Blackwater Park- Dirt Box  An early hard rock release from Germany featuring an English singer, Blackwater Park is familiar to Opeth fans because it is also the title of an album that may represent Opeth’s peak as a metal band (before Opeth eventually turned to more naturally voiced, progressive rock sounds). Beyond name-checking this early band, I don’t recall much similarity to the Opeth album but admittedly, it’s been a while since I played Opeth’s Blackwater Park. This record, by contrast, is more straight ahead hard rock of the heavy variety; original pressings on BASF are... Read More

Orne –Tree of Life   Ever listen to “doom prog”?  Tree of Life by Orne is a beautiful, dark journey that manages to avoid some of the clichés of the genre but shines in unexpected ways. Orne is an offshoot of the doom metal band Reverend Bizarre and started life as Mesmer. By the time of this release in 2011 (on Black Widow Records of Italy), Orne seems to have captured their muse, delivering a moody, delicate brooding sound without too much sameness. The album is very atmospheric—you let it play, rather than “listen” to it. The spoken word bit at the beginning of the album... Read More

Cargo    This Dutch hard rock outing was originally released in 1972 on Harvest in the Netherlands as Cargo and consisted of four tracks. At the time of recording, the band was originally known as September. Various reissues have included “bonus” tracks. The most current reissue on vinyl (2017) is on the Pseudonym label (which appears to be identical to that label’s 2012 reissue); it contains the original four tracks, with a handful of demo tracks that were allegedly unreleased, spread over two LPs.   Although the original album is a known collectible, and priced accordingly,... Read More

Krokodil ‎– An Invisible World Revealed If any album defies categorization, it is this one: an early psych driven effort by a Swiss band sporting a British bassist/guitarist/vocalist that is categorized as “Krautrock” but often dismissed by progressive rock enthusiasts as blues-driven hard rock. Who cares? It’s a wonderful record, starting with the first track, “Lady of Attraction,” with its swirling, phasey vocals and psychedelic atmospherics. You can detect the blues-rock elements in some tracks, but they are so effectively combined with other, more exotic motifs that the... Read More

Blues Creation ‎– Demon & Eleven Children   This album is no secret to aficionados of the early Japanese psych rock scene—it is usually on “best of” lists for that genre and era. The band followed the typical evolution of the late ‘60s UK blues-rock sound, but broke ground with this album in 1971. It owes much of its power to guitarist Kazuo Takeda who, as of this writing, is still revered as major influence in the sound of the era and has enjoyed a long career as a session player, both in the United States and Japan. Interestingly, subsequent to the release of Demon... Read More

Atlantis Philharmonic-s/t     Here’s another one that completely escaped my notice at the time. In fact, I hadn’t heard (of) it until it came in a box of records from the East Coast- Ken was already texting me- “did you listen to Atlantis Philharmonic yet?” “Uh, no, the box got here like five minutes ago.”   Well, it took me a couple days to get around to it for reasons that aren’t worth explaining. Whoa!   Heavy, prog, hard rock with the drive and brutality of early Sabbath, mellowed by keyboards and those “soundscapes” characteristic of period prog. But,... Read More

John Fahey- Blind Joe Death     John Fahey is remembered as seminal figure in the original blues revival movement that flourished in the early-mid ‘60s. His efforts, along with those of others, led to seismic change in popular music, when more traditional rock and roll was replaced by blues-driven harder rock in the later ‘60s. (I think the impact on folk/acoustic scene was more limited, commercially, for a variety of reasons). Fahey was part of the effort to locate still living rural blues performers – including Skip James–who had been all but forgotten in the era from the... Read More

TOO MUCH- s/t     Too Much, by the band of the same name, is a pretty rare Japanese psych record with English lyrics issued in Japan by Atlantic in 1971. Critics have rightly dismissed it because it contains some tracks that should never have been included: a cover of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and some long form prog that winds up the end of side two. But for heavy rock fans, the other tracks, including “Grease it Out” more than make up for those transgressions.   Original pressings are scarce; Warner Japan reissued the album in 2011, and again in 2016. I recently... Read More

Winter in America- Gil Scott-Heron (Strata-East)   Exploring the Strata-East catalog, you’ll no doubt see Winter in America by Gil Scott-Heron (and Brian Jackson). Even if you aren’t hunting down Strata-East records, you inevitably see older copies in stores and online because it was the most popular of the original Strata-East records. And for good reason—it’s a killer.   Most people know of Gil Scott-Heron (“GSH”) through his famous “The Revolution will not Be Televised.” That piece- a spoken word poem capturing the domestic turmoil and... Read More