Comment by Magic Marmalade:
Found a super-tatty copy of this in the charity shop, with misprinted labels (matrix - A1 / B1), and while I didn't want to look to close at what was going on on the cover art (yikes!), I assumed it was going to be some kind of Black Sabbath-y proto metal affair...
...Actually, consistent with the date of release, this has more of a bleed-over into the seventies-sixties psychedelia, proto-prog / folk thing happening instead.
Only the themes (the whole cult / occult / devilry) of the songs and the surprisingly excellent vocal style really have anything to do with any kind of heavy metal. Rather, this has more in common, to my ears, to Gabriel era Genesis, underscored by a more sedate, even tender at times folk feel, as far as the overall sound is concerned... as one of the two most prominent elements in this is the extensive use of various organs... which gives it that psychedelic going into prog style....
...The other most prominent element, which is actually a point of distinction for this, is the drumming - very jazzy, lots of fills and punctuation, as opposed to flat rhythms.
That said. the opening track of side two does wrong foot you, with a more gentle, sweeping affair, with strings, that sounds like it's about to go all "Moody Blues" of a sudden, before it settles back down into it's established style.
Quite a good album actually... except maybe the organ and drums, being so prominent do largely overwhelm anything else in the music, even the vocal at times. And although this does, at the same time, give the sound a sense of scale, it is mostly an artificial one, as I think this is more intimately recorded, arranged and produced than would otherwise have been the case without those two instruments.
So you could probably get a later remaster on a CD which might have attempted to "pull the sound elements apart" a little, in order to give the vocal and other instruments a more separated sound, I'm not sure there's enough here the the music could bare it, and the sound, as it is here, has a character of it's time, and consistent with the subject matter, that may be somewhat lost through such an exercise.
It's a CBS disc, so as always, and excellent pressing, and any issues you may have sound wise, are as mentioned, before the getting to press stage... not a pressing issue.
If you can find a copy in good condition (unlike my scratched, and snowy sounding one!) and appreciate an album of this kind with this kind of audio aesthetic and character, it's well worth getting this issue.
