Raven “Wiped Out” – Rare NWOBHM Voltage With a Bonus 7" Sting #raven

RAVEN - Wiped Out (1982, Italy) 12" Vinyl LP Album

- Speed-metal nerves, NWOBHM sparks, and that bonus 7" single bait

The sleeve looks like a warning sign designed by someone who had discovered electricity and immediately decided to abuse it. A huge pink lightning slash cuts diagonally across a black one, both outlined in white against a hot red-orange field. The Raven logo hangs at the top like a sharp little power surge, while "Wiped Out" sits at the bottom in blue block lettering, dragged upward by thin white lines like the whole cover is being sucked into the blast.

Raven did not use "Wiped Out" to polish their NWOBHM credentials; they used it to ram speed, noise, and nervous energy straight through the front door. This 1982 second album helped push the band toward the speed-metal edge, where everything sounds slightly over-caffeinated and dangerously under-supervised. "Faster Than The Speed Of Light" opens like a warning siren, "Bring The Hammer Down" swings with greasy workshop force, and "Live At The Inferno" already feels like a stage dive waiting to happen. Keith Nichol keeps the production raw and wired, not wrapped in studio perfume. This Italian LP with its 7" single is the sort of copy that makes collectors stop pretending they are “just browsing”.

"Wiped Out" (1982) Album Description:

"Wiped Out" is Raven in 1982 with the brakes removed and the steering wheel already vibrating loose. Sitting in the hot middle of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, this second album pushed the Newcastle trio beyond pub-metal muscle into the nastier, faster edge that speed metal and early thrash would soon start raiding for parts. Not a tidy breakthrough in the chart-pop sense. More useful than that. This is the sound of a band making the room smaller, hotter, and a bit less safe.

The front cover shouts first, obviously, with its red-orange voltage and cartoon-danger lightning bolt. But the real evidence waits deeper in the package: the collage back cover, the Neat Records label details, the Italian manufacturing line, and that awkwardly wonderful bonus 7" promotional single. That is where "Wiped Out" stops being just another fast NWOBHM LP and starts behaving like a complete little crime scene for collectors.

Britain in 1982 was not short of heavy metal noise. Iron Maiden were already moving like a machine, Saxon had their boots on bigger stages, Venom were dragging filth and theatre into darker corners, Tank were making everything sound like it had been assembled in a lock-up, Girlschool still had bite, and Diamond Head were the cleverer kid in the room who occasionally remembered to punch. Raven came from a different angle: less elegant, more athletic, all elbows.

The Gallagher brothers had been at this since the 1970s, with John Gallagher on vocals and bass and Mark Gallagher on guitar forming the core that refused to die quietly. Rob Hunter’s arrival in 1979 gave the band the final classic-line-up shove, and by "Wiped Out" the trio sounded less like three musicians taking turns and more like a small factory malfunction. John yelps and pushes the bass forward. Mark saws through the riffs. Rob kicks the whole thing down the stairs and calls it timing.

"Faster Than The Speed Of Light" is the obvious opening statement, all panic and headlong attack, but the album does not survive on speed alone. "Bring The Hammer Down" has that greasy workshop swing, "Fire Power" snaps with cheap-ammo urgency, and "Live At The Inferno" already smells of hot lights and beer on a wooden floor. There is space here, but not much comfort. The songs lean into you.

The production credit deserves a little care because the page material and the record label tell the story better than a lazy one-line database scrape. The LP page names Keith Nichol as producer and engineer, while the Side 1 label itself credits production to Raven and Keith Nichol. That makes practical sense: Nichol captured the thing, but the band’s own manic fingerprints are all over the sound. Nobody polished this into showroom metal. Bless them for that.

Impulse Studios in Newcastle matters here because the album sounds local in the best possible way. Not provincial. Local. Tight room, working gear, hard attack, no grand illusion that British heavy metal needed satin curtains and heroic mist to be convincing. The guitars are wiry rather than fat, the drums crack instead of bloom, and the bass keeps poking through like it has paid rent and wants everyone to know.

The sleeve backs up the noise. The front is pure voltage warning: red heat, black slash, pink bolt, blue title, no band photo trying to look dangerous near a brick wall. The back cover is better, because it is messier. Live shots, fan snapshots, tilted photo borders, credit cards, names, gear details, thank-you lines along the bottom; all the human debris that proves Raven were living this rather than merely posing inside it.

The label photographs are where the collector brain starts misbehaving. The LP label shows NEAT 1004 A, SIAE, "made in Italy", the curved Neat Records lettering, the Raven logo, and an orange lightning-bolt drawing interrupted by the centre hole. It is clumsy in exactly the right way. The bonus 7" single carries NEAT 10047, 45 RPM, "PROMOTIONAL COPY NOT FOR SALE", and the two short blasts "Crash, Bang, Wallop" and "Run Them Down". Small disc, big nuisance. These things vanish from used copies faster than common sense at a record fair.

No grand public controversy hangs over "Wiped Out", at least not the tabloid kind. The usual misunderstanding is lazier: treating it as either just NWOBHM or already full thrash. It is neither that simple nor that tidy. This is the awkward middle animal, still wearing the sweaty club-band jacket but already moving with the forward snap that younger American and European bands would sharpen into a weapon.

Compared with Venom’s grubby theatrical menace, Raven are less occult sewer and more electrical accident. Compared with Saxon, they are less road-anthem and more panic sprint. Compared with Diamond Head, they trade architecture for impact. That trade will annoy listeners who want elegance. Fine. Elegance can go alphabetise the shelf while "Wiped Out" chews the speaker cloth.

Late at night, this is the sort of record that sounds better with the sleeve beside the turntable and the label photo open for checking. The music comes out jagged, the cardboard looks slightly overexcited, and the bonus single sits there like a smug little receipt for doing the collector job properly.

"Wiped Out" survives because it still feels unstable. Not unfinished. Unstable. Raven were not trying to become respectable on this record; they were trying to outrun the walls, and for most of the album they very nearly manage it. That is worth more than another perfectly mannered heavy metal LP with clean shoes and nothing to say.

References

RAVEN - Wiped Out LP incl 7" Single Album Photo Gallery:

The photos here show the Italian "Wiped Out" LP as an object, not as some museum-clean fantasy. The front cover has that frantic Raven energy, loud enough before the needle even drops, while the back cover is where the collector starts leaning closer: layout, print density, small credits, and the kind of production information that usually tells more truth than a glossy promo blurb. The LP label keeps things properly Neat, with catalogue detail and plain working-label charm, and then there is the included 7" single, the little bonus slab that makes this copy worth a second look. The real fun sits deeper in the gallery: labels, pressing clues, odd corners, and all the tiny printing habits that only vinyl people pretend not to obsess over.

Album Front Cover Photo

This Raven "Wiped Out" front sleeve feels like somebody turned a warning sticker into an album cover and then decided it still was not loud enough. The red-orange background does most of the shouting first, warm and slightly uneven in the way old printed sleeves often are once the gloss has lived a little. Across it, two huge lightning-bolt shapes slash diagonally through the middle: one black, one hot pink, both edged in white. Subtle? Not even remotely. But Raven were not selling chamber music here, so fair enough.

The design concept is brutally simple: speed, voltage, impact. No band photo, no leather trousers, no serious-looking alleyway nonsense. Just the Raven logo sitting near the top like a blue-and-white electrical fault, with that small lightning flash above the lettering, and then the album title dragged along the bottom in big blue block capitals. Those thin white lines running down toward "Wiped Out" give it a weird forced-perspective pull, as if the title is being sucked into the blast or fired out of it. Slightly gimmicky, yes. Also memorable, which is more than can be said for half the sleeves that tried to look “professional” in 1982.

The corners tell their own little story. The artwork runs right to the edges, with the black and pink shapes clipped off by the sleeve border, so the whole thing feels too large for the square it has been printed on. That works. It gives the cover a restless, overstuffed feel, like the record cannot quite stay inside its cardboard jacket. Down at the bottom left there is a tiny yellow mark peeking in, one of those annoying little edge details that collector eyes notice immediately and then cannot unsee. No production names, no support personnel, no neat credit block on this front side; those pleasures live elsewhere, on the back cover and labels, where the real archivist dirt usually hides.

My favourite thing here is the refusal to behave. The sleeve is basically a graphic punch in the ribs: red heat, black slash, pink bolt, blue title, all fighting for attention like they have been locked in the same rehearsal room too long. The Raven logo itself is sharp and mechanical, with the letters stretched into that early-metal geometry that always looks better slightly scuffed in a crate than preserved behind glass. A polite designer might have cleaned this up. Thankfully nobody called one in time.

Album Back Cover Photo

This back cover is where "Wiped Out" stops being a clean graphic idea and becomes a proper scrapbook explosion, the sort of thing that looks as if somebody emptied a Raven road case onto the paste-up table and said, yes, print that before anyone calms down. The top strip carries the Raven logo on the left, the blue "wiped / out" title on the right, and the tiny Neat Records fist logo with NEAT 1004 tucked in the corner. That little catalogue detail is doing more useful work than half the dramatic stage shots, obviously.

The whole surface is packed with overlapping photos: Mark Gallagher bending into guitar poses, John Gallagher caught mid-shout and bass attack, Rob Hunter buried behind drums and cymbals, plus fans, friends, backstage grins, sweat, smoke, and the usual early-1980s denim-and-bad-lighting evidence. Some photos are tilted like thrown Polaroids, some framed with white borders, some half-buried under other shots. It feels deliberate, but not tidy. Good. Raven were never improved by tidiness.

Two black information cards sit in the lower half, and this is where the collector starts leaning in instead of just nodding at the chaos. One card carries the album details and credits, including songs composed by Gallagher, Hunter and Gallagher, production by Keith Nichol, recording at Impulse Studios in Newcastle, England, and the 1982 Neat Records copyright line. The other card names Mark Gallagher with guitar gear details, Rob Hunter with drums, vocals and gong business, and John Gallagher with lead vocals, Rickenbacker bass, classical guitar, bass pedals and the wonderfully excessive baggage of a working metal band. That is the useful dirt.

Along the very bottom edge, the thank-you line runs like a tiny road-map of the Raven world: fan club names, crew, journalists, Base Records, Holland contacts, and other support personnel squeezed into the margin where normal people stop looking. Naturally that is where the interesting stuff hides. The print is small, slightly unforgiving, and a little annoying to read, but that irritation is part of the pleasure. A back cover like this does not behave like an advert. It behaves like evidence.

Close up of Side One record’s label

This Side 1 label is where the Italian pressing starts giving away the useful collector information. The white label sits inside the black vinyl like a paper target, with the big brown Neat Records lettering wrapped across the upper curve in that chunky, slightly worn-looking type. It is not elegant. Good. It looks like a working heavy metal label from 1982, not something designed to impress a wine bar.

In the centre, the Raven logo cuts across an orange lightning-bolt drawing. The drawing is not just decoration; it echoes the front sleeve’s electricity-and-impact idea, tying the label back to the album artwork without wasting space on a miniature cover reproduction. The centre hole punches through the lower part of the orange graphic, which gives the whole thing that lovely practical vinyl weirdness: art interrupted by mechanics.

The left side gives the side designation as Side 1, with “(P) 1982” and the SIAE rights society mark underneath. A purple circular stamp and a small blue handwritten mark sit nearby, the kind of tiny pressing-life evidence that makes label photos worth taking in the first place. On the right, the catalogue number appears as NEAT 1004 A, with Stereo 33 rpm printed below it. The track list is centred below the title, with durations aligned to the right, squeezed in but still readable.

The lower label area carries the credits that matter: all titles credited to Gallagher / Hunter / Gallagher, recording at Impulse Studios in Newcastle, England, production by Raven and Keith Nichol, original sound recording by Neat Records, D.W.E. Ltd., and the final made in Italy line. Around the rim, the rights warning curves in English. In the run-out groove, a faint hand-etched matrix-style marking is visible near the top right. Small, easy to miss, and exactly the sort of thing that separates a real record inspection from just staring at a JPEG like a tourist.

Neat Records, Italy Label

White Neat Records Side 1 label for Raven’s "Wiped Out", used on the Italian 1982 LP edition. The design combines the Neat Records house branding with Raven’s own logo and an orange lightning-bolt illustration, giving the label a proper NWOBHM workshop feel rather than some polished corporate nonsense.

Colours: White label background, brown Neat Records lettering, black text, black Raven logo, orange lightning-bolt drawing, purple stamp, blue handwritten mark, black vinyl surround.
Design & Layout: Circular white label with oversized Neat Records logo arched across the top, Raven logo and lightning graphic centred above the spindle hole, side and rights data on the left, catalogue and speed data on the right, track list and credits stacked below.
Record company logo: Large curved Neat Records wordmark printed across the top half of the label in brown outlined block lettering.
Band/Performer logo: Raven logo printed across the centre in black, with sharp angular lettering and a lightning motif, placed over an orange lightning-bolt drawing.
Unique features: Orange lightning-bolt label artwork, purple circular stamp on the left side, blue handwritten mark near Side 1, visible hand-etched matrix-style marking in the run-out groove.
Side designation: Side 1
Rights society: SIAE
Catalogue number: NEAT 1004 A
Rim text language: English
Track list layout: Centred track titles in uppercase beneath the album title, with running times aligned to the right of each song title.
Rights info placement: Rights warning printed in curved rim text around the lower edge of the label.
Pressing info: “made in Italy” printed at the bottom centre of the label; faint matrix-style marking visible in the run-out groove near the upper right edge of the vinyl.
Background image: Orange lightning-bolt drawing behind the Raven logo and centre hole, visually linking the label to the front-cover lightning artwork.

Photo of the 7" Single Included with this Album

This is the sort of 7" bonus single that makes a copy of "Wiped Out" worth checking before anyone starts waving the word complete around like they know what it means. The black vinyl fills most of the frame, photographed cleanly from above on a pale background, with the grooves catching light on the right-hand side. The centre label is plain white, almost suspiciously practical, and that is part of its charm. No sleeve theatre here. Just the little record doing its job.

The Raven logo sits at the top of the label in black, with the familiar angular lettering and lightning flash above it. Unlike the LP label, this 7" label does not carry the big arched Neat Records wordmark or the orange bolt artwork. It is cleaner, plainer, and frankly a bit more businesslike. On the left, the pressing information is stacked tightly: STEREO, 45 RPM, S.I.A.E., Side 1, and NEAT 10047. A purple SIAE stamp sits over that area, and there is also a small blue handwritten mark above it, the kind of small human interruption that immediately wakes up the collector brain.

The right side carries the rights warning in small black type, followed by the wonderfully blunt PROMOTIONAL COPY NOT FOR SALE. That line matters. It tells you this was not just a throwaway extra pressed for decoration; it had a promotional identity of its own, and those little words make the single more interesting than another loose black disc rattling around in an LP sleeve. Naturally, it is also exactly the sort of thing that disappears when records get separated, sold badly, or “stored carefully” by people who should be banned from cardboard.

Down at the bottom, the track title Crash, Bang, Wallop is printed in bold, with the running time of 2.56, followed by the Gallagher / Hunter / Gallagher credit, publishing by Athletic Rock Music / Neat Music, NEAT RECORDS 1982, and made in Italy. The large centre hole cuts straight through the label’s middle, giving it that proper 7" single look: utilitarian, slightly awkward, and completely honest. This is not the glamorous part of the package. It is better than that. It is the evidence.

Second Photo of the 7" Single Included with this Album

This is Side 2 of the bonus 7" single, and it has that lovely plain-label bluntness that collectors either ignore completely or obsess over for twenty minutes. The black vinyl takes up nearly the whole frame, sitting on a white background, with the light catching the grooves along the upper-right edge. No picture sleeve theatrics, no decorative nonsense. Just the disc, the label, and the useful facts. Which, frankly, is often where the real story starts.

The white centre label is cleaner than the LP label and much less busy than the Side 1 single label. The Raven logo sits at the top in black, all angular lettering and lightning flash, printed with enough force to make the small label feel connected to the larger "Wiped Out" package. The centre hole cuts out the middle like every proper 7" single should, leaving the printed information arranged around it in a practical, slightly cramped circle. Charming? In a very workbench sort of way, yes.

On the left side, the technical stack is clear and compact: STEREO, 45 RPM, S.I.A.E., Side 2, and NEAT 10047. No separate A or B suffix is visible here, just the shared single catalogue number. On the right, the rights warning is printed in small block text, followed by the important collector phrase PROMOTIONAL COPY NOT FOR SALE. That wording is not decoration. It tells you this was pressed with a promotional purpose, which makes it more than just a loose bonus disc rattling around in the sleeve like an afterthought.

At the bottom, the track title Run Them Down is printed in bold with a running time of 2.52, followed by the Gallagher / Hunter / Gallagher writing credit, publishing by Athletic Rock Music / Neat Music, NEAT RECORDS 1982, and made in Italy. It is all very direct, very readable, and almost aggressively unfussy. A little too plain for display glamour, maybe, but that is not a complaint. This is the sort of label that earns its place by proving the single belongs with the LP, not by trying to look pretty for the camera.

All images on this site are photographed directly from the original vinyl LP covers and record labels in my collection. Earlier blank sleeves were not archived due to past storage limits, and Side Two labels are often omitted when they contain no collector-relevant details. Photo quality varies because the images were taken over several decades with different cameras. You may use these images for personal or non-commercial purposes if you include a link to this site; commercial use requires my permission. Text on covers and labels has been transcribed using a free online OCR service.