ROCK & ROLL SCARS

This was a tragedy. Since the breakup of the original Ariel, Mike Rudd and Bill Putt had been working on a rock opera, The Jellabad Mutant, rehearsing the material with the new lineup of Ariel they had put together. In the meantime, the first album was beginning to get some attention in Britain, and EMI promptly summoned the band to London. They were most displeased when the band that arrived turned out to be a completely different lineup, but nevertheless installed them in Abbey Road to record a new album. However, when presented with the concept of The Jellabad Mutant, they rejected it.

This left the band scrambling to find material for the album. Apart from his work on the incomplete opera, Rudd had only three new songs ready, so the album had to be padded out with new recordings of old Spectrum and Murtceps, and also of a couple of old Ariel b-sides. The new band brought much more of a hard rock edge to this material than the earlier bands, especially with Harvey James on lead guitar, and some prefer these recordings to the originals for that reason. I find them much less satisfying, particularly given the lack of keyboards. The new material is in a straight hard rock vein. It's of no real interest to a prog fan. Definitely collectors/fans only.