Album of the day: Armageddon – S/T

Lovingly stolen from our friends at Aquarius Records / San Francisco:  A few things you might want to know about Armageddon (this band / album, not the Biblical battlefield of the Apocalypse described in the Book Of Revelations, and presumably depicted on the album cover, with the longhaired band lounging about smoking cigarettes in the foreground):

1. Despite the name, it’s not a really heavy metal. Recorded in 1974, you could certainly call it “proto-metal”, though, as well as “heavy progressive”.

2. Don’t confuse ‘em with the other proto-metal band with more-or-less the same name. That band spells their name with two g’s and one d.
This band spells their name with one g and two d’s. That Armaggedon were from Germany’s krautrock scene, this Armageddon were a UK-USA sorta supergroup.

3. Their singer was Keith Relf, originally of The Yardbirds and later Renaissance, and this was his last recorded project before his tragic death from electrocution whilst practicing guitar in ‘76.

4. On drums, was Bobby Caldwell of Captain Beyond. There’s some extra proto-metal cred!

5.  And perhaps most importantly, this band included 2 ex-members of British bluesrock act Steamhammer, guitarist Martin Pugh and bassist Louis Cennamo. Steamhammer’s best and proggiest album, Speech, is a long-time AQ fave in the heavy prog / proto-metal genre, recently reissued and relisted here not long ago. If you dig Speech, you’ll also want to hear Armageddon, in fact, they open up here with a completely rippin’ song, ‘Buzzard’, that’s adapted from a track on Speech.

6. According to the sleeve, Cennamo claimed to be the “originator of the electric bowed bass guitar”.

7. Armageddon’s sole, self-titled album has been newly reissued on cd by the Esoteric label, superseding the previous (and hard to find) Repertoire edition, with nicer packaging.

8. Oh yeah, it totally kicks ass and rocks hard, while maintaining an aura of psychedelic hippie higher-minded mysticism. We mentioned speedster ‘Buzzard’, then there’s ‘Silver Tightrope’ and ‘Paths And Planes And Future Gains’, both of which sound kinda like a combination of Yes and Captain Beyond, in different and complex ways.

‘Last Stand Before’ is a rollickin’, almost funky one too, and then the album wraps up with the four-part epic ‘Basking In The White Of The Midnight Sun’, full of fierce fuzz, percussive bombardment, and some of the heaviest harmonica soloing this side of Sabbath’s ‘The Wizard’. What with their pedigree, Armageddon had a knack for breakneck (and quite catchy!) bluesrock riffage, like we said rippin’ from the get-go of ‘Buzzard’ through to the finale of ‘Basking’, energetic and exuberant throughout but for the occasional calmer bit of reverie (like on ‘Silver Tightrope’) wherein Relf takes the listener for some lovely astral trippin’.

9. We recommend it, especially to all proto-metal, heavy prog fiends! You know who you are, if you like Captain Beyond, Steamhammer, early Wishbone Ash, Wild Turkey, Tarkus, Toad, early Deep Purple, etc…
That’s it. If you want to know more, there’s always the liner notes, so buy the disc!! Then you’ll get to hear the whole thing too.

Tags: album of the day, Aquarius Records, Armageddon, Esoteric label, heavy 70's

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