Kingdom Come

“...with each day gone by I learn to live another life..."

Bygone bands like the low-key named Sir Lord Baltimore along with the likes of Horse, Lucifer's Friend, Buffalo, Night Sun and other early '70s firebreathers have survived in rock's dark purgatory for the last thirty five years or so. If you're lucky, you'll find someone who recalls some drummer or bassist that was in some opening band at a show that would later break up to ultimately form another band that never made it past the Bermuda Triangle. Names - bands, members, or whatever - are supra-fuzzy, and most fans of that era's music weren't all that hip to the underground scene (gee, sounds kinda like much of the '80s metal years). Only in the past few years has a lifeline been thrown to these bands, secured like first-time skydivers to the backs of album collectors, heavy music historians, and completest sites like this. The word is getting out, and it's downright fun opening the eyes and ears of diehard rock fans who're twenty years my senior.

Sir Lord Baltimore is a Long Island trio (at this time) that could tremble the ground tread upon by Sabbath, heavier portions of Zeppelin, Heep, and In Rock-era Deep Purple and is probably the only reason SLB are uttered in the same breath as these immortals. Why only then? Well, there seems to be some sort of love/hate thing going on with this band's sound. After speaking with a few people apparently ‘in the know’ of museum-dusted, back shelf heavy sounds, there's an undeniable split opinion thing going on, ‘cause I’m the only one to seem to think they’re just okay. It seems their raucous racket either blew peoples’ ears off or evoked a roll of the eyes with a dismissive chuckle. It's also somewhat apparent that the four aforementioned bands seemed to know what they were doing: tight, inventive, even courageous. SLB, however, are almost as sloppy and unkempt as they are heavy.

Loud boisterous riffs roar and squeal in just about every one of these ten tracks, save “Lake Isle of Innersfree”, the fetching Heep-ish harpsichord-bred, story-like ballad that is the band’s only departure present. It's not hard to visualize amplifiers vibrating off perches and glass shattering from sheer sonic force when the hard-rollers bulldoze through. Songs such as untamed “Master Heartache”, the shatter-riffed title cut, the boogiefied “Ain’t Got Hung On You”, and all jaw asteroids “Lady of Fire”, “Pumped Up” and 'Hell Hound" revolve around two things: an unbreakable sledgehammer rhythm section and drummer John Garner’s often maniacal, even comical vocals – he’s just all over the place, screaming fanatically to high heaven, his pipes roaming uncontrolled like a crowd scattering from the sound of gunshots. “Hard Rain Falling” and especially “I Got a Woman” are slightly more reasonable affairs by their standards with structures and musicianship leaning on the cohesive without beating down the heaviness. While as progressive as a penguin, the rhythms and licks honestly are pretty good, just played with a fervor that can come off childish, as if playing heavy for heaviness’s sake, but too sincere in their base delivery to be sakeless.

If I had to throw a band out at you, commercial or otherwise, that resemble what SLB may sound like, I’d have to go with the heavier tendencies of Mountain. That “Mississippi Queen” guitar grumble isn’t far off here at all, and I can definitely see both sides of the love/hate debacle. I still think they’re just ok, and in sight of other records from this hallowed time period, this doesn't spend all that much time on my turntable.

With an OTT-ness much more acceptable by today's overwhelm-or-else standards than those in '70, I don't know if Kingdom Come will be seen by today's youth as a speed-amped Sabbath or just another crusty, wheelchaired hard rock band that was pussyfooting around two decade before they were born. For me, prolonged exposure to music from 1950 makes me weep. In any case, there's no denying the eruption this album threw into the air at the time, like it or not.