So I only just the other day discovered Roky Erickson and Aliens through their 1981 album "Evil One" and I have to say that I am absolutely blown away by it and it is already one of my favorite albums of ANY style of music. I just happened to randomly come across it on Youtube without ever having heard of them.

Now I did already know and like the 13th Floor Elevators who are the band who pretty much created Psychedelic rock, but I was unaware that Roky was their vocalist, and anyways, their style is totally different from his style with the Aliens.

But after listening to it I realized how metal sounding an album it is! I mean it's not really metal exactly, but it kind of sounds metal in some ways, and punk in others. Honestly, if I had to describe them I'd say they sound like if you were to throw Pentagram, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Misfits in a blender!

In many ways they do remind me of Pentagram with some of their riffs and both Pentagram and the Misfits with their lyrical material and every track on the album being about ghosts or vampires or Aliens etc.


I now realize that they HAVE influenced metal bands like Ghost was COMPLETELY influenced by them and probably took their name from them and of course covered Erickson's song "If You Have Ghosts" (I think Roky's version is WAY better), as well as Witchcraft and Entombed also covered "The Night of The Vampire"...so they ARE recognized by metal bands, but I've never ONCE heard them mentioned on this site or by metal heads, so why is that when they are CLEARLY so excellent and influential??!!!

I think somehow they have flown under the radar of most metal heads, and in some ways this album truly does have a very "doomy, sabbath-like" sound, as well as a punk sound. I mean just listen to tracks like The Creature With the Atom Brain and the opening riff which is very "sabbath esque IMO", Bloody Hammer and The Night of the Vampire. They also sound like they could have influenced some goth bands like Type O Negative.

I just think this album was WAY ahead of it's time and that more metal heads ought to recognize them.

To some extent I could MAYBE even call this a metal album in some ways...though I guess it's really more rock.


Here's the youtube link to the album:

https://youtu.be/sZEi-13NqF0



So, why do you guys think Roky Erickson isn't mentioned more in metal circles and is he perhaps more well recognized as an influence on metal than I realize??

I mean just listen to these individual tracks and tell me you don't hear metal in them even if they aren't exactly a pure metal band:

Bloody Hammer:

https://youtu.be/vEHwy3quc14


Night of the Vampire:

https://youtu.be/NqRdqw0VDXw

Creature With the Atom Brain

https://youtu.be/qVcK2BRvCgU

He got a lot of exposure through The Devils Blood covering “white faces” about 10!years ago. I saw him on tour around the same time, was a good show

I've never heard of The Devil's Blood so I looked them up on here with no results.

Are they a metal band and if not, what would you consider them?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cvRN7uh7MI

"occult rock" I guess....not metal, but they used to tour with Watain and assorted Black Metal acts. Sadly they are defunct now since the guitarists death

I hear a fair amount of BOC in this. Stand for the Fire Demon in particular sounds awesome.

He's not recognized as a larger influence because he wasn't very influential.

I have heard the album entirely last night. It was good but it was certainly not groundbracking, especially not for a 1980 album. Not with band like Coven, Black Widow, Black Sabbath, Deep purple, Lucifer's Friend, Alice Cooper and a lot more who had made albums well before it.

Roky is one of those artists that is actually quite well known but never gets talked about much.

He's pretty awesome, but I think his work with The Thirteenth Floor Elevators is more widely known and is considered much more influential.

I think his work gained a fair amount of traction in the metal community when Entombed covered "Night of the Vampire" on their "To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth" in 1997.

I find myself listening his solo stuff a lot, though; usually in the fall and in the winter. He has a lot of really fun, catchy tracks; Cold Night for Alligators and Two Headed Dog are personal favorites. It's really a shame what happened to the guy, but it seems he's doing better this past decade. Watch the documentary floating around YouTube, if you have the time.

I'll leave you with this classic:

Each to his own but I think it's far better than anything Lucifer's Friend or Black Widow ever did, and while I'm not as well acquainted with Alice Cooper as I could be I prefer it to him as well.

Coven only had one good album while the others were country, but of course Sabbath and Deep Purple can't be questioned.

Is that really the case?

If not, I think he deserves to be better recognized at least for that one album which I think is remarkable.

Yeah I watched the doc and it was good and I knew I'd heard Night of the Vampire before when I first heard him play it and then realized it was Entombed who had covered it.

Supposedly Witchcraft was also nearly as influenced by him as Pentegram and Ghost obviously was and I feel that album has a fairly Pentegram-ish feel at times. I saw there's also a band called The Bloody Hammers and they obviously got their name from him.

Yeah, I knew about the Elevators and already liked them and when I first heard his voice on The Evil One I realized he'd played with them, and that was certainly a bigger band than The Aliens but it was a psych band and had less of that metalish-but not quite-metal-rock sound. I just loved his vocals and his lyrics are just great.

He does seem to be doing better now that he's on meds but all that LSD on top of his untreated schizophrenia and forced electro shock treatment messed him up, but without all that who knows, he may not have had the inspiration to write such great music.

I think he ought to be more widely recognized in the metal community and I think that one album could be played alongside classics by pentagram, sabbath and deep purple without missing a beat...perhaps with some Misfits thrown on there for good measure.