SPACE SHANTY

What a nice surprise this album is to me. I´ve never heard of this band before I read a review in Prog Archives. This means that I had never heard of Steve Hillage before either. BIG MISTAKE. What a fantastic guitarist he is and a great singer too. Steve sounds a lot like Rob Halford ( Judas Priest) when he sings in mid-range ( Not his high pitched screams) and sometimes like Ozzy. Actually the whole band is bloddy magnificent. There are other hints to early Judas Priest ( Rocka rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny) along the way, but these are only hints. Don´t expect Heavy metal on Space Shanty though only some really mean hard rock riffs.

The compositions on Space Shanty are 6-10 minutes, and in these minutes much happens. There are both some of the meanest hard rock riffs I have ever heard, great rock/ jazzy instrumental passages, nice vocal melodies and an overall feel that these musicians are having fun. Too bad they only made this one album.

I don´t know if I would catagorize this as canterbury prog rock, but genres don´t matter when you are dealing with music like this. It´s really good. I´m not sure if this is a 5 or a 4, but on second thought it will be a 4, as it lacks the last things to be a complete masterpiece. This is a very worthy purchase though and a great surprise for me.