Favorite Track: Holy Soldier - Last Train

What’s your favorite song from this classic?

Mine is the title track, though two or three other songs are pretty close too. In the title track, I love the musical dynamic with the subject of the lyrics. They work perfectly together. 

What’s your favorite song?

Hallow’s Eve, but the title track is just behind it.

Title track, closely followed by Fairweather Friend.

That Rolling Stones cover is awesome too.

Last Train

I'd have to go with the title track as well (although I really dig Virtue & Vice too)

I'll be the oddball and vote Virtue and Vice.

No one said anything about me saying Last Train. It's my favorite by them. This album would be When The Reign Comes Down

Black Rider wrote:No one said anything about me saying Last Train. It's my favorite by them. This album would be When The Reign Comes Down

Last train is the bomb! I friggin' love that song! And the lyrics are haunting too. I wrote a story based off those, ha. Also The reign comes down  reminds me of some predatory beast stalking through some field or something, what with those tribal beats and that bass, that BASS!. I can't pick a best song though from either of those albums, but Ill say that Last train is pretty tempting for first place.

For my Carnival of Souls novel, I quote a stanza from Last Train for the final story part.  Timeless lyrics.

Title track

BaleMaster wrote:For my Carnival of Souls novel, I quote a stanza from Last Train for the final story part.  Timeless lyrics.

You wrote a novel! Wow. Anyone that completes a novel has my respect. I've been pretending to do one for years, lol. I will complete it!  Curiously, how long did it take you to complete?

It's hard to say. I think its a toss between Dead End Drive and Crazy and Last Train is a close 3rd. I have the original  Myrrh Records and the Pony Caynon Japanese versions on CD and the Roxx Records version on red vinyl.

My favorite track has always been the cover of Gimme Shelter…I love this version almost better than the Stones version. I think the album starts with 3 fantastic songs Virtue and Vice, Crazy and Hallow’s Eve capped off by Gimme Shelter.
I also like Fairweather Friend… it kind of has that Van Halen guitar riff vibe going on…followed by Last Train which is very good as well.
All in all, a very solid album!

Dead End Drive and Last Train

Gimme Shelter is good too. Crazy, Gimme Shelter, Dead End Drive and Last Train are my favorite. They re my top songs. The next one would be Virtue and Vice - it's got that cool slow heavy groove. It's almost bluesy but not quite sort of groove.

While not usually everyone's fave, mine is "Tuesday Mourning".  But, there is a reason for this.

My mom died on a Tuesday morning and the song helped me during that time.  I never felt like I got to say goodbye as I got a phone call from my sister telling me mama had died that morning.

So, while I love the rockers on there, that one is the most personal.

I never liked this album in high school, but I don't think I gave it a proper chance b/c at that time I was all into fast drumming. Classic Heavy Metal didn't have much opportunity to make it into my 5-disc changer.

With the exception of Dead End Drive (which I learned from The Extremely Loud Guitar Tape) I didn't know a single song on the album.

So I've been listening to it this week and, man, there is some awesome songs here! I don't know them well enough to pick favourites yet, but maybe in week or two. The opener, Virtue or Vice has some real power and great melodies!

Sevenoneself wrote:I never liked this album in high school, but I don't think I gave it a proper chance b/c at that time I was all into fast drumming. Classic Heavy Metal didn't have much opportunity to make it into my 5-disc changer.

With the exception of Dead End Drive (which I learned from The Extremely Loud Guitar Tape) I didn't know a single song on the album.

So I've been listening to it this week and, man, there is some awesome songs here! I don't know them well enough to pick favourites yet, but maybe in week or two. The opener, Virtue or Vice has some real power and great melodies!

It's a beautiful piece of work is Last train. So too their first album. Both flawless masterpieces and master classes on how to write melodic hair metal perfection!

^^^ I have also never given the first one a decent chance; I'll be listening to that one as well.

I often mentally kick myself now for being so narrow-minded in high school with my musical choices. For example, I didn't even notice the great guitar solos on the Vengeance Rising albums b/c all I listened to were the drums and vocals!

Virtue and Vice is the stand out track for me.  The lyrics alone separate it from the rest of the album which lyrically is all over the place.  Various Christian songs address the duality of the Christian as sinful nature does battle with the person God is changing you into.  Petra’s Killing My Old Man comes to mind.   But this song impacted me the most as a new believer.   As Paul said: I do the things I do not want to do, but what I want to do I cannot do.

Maybe the genius of the album is that the remaining songs explore various challenges that test you (love, betrayal, fallen world, loss, judgment).   And yes I love the title track.  That bass line is haunting, even more so than the bass from When the Reign Comes Down from the previous album.   Bands led by the bass player (Bloodgood was the same way) have many songs built around bass lines.   I think Virtue and Vice falls in the same category, the song seems written around the bass line, which is groovy not haunting.

Don't know all the songs here, but it would be hard to beat Last Train. Some of the best lyrics anywhere.