THE FIRST 10 EXPLOSIVE YEARS

In 1970 guitarist and vocalist John DuCann joined Atomic Rooster and he immediately went on tour with the band. When bass player Graham left the band keyboardist Crane refused to replace him and started playing bass lines on the lower part of Hammond organ. To compensate the fact that he couldn't use his left hand to press down chords on the lower manual he created a 'burning' style of playing, often in furious interplay with DuCann. When Carl Palmer left Atomic Rooster to join Keith Emerson and Greg Lake left for supergroup ELP Rick Parnell shortly replaced him. John and Vincent were not satisfied about his skills and had to replace him by Paul Hammond, an extremely good drummer from a local band called Farm. Soon the trio started to develop their influential 'heavy progressive' sound: hard edged progressive music with a swirling Hammond B3 organ and fiery guitarplay. The interplay between John's guitar and Vince organ is hot and often furious. In fact this powerful sound was the precursor to 'progressive metal', many metal- acts from The Eighties pointed at Atomic Rooster as their main source. In '89 it was all over for Atomic Rooster because of Crane's tragical death, he commited suicide. On this great compilation (my favorite Atomic Rooster CD) you will be blown away by the dynamic sound, loaded with short but magnificent soli on guitar and organ, energetic drums and powerful vocals. DISCOVER THE FIRST 10 EXPLOSIVE YEARS BY THIS UNDERRATED BAND!

The Power Trio present their best work - well, not quite but this is still a delight.

With a new lineup and a new tour a compilation was inevitable. Du Cann was an apt replacement and features on some of the tracks.

The First 10 Explosive Years attempts to capture the heavy prog brilliance of Atomic Rooster to wrap up their long career for newbies to the band, and almost succeeds apart from the omission of some tracks that should always grace an AR compilation but this is a great CD if you have none of the AR albums. Of course this compilation covers every album and my favourite was always "Death Walks Behind You" and from that we have on this comp Sleeping for Years, Seven Streets, I Can't Take No More, Death Walks Behind You and a great live version of Tomorrow Night.

There's tracks from the mediocre "Atomic Rooster '80" such as Lost in Space, and there are tracks from their classics such as Head in the Sky and Break the Ice. The great live track Devil's Answer is a delight and there are some tracks you rarely see on a compilation such as Rebel With a Clause, Night Living, It's So Unkind, and When You Go to Bed, some of the more recent material when it comes to their repertoire.

There are far worse comps about and this certainly has a typically eye catching cover you may want to hide from the parents. I recommend this comp but it's not as good as the 2 CD package "Heavy Soul: Anthology".