666

Wow, what an album! Aphrodite's Child present their own conceptual musical version of the Apocalypse. All the music was written by Vangelis. There are no songs like the more commercial 'Rain And Tears' or 'It's Five O'Clock' on here! It's a double album full of bizarre and unusual, twisted music but I was amazed at how good it was. Most of the lyrics are simply taken directly from the Apocalypse, with just minor changes to fit the rhythms and moods. It's well worth the experience. Nothing here is too complex - but nothing is too unmelodic either, and just as in the case with the previous AC albums, everything is interesting and completely unpredictable.

The styles go from ambient to hard-rocking to pop to prog to psychedelic to folk to 'strange', and almost every track has something new to say and openly serves its purpose.

Favourites include the first main song called 'Babylon', which is an upbeat acoustic folk-rocker. 'Loud Loud Loud', on the contrary, is a simple but beautiful piano-based tune where a young voice recites the 'presuppositions' of the Apocalypse. A major highlight - 'The Four Horsemen', is a true art-rock classic with an incredibly catchy vocal melody in the chorus ('the leading horse is white...') I also love 'The Lamb', with its heavy Greek and Turkish folk influences, all set to a steady Western rock beat. And 'The Seventh Seal' closes it off with some sitar and a bit of a psycho setting. Another eye-opener is the stunning ambience of "Aegian Sea".

666 is a truly rare album which manages to combine pretentiousness with accessibility. I really can't rave enough about this record - It's a shame the band dispersed after it. A minor complaint is 'Infinity': hearing Irene Papas' five-minute hysteria as she bellows 'I am to come I was' in all possible manners is a little too much after a while. A more major complaint is 'All The Seats Were Occupied', a nineteen-minute 'jam' on the fourth side that's mainly based on endless reprisals of themes from the other parts of the album. A short reprise section might have been nice. Perhaps there wasn't enough material to fill up all four sides of the album? Despite the faults, the rest of the record is so wonderful. Much of this stuff is far ahead of it's time too, nobody ever made music like it, and I seriously doubt anybody ever will. Highly recommended. 4 solid stars.

666 (The Apocalypse of John, 13/18)