Lucifer's Friend

I really, really hope that at least one other person who has listened to this immediately thought of the 1960s TV show Get Smart as soon as they heard the first minute. The odd instrumentation in the background sounds exactly like that theme!

All of that aside though, Lucifer's Friend is an early metal act that basically rocks every popular aspect of '70s metal, before the '70s even truly began. While it doesn't quite hold the hazy and gloomy atmosphere that Black Sabbath brought us, it's certainly just as heavy, and uses a similar style of riffing. Pretty much any track will show you this, as there's a lot of down tuned, harder notes, but cleaned up. "Everybody's Clown" is like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple combined their ingenious iconic qualities right off the bat, with blues-heavy bass lines, fast jam-rock riffing, and a lot of keyboard work. Though this is just merely the ground-work, it's easy to conclude that their overall sound was basically a combo of the three earliest metal gods; Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin (they're metal, bite me!).

While everything may seem too straightforward here, there's never a dull moment, due to the switching of instruments taking the lead. Hell, even the bass outdoes the guitar in some parts. There's a phenomenal moment of "Keep Goin'" where the bass and keyboards take complete control and it's absolutely mind blowing, especially coming from such an early time. This is then followed by a catchy guitar solo, which are very common on this release. You've gotta appreciate the way they switch tones a lot too. Many times it goes from a slower blues-like buildup, and then transitions into a crushing heavy metal guitar piece without any hesitation. Long, drawn out instrumental breaks are definitely molded together very well, and though some parts drag on, they're totally worth it at the end. Bottom line, every instrument basically "takes the lead" at some point or another.

Interestingly enough, the vocals are like a combo of Ronnie James Dio, and Montrose-era Sammy Hagar. They're smooth and crystal clear, with no signs of fear in nailing those high notes. Unfortunately, they don't show as much range as I feel like they could, but what we're given here is certainly enough, vocal wise. Truly, I like to think of this as a super group that wasn't actually anyone famous. But it's as if Jimmy Page, Jon Lord, Geezer Butler, Ronnie James Dio, and Sammy Hagar got together and recorded an album before any of those bands were even very big, if formed at all. How this isn't that well known, I don't know. But it's deserving of a spin from anybody who appreciates metal, especially the classics.