WARRIOR ON THE EDGE OF TIME

I managed to get an original UK vinyl copy where the cover folds out into a Chaos shield (it says "Chaos" on the shield, that's how you know). I've owned the American pressing on Atco for a few years, but nothing special about the packaging on that one. Whatever the case, this is one album, though I was aware of it almost as long as I've been aware of Hawkwind. I first heard of the band in 1992, but that name Hawkwind was familiar to me since 1986 from playing Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar on the Atari 800XL as visiting the Seer Hawkwind was essential in completing your quest. Once I found out about the band, I started wondering if Richard Garriot (Lord British) was a Hawkwind fan. From 1994 to 1997 I bought a bunch of Hawkwind, but Warrior on the Edge of Time wasn't one of them. Which is something I totally regret.

This is truly one of their finest albums ever. It was their final album with Lemmy. Here it seems his bass playing has been toned down, and he doesn't sing on the album, but if you own a CD reissue you get "Motorhead" as a bonus cut, which was the B-Side to "Kings of Speed". This naturally screams Lemmy and became the name of the metal band he's famous far. This is without a doubt their proggiest album ever. The Mellotron is quite effective as well as some great use of synths. I already knew "Assault and Battery" and "Lives of Great Men" from live versions on their 1991 album Palace Springs (at the time I bought the cassette, in 1996, at a junk store, sitting next to New Kids on the Block and hair metal cassettes, I didn't realize the only new songs on that album were "Back in the Box" and "Treadmill"). I have to say they did those two songs justice on that version, showing they could do it live some 14 years later (all the material on Palace Springs dates from 1989, but released in 1991). So obviously these songs were very familiar, but instead of a Korg M1, tons of Mellotron was used, as well as some of the most ear piercing high-pitched synth leads you're ever going to hear. "The Wizard Blew his Horn" was another one of those spoken dialog pieces, not unlike "Sonic Attack". "Opa-Loka" was basically an instrumental piece that leads into "The Demented Man" (for confusion, the label read "The Demented King", but the inner sleever read "The Demented Man"). This sounded like Hawkwind attempting to sound like the Moody Blues. It's an acoustic Mellotron-dominated piece with parts that reminds me of "Watching and Waiting" (from To Our Children's, Children's Children). Of course you have Dave Brock, not Justin Hayward singing, and there seems to be a rather unsettling feel you wouldn't get off a Moodies albums. "Magnu" and "Dying Seas" are very much typical Hawkwind songs at their best while "Kings of Speed" is more rock.

No Hawkwind fan should ever be without this.