LUCIFER'S FRIEND II: SUMOGRIP

Lucifers friend are an "old" band in terms of rock/prog ...actually they are more like Uriah heep/Deep purple sort of music...than say ordinanairy progbands!! John Lawton on vocal are as ever splendid!! He joined Uriah Heep later!! So this record is indeed a hardrock specie!! I Dont know why we (They) call it prog??? As this is ALL heavy/power rock!!! Enuff said...this qualifies as hard rock!!! Next page!!! Please!!!

This album is crap. I don't intend to demean on the efforts of the musicians to create this album. But honestly, by any definition of even mainstream rock, you'd better buy any LED ZEPPELIN album, I think, than to buy this CD. As a fan of Lucifer's Friend, I cannot accept the quality of music this band produces for this album. What do you think? - Gatot Widayanto, Indonesia.

This album should best be avoided. It's far from representative of what Lucifer's Friend is/was about in the 70's. The five first Lucifer's Friend albums are excellent, very progressive and very heavy but this is just boring straightforward rock. Their cover of the Uriah heep song "Free Me" is especially horrible, its sounds as if they put it together in five minutes! Lucifer's Friends early albums are highly recommended but not this album. Avoid it!

It seems musicians themselves felt that they were not making true LUCIFER's FRIEND album and decided to call reformed band LUCIFER's FRIEND II.

Nothing to do with prog here, only mainstream rock and even pop. Positive things are Lawton's voice, strong as ever, and a couple of good songs: new powerful version of ''Ride the Sky'' (originally from LUCIFER's FRIEND first album) and catchy ''Hearbreaker'', sounding like a lost track from URIAH HEEP ''Fallen Angel'' sessions. I can also mention not a bad version of ''Free Me'' and cheesy but memorable ballad ''You Touched Me With Your Heart''.

If you are unfamiliar with LUCIFER's FRIEND music, better start with their masterpiece ''Banquet''. Though some tracks of ''Sumogrip'' can please tolerate Lawton fans.

Get a grip!

I remember that I bought this album many years ago, in connection with my initial discovery of Lucifer's Friend. I particularly remember how utterly disappointed I was with this album after having quickly grown very fond of the bands early albums. Hearing it now, years later, I must say that it still is very disappointing, particularly in comparison with the great classic albums, but I do find some minor qualities in Sumogrip. The guitar work in particular is often nice as are the always strong vocals of John Lawton. But overall this is a rather uneven album that ranges from good to decent to downright awful. The music could be described as a mix of Rock 'N' Roll, Hard Rock and AOR with only very occasional and slight flashes of Prog. The four short instrumentals give a bit of diversity to the whole.

They cover themselves with Ride The Sky, originally from the self-titled debut album from 1970, and this is a really great version of that old Lucifer's Friend classic! They also do a cover of Uriah Heep's Free Me and this, on the other hand, is absolutely awful in comparison with the original (which is not that great in the first place, I must say)! It is hard to understand the decision to include this cover as the album runs for over an hour anyway (including two different versions of You Touched Me...!)

This album can only be recommended to fans and collectors of the band (and even for us, this is disappointing despite some worthwhile moments). Two stars is a generous rating!

This is a pretty bad album.

The band never really convinced me (except their first two releases) and in terms of prog this one rates below zero. This is a pure and poor AOR stuff from start to finish. There are NO needs to write a long and detailed review about this crappy work.

Lawton can't help either: the vocal department is OK but gosh!!! What about the songwriting? Just poor I am afraid. The band should have called it quit a long time ago already.

I guess that no progheads could bear this sort of treat: poor & basic FM music. This is all you are going to get. No more. Avoid it by all means! On top of all, this album is damned long as well!

One star of course.