We have something interesting to talk about today. I haven't heard anything this nutty from the early 80s since Quasar Light and Rantz came wafting under my nose a few years back. It's comforting to know our friends up north were also harboring these kind of crazies too. Skeptical Eye is basically a duo of Angela Black and Christopher Flint. She's white, he's black - and they both look like they're from 1976, if one considers hair styles and overall look. We're talking bad hair for the former and dark sunglasses and fro for the other. Rounding out the duo is engineer Paul Croscup, trying his best to look like Baretta with a derby cap, and a two-sizes-too-small T-shirt that says "The Doctor of Engineering". Given that all the songwriting was done by Black and Flint, it remains unclear why he gets top billing here - perhaps he funded the record? Anyway, the whole back inner sleeve is Dork City.
What of the music you ask? Well, that's a toughie too. Take away the mid 70s synthesizer sound (yes, mid 1970s...), the rest sounds like one of those loopy US rock albums on Paramount or Buddha from 1970 (going back further we are). There is absolutely nothing 80s about this album, excepting the obvious copyright dates of 1984 splattered all over. There's no recording date, which leads me to believe this probably was recorded in 1976 (with period photos) and not released until 8 years later. So back to the music. There's some really fascinating sequences here. Lots of psychedelic, progressive, and hard rock can be found within these grooves. The musicians are slightly incompetent, but that just adds to the allure of something like this. The children's choir on the first track is really eerie, as if they kidnapped a school bus and forced them to sing. Not all of it works of course, including some woeful blues and singer-songwriter fluff.
The lyrics contain an underlying Christian tone, but not of the praise-thee-Jesus type, rather it's more of the we're-all-going-to-hell-in-a-hand-basket variety (hence the chorus "we're living in the Devil's Playground"). Here are the opening lines to the first track 'Universal Call - The Message': "The world is full of corruption. And headed for total destruction". Jolly stuff, eh? These guys would have been great lyricists for a death metal band.
The rip I was sent is completely distorted, which I think might actually help the music. At some point, I'd like to hear the album as originally presented. No matter, it's going to be an odd experience. Overall this is one of those albums you can't help but pay attention to. Like a highway car crash where they're starting to pull charred bodies out of the remains. You just have to look.
Originals are rare and expensive (no surprise there). No reissues exist. Not sure it needs one honestly, but I probably would fork over for one, especially if we could get the whole story from the band.
This was from the last batch The AC turned in from early 2015. His original notes: "Bizarre homemade Christian prog/psych anachronism out of Belleville, Ontario. You know when a Christian-themed LP has track titles like "Tortured From Inside" that it's probably something beyond the ordinary, and that's certainly the case here. Psych guitar and organ, ineptly performed prog breaks, off key male and female vocals (including a children's choir section that seems to have been done by a group of random local school kids who couldn't sing at all) weird and disturbing sound effects, spacey Pink Floydian sections, and even a weepy ballad and terrible blues rock jam. Yet, it all flows together somehow as a cohesive concept work. I think. I don't really want to know, to be honest. A few keyboard tones aside, the whole thing sounds like it was recorded about a decade earlier. And as far as the amateurism level is concerned, I'll paraphrase myself from the Rhea review I did here a few years back: To put it in Canadian progressive terms, these guys make VIIth Temple sound like Rush in comparison. Very rare, but perhaps that's for the best? Completely demented."
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May 26, 2019 update: We've recently heard from someone very close to these recordings, and some interesting data has emerged. As it turns out, yes, this recording was from the 1982 to 1984 time frame. Hard to imagine, but it's not the first "out if its time" album we've reported on either. We've also learned that Angela was a Catholic girl, a couple of years removed from high school, thus the Christian overtones. Also "I believe your review wondered why the sound engineer was credited so prominently...it was his house and his equipment and there was some sort of weird dynamic/power struggle going on...but mostly because it was his house, his stuff." The children's choir, that we had some fun with above, were aged 11 to 15. No prep work or rehearsals occurred. Just sing this! Really the backstory is only adding to the allure here...
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