Video: 'Ready 4 U' by Weapon, featuring RTYD Member, Danny Hynes

Inspired by what they regarded as a "hip-hop dominated British chart", last year Weapon released their first single in 30 years as a digital download. The band, who were originally part of the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) movement of the 1980s, features ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP member Danny Hynes and other original members: Jeff Summers, Gavin Cooper (Paul Di'Anno's Battlezone/Killers) and Ian Sweeting (The Risen, Stone Katz).

Judith Fisher at MetalTalk.net described the single, entitled Ready 4 U, as a "chunky slice of hard hitting, foot stomping rock, filled to the brim with chunky guitar riffs and melodies [and] driven along by pounding drums that is guaranteed to get fists pumping and heads shaking". And she knows here stuff.

The last WEAPON single, released in 1980, actually got namechecked in a book about Metallica, which is pretty cool. Here's the extract:

'Metallica opened its early live sets (and “Kill ‘Em All” album) with “Hit The Lights” a song that begins with a noisy two chord flourish meant to evoke the opening of a concert. However, in a further illustration of NWOBHM’s important role in Metallica’s musical direction, the opening chords – drum fills and all, seem to have been lifted directly from WEAPON’s “Set the Stage Alight” - the 1980 release from the influential fledgling NWOBHM band'  (Metallica Biography Damage Incorporated Pub. 2006)

You can download Ready 4 U on iTunes here.