BABYLON A.D.: CD 1st press 1989 original 1st press debut. Cool US hair metal. Check videos + (audio) whole album + video reviews.

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Babylon A.D. is a hard rock band created in 1988 in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The band’s original members were singer Derek Davis, guitarists Dan De La Rosa & Ron Freschi, bassist Robb Reid and drummer Jamey Pacheco. In 1989, the band was signed with Arista Records. Later that year, they released their self-titled album which included some of their biggest hits “Bang Go The Bells”, “Hammer Swings Down” and “The Kid Goes Wild”, which was also the trailer song and video for Orion Pictures movie RoboCop 2. Three of their songs hit the number one spot at metal radio and reached gold on their first release. During the early 90’s the band toured multiple times, while several MTV videos made them one of hard rock fans’ favorite bands.


REVIEWS:

Tracks:
1. Bang go the Bells 4:15
2. Hammer Swings Down 3:27
3. Caught in the Crossfire 3:33
4. Desparate 5:23
5. The Kid Goes Wild 4:52
6. Shot O’ Love 5:47
7. Maryanne 3:41
8. Back in Babylon 4:10
9. Sweet Temptation 3:40
10. Sally Danced 5:53
Total Running Time: 44:41

Personnel:
Derek vocals
Danny DeLaRosa guitars, banjo
Ron Freschi guitars, backing vocals
Robb Reid bass, backing vocals
Jamey Pacheco drums


Check (audio) whole album (all songs):

very good CD a must have if you like the rock from the late 80s …very guitar based and a few ballads good overall CD not just 1 or 2 good ones

Kick ass CD. The best of the 3

i like this one its by far there best good hooks and chorus good song arrangements to bad there not on top of there game i give it a 9

Hard edge guitar rock. If you like XYZ or Cry Wolf you might like these guys. Good stuff through and through. I agree that its the best of the three.

What a band. Their first album was absolutely full of energy, great songs and riffs that could blow you away. They never had the recognition they deserved. The singer has one of the best voice in Rock n Roll in terms of range. Kid Goes Wild even features the late Sam Kinison. From beginning to end the album rocks. If you want something to sink you teeth into…B.A.’s first album is what you need. Too bad they never made it to the big leagues. Very recommended.

bang goes the bell, when the hammer swings down, desperate rocks, rocks, rocks.

Good but rather generic. Hammer and Desperate are great tunes. Kid Goes Wild is featured in Robocop 2. This was the best CD of the 3 they have done.

The album included quite good ones such as “Bang Go The Bells”. Also when listened today “Desperate” has nothing less than a quality ballad. The bad luck of the band may be that they appeared at the height of melodic rock. So they were ignored while there was Guns’n Roses or Motley Crue around. In fact they were a powerful candidate for the coming years

Overall….a very well put together CD Tracks such as “Bang Go The Bells” and ” Caught In The Crossfire” really get things rolling on this one.The ballad “Desperate” just adds that extra bit of class to make this a worthy release.

Anyone who loves big, loud, over-the-top late 80s melodic hard rock should consider it a sin not to own this fantastic debut. I consider this one of the finest releases of the hair-metal era. Whats not to like? Loud guitars, massive hooks, in-your-face choruses, monster backing vocals, a cool lead vocalist, top-notch production…just an all around superb album. Go back and give it another listen…

5.0 out of 5 stars This rocks from START TO FINISH!,
My God this is a killer album. Derek Davis shows off some killer vocals here. Although every song on this album is awesome, standout tracks are “Hammer Swings Down”, “Crossfire”, “The Kid Goes Wild”, and “Maryanne”. Is it possible to be into 80s metal and not like this? Probably not. Babylon A.D. were among many awesome 80s hair bands like XYZ, Killer Dwarfs, TNT, Bang Gang, Jillson, Shotgun Messiah, Britny Fox, and many others that just should have been far more popular. If you like 80s glam, do yourself a favor and buy this!

5.0 out of 5 stars awesomeness,
My favorite album listened to it daily. Time for a new copy.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good old fashioned 80s hair metal,
This LP rocks. If you like 80s hair metal, then you need to have this in your collection.

I’ve been an obsessed hard rock/heavy metal fan and collector since the early 1980s. If it’s got a good guitar riff and attitude, I’m in.

BABYLON A.D. (Arista Records, 1989)

I discovered Babylon A.D. quite by accident on a chilly night in Brooklyn, New York, in the Fall of 1989. My friends and I had gone to the borough’s legendary rock club “L’amour” that evening to check out the debut NYC gig by the Sea Hags, a sleaze-rock band from San Francisco who were being hyped as “the next Guns N’ Roses.” We doubted that any band would be able to live up to that, especially when an unknown quintet called Babylon A.D.—who weren’t even listed on the bill—came onstage to start off the evening and quickly stole the show. After a blistering, all too short set by these newcomers, the Sea Hags were a disappointment—we actually walked out on them after only two or three songs.

During their time onstage, Babylon A.D.’s lead vocalist advised the crowd that their debut album would be available “in just a couple of weeks,” so my pals and I all kept an eye out for it at our local record stores and snapped up copies when it appeared. Several months later, Babylon A.D. returned to L’amour as a headlining act and we all went back to see them a second time. Once again, the band packed a serious wallop on stage and we went home expecting a big future for them. Unfortunately, that never quite worked out for Babylon A.D., who garnered a small cult following over the next several years but never broke through to rock’s “big league.”

Derek Davis strikes a pose in the "Hammer Swings Down" video

Derek Davis strikes a pose in the “Hammer Swings Down” video

So Who the Heck Was Babylon A.D., Anyway?

Babylon A.D.’s story began in 1986, when the band was formed in the San Francisco Bay Area as The Persuaders. After kicking around the local club scene for a couple of years and changing their name to “Babylon” (the “A.D.” was added at the last minute due to another band laying claim to the “Babylon” moniker), they caught the ear of legendary music mogul Clive Davis, who signed them to his Arista Records label in 1988. Hard rock or “Hair Metal” was all the rage at the time and Babylon A.D. certainly had the goods to compete in that extremely crowded field. The guitar team of Dan De La Rosa and Ron Freschi knew their way around a catchy riff, while vocalist Derek Davis had male-model good looks and a powerful, soulful voice with a touch of grit that set him apart from many of his Aqua-Netted contemporaries. Babylon A.D.’s first disc (produced by Simon Hanhart, a veteran engineer who’d also worked on albums by Saxon, Asia, Bryan Adams and David Bowie’s Tin Machine) was a catchy, potent mix of AC/DC and Aerosmith style bar room boogie. It may have been hampered slightly by the overly glossy, “slick” production sound that was characteristic of most hard rock albums of the time but the album had its share of catchy anthems (see: “Hammer Swings Down,” “Shot O’ Love,” or “Sweet Temptation”) tempered by a few tracks with enough “heavy metal” bite to appeal to the headbanger crowd. The best examples of this would be the pounding, sinister “Back in Babylon” (a great mood-setter which was their set-opener at both live shows I saw) and their best-known song, “The Kid Goes Wild,” a tale of a teenager on a crime spree that appeared in the 1990 film “RoboCop 2.” “The Kid Goes Wild” featured a vocal cameo by foul-mouthed comedian Sam Kinison in the role of “Billy,” who shouts his defiance at the police before he’s cut down in a hail of bullets. Babylon A.D. was also adept at the type of get-out-your-lighters balladry that made the girls swoon, as evidenced by the sensitive, acoustic “Desperate” and the bluesy “Sally Danced.” As a whole, the ten tracks on Babylon A.D. still sound pretty damn good today, which is not something you can say about a lot of the albums that were released during the Great Hair Metal Glut of 1989-1990.

So What Went Wrong?

How come Babylon A.D. never hit the big time? It’s hard to say for sure, but perhaps it all came down to simple bad timing. By the time Babylon A.D. was released in late 1989, the hard rock scene was already oversaturated by hundreds of second-and-third-string hair/glam/sleaze metal bands, all trying to cop some of the audience share enjoyed by platinum-selling giants like Poison, Ratt, Cinderella, and Guns N’ Roses. I imagine that it would’ve been an impossible task for any new band to get traction amongst all the competition. It probably didn’t help that their label (Arista) had little experience in the hard-rock arena, as they’d spent most of the ’80s concentrating on easy-to-sell pop acts like Air Supply and Whitney Houston. By the time Arista tried to get in on the hair metal party by signing Babylon A.D., Every Mother’s Nightmare and Enuff Z’nuff, the train had left the station and the “scene” had already chosen its winning acts.

It also took Babylon A.D. three years to produce a follow up album. By the time the sophomore effort Nothing Sacred was released in 1992, the Grunge music takeover had begun and fans had moved on to other things. Nothing Sacred also happens to be a fine listen, though it was a bit less heavy than the first album. The band pushed the blues-based early Aerosmith-isms of their sound to the forefront on tracks like “Dream Train” and “Bad Blood,” but their clueless label chose to highlight the sappy “So Savage the Heart” as the album’s single. Apparently they hadn’t gotten the memo yet that power ballads were dead!

© 2012 Keith Abt

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