UNDERGROUND AND BEYOND

Lucifer was is an interesting Norwegian band, often described as a blend of Jethro Tull (prog) and Black Sabbath (hardrock) from the Seventies. Listening to Lucifer Was I also hear echoes from Atomic Rooster, especially the vocals and the heavy, propulsive atmospheres. Perhaps you could say ''Black Sabbath with organ'! A remarkable track is the epic The Green Pearl featuring a harder-edged rendition of Grieg's composition The Mountain King. And the Spanish inspired Fandangos sounds sultry with catchy flute work. This album is not similar to the sound of another album entitled Blues From Hellah, I prefer Underground And Beyound but thas has to do with the fact that I like Black Sabbath and Atomic Rooster.

The first album of Lucifer Was is great. This is probably the best mixture of Black Sabbarth- meets-Jethro Tull album of all time. Although the band didn't release a regular album in 70's, this re-recording shows, that it's a pity.

Opening track brings us wonderful heavy sound of Sabbath combined with great flutes. The singer isn't extraordinary, but his voice perfectly fits to this heavy prog-related band. My favourite songs are The meaning of life and Light my cigarette (together with the opening track), but all of them are very good.

The sound of this recording is close to 70's, but it obtains some modern fashion, so I think, nowadays listeners could be affected by this album too.

This recording is a must-have for all who likes heavier bands and Jethro Tull. It's a pity that there is no more recordings like this recently.

Although, in principle, I fully welcome the 're-discovery' of bands playing in that classic 70s Hard Rock style - which is surely one of the greatest but least appreciated contributions to popoular music of that decade - I can't help thinking that there were surely many other bands better deserving this treatment. The guitar contributions are reasonably good although nothing spectacular and some of the riffs are catchy. But too often these riffs sound simply like repeats of Bad Company's 'Feel Like Making Love' . This, in itself, is no bad thing but there is perhaps an over-reliance on the duh-duh dah riff on this album with no great elaboration or development. The other contributions are, alas, fairly perfunctory. And two flutes! You can hardly tell from the contribution they make. The Grieg adaptation is dull and the 'Spanish' musical references only half-hearted. Now, I have only heard snatches of this band's more recent albums but it seems that the music has become fuller and better thought out. I shall, therefore, probably hope to listen to some of these albums soon. But I'm left wondering why this band rather than the thousands of other unsung, unsigned and unrecorded hard rock, heavy progressive bands of the 70s were not chosen before them.

This Norwegian band was founded in 1970 and Underground and Beyond is their debut album after 27 years of musicianship!Compositions included are solely songs from their 1970-72 repertoire.

Album sounds as great evidence of early 70-s era, end for those who isn't familiar with band's story this music is almost original sound from that time. Even sound mixing and producing is in the fashion of that time.

Stylistically music on this album is blues-rock based hard rock with strong prog-folk influences (flutes are pure Jethro Tull). Arrangements are quite progressive though, and in whole compositions sound (as many reviewers noticed yet) as crossover between Jethro Tull and dark and quite heavy hard rock. Songs are melodic and quite catchy, musicianship is competent,vocals are good enough. Really interesting album for fans of vintage prog rock, for all others possibly far not so interesting though: when in nostalgic moments it always better to listen to original great releases from early 70-s.

Positive moment is band are not a copy cat actually - they play their own music they wrote in early 70-s and got the possibility to release this debut only now!

Some dead holes in the history of this Norwegian group, as the sleeves of their debut refer to Thore Engen (guitar), Einar Bruu (bass), Dag Stenseng (vocals, flute), Anders Sevaldson (flute) and Kai Frilseth (drums) as the original crew.Sure thing is the band came from Klemetsrud near Oslo and was formed in 1969/1970 as Ezra West.However among the first members seem to be guitarist Tor Langbråten, bassist Arild Larsen and later keyboardist Jan Odegaard.Anyway, the band unfolded around 1974 after many concerts but no recordings and was reformed 20 years later with the first refered line-up.Their debut ''Underground and beyond'' was recorded in just 18 hours, just for fun, but it was good enough to earn them a contract with Swedish Record Heaven.27 years after their original formation, Lucifer Was eventually made their discography debut.

The album contains 11 tracks, that come from the 1970-72 period, now reworked by the group in the studio, however both the length and the production of the album recall the early-70's.Their sound was a powerful and very energetic blend of Hard Rock and JETHRO TULL-esque flute-led Heavy Prog with excellent English vocals and frenetic rhythmic parts, not to mention the hard driving guitar solos.The production of the album is clear, but the technology used maintains a true vintage feeling throughout.At moments the scratching guitars have a strong Proto-Metal vibe, but noone knows if this was the actual style the group performed back in the 70's.All tracks are memorable with a dominant sound, some superb choruses, fantastic flute work and series of tremendous guitar moves.A decent number of breaks and shifting tempos keeps up the progressive value of the album.The same album was re-released on Transubstans with two bonus tracks, performed by a slightly different line-up, but the sound remains more or less the same: Dynamic Hard Prog with angular guitar riffs and folky flute grooves all the way.

I am really pleased for this comeback.Lucifer Was' style seems sometime lost in the 70's, offering some really passionate Heavy/Hard Prog of high quality, respecting all the values of the old school.Strongly recommended...3.5 stars.