TYRANNY AND MUTATION

Nothing to do with Stendahl and his literary masterpiece. The track is about the Canadian police. This second album is more rock oriented than the first, probably influenced by having toured the year before with Alice Cooper.

The black side (the side A of the vinyl) is "only rock and roll, but I like it". The opener is hard and powerful and the transition with "O D'd On Life Itself" is very good. Of the four songs on this side only the last is similar enough to those of the first album. Wikipedia says that "The Red and the Black" is a rewriting of "I'm On The Lamb", but to be honest I have listened to those two albums dozens of times and I never realized it. It's a good hard-rock album with some blues-psychedelic influences specially on "7 Screamind Diz-Busters" whose central section is jammed and sometimes chaotic.

The Red side has more appeal from a prog point of view. It's more similar to the debut. In particular "Wings Wetted Down" is a song of a kind which could appear an a Black Sabbath or Uriah Heep album, however there are no real highlights even on this side.

Looking at the early BOC, this is the weakest album released between two good ones. Not bad, but surely non-essential.