One Album Wonders

I’m the kind of guy who tends to buy ALL the albums of a favorite band.  For Frank Zappa, that will take some time.  For these bands, on the other hand, it’s made easier because for whatever reason, they only made one album – which may have been released after they broke up.  Many of them were found by Lee Dorrian, from the band Cathedral, and founder of Rise Above Records, who is well known in the stoner rock community.  The liner notes to these albums, which are remastered and reissued after ages of obscurity, with helpfully articulate band history information, read like name-dropping who’s who.  Leaf Hound crossed paths with Paul Kossoff of Free, while the Possessed shared roots with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy and Al Atkins of pre-Halford Judas Priest. 

 Billy Joel’s Attila.  Let me start by saying that I am NOT a Billy Joel fan; I can’t stand that pretentious “New York” pop music sound.  So I was skeptical about this album.   But it turns out this is not his mainstream pop piano songs, but more like Deep Purple (strong Jon Lord sound) without a guitarist – more boogie-woogie like Elf than Emerson, Lake and Palmer.  The songs have names like “Amplifier Fire, Pt. 1” and “Brain Invasion”.  Unfortunately, it’s heavy enough that I doubt he even wants to acknowledge its existence. 

 Luv Machine, Turns You On (Rise Above Relics). This was a West Indies (Barbados) band which relocated to London, but could not find success.  Their stuff is heavy enough with a good dose of funk added in.  This new version has 6 unreleased tracks on it.

 Jerusalem (self-titled) (Rockadrome).  Closest in sound to early Black Sabbath; like the first Sabbath album, this has a fair amount of jamming on it.  These guys were discovered by none other than Ian Gillan, who produced their album and donated extra Deep Purple equipment to the band.

 Steel Mill, Jewels of the Forest  (Rise Above Relics).  Another band emulating Black Sabbath, though a bit weirder.  This remastered version has not only the original 8 song album Green Eyed God, but 3 7” single cuts (all mono), 5 unreleased studio recordings, and a new track recorded in 2010.

 Leaf Hound, Grower of Mushrooms (Repertoire).  I hear Grand Funk Railroad, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin in here.  This band was cited as a stoner rock precursor like Blue Cheer.  The singer, Peter French, also sang with Atomic Rooster and Cactus.  Despite the name, French insists they only drank beer. 

 The Possessed, Exploration (Rise Above Relics)  Scraping the bottom of the barrel, this band’s album remained unreleased until now.  The singer, Vernon Pereira, was the cousin of Robert Plant’s wife Maureen, and played with him in Band of Joy.  Guitarist Mick Reeves played in Sugarstack with Al Atkins, which later became Judas Priest. The major members of the band died in a road accident shortly after the material was recorded.  Of all these bands, this was the only one which I did not like: to me it sounded like 10^th rate Black Sabbath.  Having said that, they have the best album cover.

 Of these, with the conspicuous exception of Possessed, I can heartily recommend all of them to fans of 70s hard rock.  While they certainly sound similar to the more famous bands from that era (particularly Black Sabbath) their own sounds are different enough to avoid considering them mere clones or copycats unsuccessfully riding the coat-tails of the more successful bands.