Avenger

Avenger emerged in Newcastle, England, toward the close of 1982 when vocalist Brian Ross and bassist Mick Moore assembled the lineup after their prior band Blitzkrieg dissolved—the same Blitzkrieg whose signature track Metallica would later cover with widespread recognition. Having shifted their base from the Tyneside area to Newcastle, the pair linked up with guitarists Steve Bird and Gary Young and promptly tracked early demos under the Avenger banner, repurposing several unused Blitzkrieg numbers including “Too Wild to Tame” and “Hot ’n’ Heavy Express” along the way.

The latter cut secured a spot on Neat Records’ One Take, No Dubs EP and opened the door to Avenger’s official debut single, “Too Wild to Tame” backed by “On the Rocks,” cut with newly recruited guitarist John Brownless. Just as the group’s plainspoken, working-class strain of New Wave of British Heavy Metal began drawing notice, vocalist Brian Ross abruptly departed for Satan, whose own singer Ian Davidson Swift filled the vacancy in a direct swap that nevertheless left many listeners puzzled.

Guitarist Les Cheetham now aboard, the reconfigured unit pressed ahead with live dates and further demos, entering Neat Studios in 1984 to lay down their first album, Blood Sports. That effort felt somewhat hastily assembled, and its 1985 follow-up Killer Elite likewise fell short of matching the band’s high-octane proto-speed-metal drive with consistently strong material.

Even so, Avenger reached the United States for a 1986 tour featuring yet another guitarist, Greg Reiter, plus drummer Darren Kurland, only to disintegrate shortly after returning home; Swift soon resurfaced with Neat labelmates Atomkraft. All that remained of the officially inactive group was the comprehensive 2002 Sanctuary anthology Too Wild to Tame that gathered their complete recorded output.