albums is that the quality doesn't drop off too much from 1st to 3rd. I haven't listend to the 4th disc of rarities yet.

With allot of those lesser-known NWOBHM bands, they were only good for maybe the first album or 2. After that, they either imploded or softened their sound and went in a more commercial direction, chasing after the success that Def Leppard acquired. Spider's 1st album is definitely the strongest, but the 2 follow-ups are solid too.

Never heard of them until now. I'll have to add this box set to my ever growing wants list.

Owned some material by these guys on cassette many years ago.

Will bave to check them out again.

Never owned the album but came across them on YouTube a few years back. Good stuff.

Years ago - 82 til 85 - I spent summers in the UK. Kerrang every two weeks and Friday Rock Show on the BBC1. I used to record the program and keep the songs I liked. (and buy the ones I really liked)

Here we go Rock and Roll was a single and I remember recording it as well as reading about them in Kerrang back then. I remember keeping my recording for a while and I always thought they were a band worth further investigation.

Thanks for the reminder...

I thought that I'd commented on this thread

I had the first record and liked it well enough, but they weren't really heavy enough for my ever evolving tastes so I never went beyond that with them. The Quo comparisons are spot on.