Beasts and Fiends (1970)
Charisma were a band from the Hartford, Connecticut area, and were
very typical of the confused American year of 1970. I speak of this
often, and it basically means that bands were throwing any and
everything against the wall hoping it would stick - or in practical
terms - obtaining radio airplay. And Charisma falls in line on this trend with their
mix of blues, hard rock, progressive, psych, and old fashioned rock and
roll. It's a mess basically. But some of these albums had gems in the
midst of the ordinary, and that's where we come in. Charisma has a
strong Hammond organ and overall keyboard presence, and there are a
couple of tracks that display this in an instrumental progressive rock
format ('Street Theatre', 'Ritual Dance of the Reptiles'). There are
other very good proto-prog / bluesy numbers in 'Leopold's Ghost' and 'The
Age of Reptiles'. The rest is take it or leave it.
And then there is the title track. Believe me folks, it is worth the price of the album just for this piece of mesmerizing insanity. Sounding like a most incongruous meeting between Comus, Uriah Heep, Stark Reality, and Funkadelic - a bizarre kindergarten story made for the Public Broadcasting Service on LSD. Whoa. I wasn't ready for that.
Ownership: 2008 Wounded Bird (CD). Booklet with lyrics of four of the five tracks and album credits.
10/15/16 (review); 9/26/26
And then there is the title track. Believe me folks, it is worth the price of the album just for this piece of mesmerizing insanity. Sounding like a most incongruous meeting between Comus, Uriah Heep, Stark Reality, and Funkadelic - a bizarre kindergarten story made for the Public Broadcasting Service on LSD. Whoa. I wasn't ready for that.
Ownership: 2008 Wounded Bird (CD). Booklet with lyrics of four of the five tracks and album credits.
10/15/16 (review); 9/26/26
10/15/16 (new entry)
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