LIVING IN FEAR

Items ordered by ending time | Showing all 24 items

Visit eBay search:'prog rock' for items
Sell your TEMPEST items on eBay !

No release results - showing artist results instead

Sort: Recent best-seller | Results cached

Visit Amazon tag:'Progressive Rock' for more prog rock

2.5 stars really!!

Colosseum's break up came a bit as a surprise to everyone involved at the end of a tour with Clempson announcing he'd received an offer to join Humble Pie, the group just suddenly broke up without anyone trying to stop it, including leader John Hiseman. He didn't stay inactive though, and keeping bassist Clarke as within a few months Tempest was up and fighting, with two multi-instrumentalists coming in, Paul Winter on guitars and keyboards, but singing as well (his vocals resembles a bit Farlowe's) and Alan Holdsworth (ex Igginbottom and Nucleus) on guitar and violin. This debut was released in early 73 (recorded in October 72) on the same Bronze label that had seen the last Colosseum album released and it featured a splendid abstract artwork below their snake lady logo.

Opening on the second-longest track Gorgon (that's a Celtic/Gallic sorceress that used snakes during the Roman empire and is part of the band's imagery, on both their albums), past an intro, we are plunged into a harder rocking music than anything we'd seen with Colosseum, including huge riffs, loud slow singing and a pedestrian bass, Hiseman's drumming being the most impressive. Clearly Hiseman had decided to bring up the rock part of his music even more up front than the jazz part and al of the tracks on this side are written by Clarke & Holdsworth, Hiseman writing the lyrics. The following Foyers Of Fun has a bit of a Cream or Mountain feel, Dark Horse keeping the same path, while the start of Brothers sounds slightly more Colosseum-esque, but soon the hard riffs and pedestrian bass are back, but it's the highlight on this side.

The second side is less focused, the songwriting better shared and even outside interference allowed. A strong Holdsworth-penned Up And On starts impressively, retaining a Colosseum edge via the solid drumming and Winter's voice, much reminiscent of Farlowe. The weakest track must Clarke's Grey & Black, where he sings too (a tame Queen's Mercury comes to mind), but it's also the shortest. Strangeher is a strong hard rocker, reminiscent of the Powell-era of Jeff Beck Group. Clearly the album's apex is the closing Upon Tomorrow where Holdsworth's violin gets a good (and all too rare) chance to shine and the track gets a long crescendo with plenty of interplay (something cruelly lacking on this album) before, between and after the verses.

It's probably safe to say that Temp2.0est was one of those groups where their individual members' credentials exceeded the actual resulting music, fruit of their collaboration. With a line up of Hiseman, Holdsworth (who still had much to prove back then, though), Clarke and Winter, the usual 70's would expect a more interesting album than this debut. Funnily enough, this is Holdsworth's least jazzy album he played on, and it was (partly) his doing for he wrote 5 songs (shared credits, but still), and what really lacks here is more instrumental interplay space, for the song format is simply too mainstream chorus-verse thing. Tons of albums like this cluttered the middle and lower ranks of the charts for Tempest to get a glimpse of sun with their chosen hard rock. While this debut deserves to be heard, just t see what Hiseman wanted to achieve, there is little doubt that it'll probably rarely spin on your turntable.

Holdsworth and Winter would quit the band, but they stayed long enough to meet and play with their replacement Olie Halsall (ex-Patto) for a BBC broadcast, which was finally released with the remastered version of the two albums.

Eager to please

With the major changes in the band between their first album and this one, their style also changed radically from a jazz rock orientated band to straight forward rock. Although Hiseman and Clarke remain from the first album, it's the late Ollie Halsall who dominates things.

"Dance to my tune" is the most prog track here, with some good guitar and fine synthesiser. The Beatles "Paperback writer" gets a real dusting down, becoming a heavy rock track, while "Stargazer" is a highly melodic Mark Clarke piece. Incidentally "Stargazer" was covered superbly by Clarke's brief Uriah Heep band-mate Ken Hensley on his "Eager to please" album, with a wonderful brass section ending.

There are at times hints of Free/Bad Company on the album, but little to link back to Colosseum. "Living in fear" benefits greatly from the multi-talented Halsall's instrumental work. Had they persisted, Tempest may well have gone on to find success. The market was however rather saturated with the style of music they chose to adopt for this album, hence such success would not by any means have been guaranteed.

Had the songs been generally a bit stronger, this could have been a much better album.

After a promising yet unspectacular debut, Living In Fear, the second album from Tempest saw major changes in the line-up leaving only drummer Jon Hiseman and bassist Mark Clarke from that incarnation. Allan Holdsworth had jumped ship for Soft Machine, who he would also only stay with for one album and Vocalist Paul William's fear of flying had cost him his place in the band. One man was to replace them both, Ollie Halsall, formerly of sixties psych pop band Timebox who were to transform into the more progressive Patto.

Living In Fear was a further step away from Hiseman and Clarke's former band Colosseum than even the debut was, ditching any traces of jazz and opting for a more streamlined rock direction. Halsall was an absurdly talented guitarist and he gets his moments to shine but fails to live up to William's rich tones in the vocal department. Despite the occasional inspired moment like Dance To My Tune featuring some cracking guitar work from Halsall the album smacks of the ordinary including a limp version of The Beatles Paperback Writer which suffers big time in the vocal department in particular.

It's certainly not a bad album, just lacking the song writing spark to lift it above the mere ordinary. Worth hearing though on the strength of the fine musicians involved but if you want to hear Halsall at his most inspired I'd recommend you go and check out the first two Patto albums. 2 ½ stars.