LEVIATHAN

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"...the magic minstrel tells of ages old, of man and his soul; the endless flight, dark against the light, it makes your blood run cold..."

Leviathan, a really obscure band, for me... for another time I have to thank Akarma records for its excellent work on many minus-known titles. It is strange thing there are so few reviews on this one shot US band. Thought our PA friends beyond Atlantic ocean were more into Leviathan.

Leviathan...that ancestral monstrum which is told about in ancient legends...Leviathan, the well known monstrum uopon whose characters philosopher Thomas Hobbes build up his description of the STATE's (governement) concept. A horrible monster which has concentrated all the rights of man. The statual government is pure strenght and violence: the Great Leviathan! Men are fighting each other and no one has dues or obligation toward anybody else: HOMO HOMINI LUPUS. Man tries always to dominate other persons and so there is the need of a PACT between them. Every man abandons all his powers and gives them to the State. After the pact is signed, man has no power or right against the State, all is concentrated in it!

Nice cover art, a sea-monster (dragon-shaped) arises from the waters and is going to attack a little ship which is sailing the vast ocean driven by the wind.

How about the music? Well, Leviathan gives us a sort of mix between american peculiar hard rock and very strong mellotron parts. In a similar vein of the first Deep Purple. This characteristics are self evident since the first few seconds of the opener track titled "Arabesque" (6,14 mns): harder and gentler parts alternate each other, always being an important role for the famous keyboard instrument. You will not hear to complecated and elaborated arrangements, but the results is very good art rock, a convincing album from start to finish.

"Angela" (6,42 mns) is a mellow song with the predominance of mellotron and acoustic guitar. Some playing children's voices introduce. A soft ballad for a romantic interlude.

"Endless Dream" (10,06 mns) is the great opus here. The most interesting for a proglover. Varied arrangements for this darker piece. More important role for bass guitar. The voice of the singer (I think he is Wain Bradley) reminds me of Erik Bloom of Blue Oyster Cult who, in the same period completed their most considerable release of the so-called "black and white period": Secret Treaties. In fact Leviathan are a sort of mix between Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin (for the vocals of another singer) and Blue Oyster Cult (the most important american rock band of that time). Yeah, Endless Dream is an excellent track.

"Seagull" (4,58 mns) is a more conventional hard rock piece. The singer (this time the singer should be Peter Richardson, but none info on the Akarma booklet) is influenced a lot by Robert Plant way of singing...sometimes he seems to be a clone of him!

"Angel of Death" (4,12 mns) continues the riff of the previous track and "Always Need You" (3,26 mns) is another romantic short ballad with a remarkable electric guitar.

"Quicksilver Clay" (7,26 mns) is the other highlight of the album with a remarkable organ.

All in all, Leviathan unique album is a very good one...the band seemed to be very promising, what a pity the split too soon! I don't know why. My rating: 3.5 stars!!

With their sole, eponymous album, American act Leviathan delivered quite an interesting item for the history of North American prog rock during its seminal stages. While not precisely a masterpiece in itself, the "Leviathan" album comprises a catalogue of energetic performances and solid melodic ideas. The band displays influences from early British symphonic prog (Procol Harum, Genesis, even PF and Nektar, to a lesser degree) and heavy art-rock (Uriah Heep, early Deep Purple) fluidly fused into a standard American hard rock basic sound, taking this hard rock nucleus to a harder edge than their more stylish compatriots of Kansas. Even thought there are three musicians on keyboards, dividing duties on Hammond organ, mellotron and piano, it is the guitars that take center stage most of the time, not only because the riffs and harmonies are heavily pronounced in the mix, but also because the solos are almost exclusively left as a guitar responsibility. The organ is the most featured keyboard in the global sound, while the mellotron is used for flourishes and ornaments. The opener 'Arabesque' is catchy, but only a hint of the level of sonic sophistication that the band is capable of building up within its well-traced confines. 'Angels' is an acoustic guitar-based ballad that gradually gets enriched by noticeable piano adornments and elegant mellotron layers (flute and strings): during the final section, the piano player begins to do some effective Wakeman-isms. This is closer to Genesis' "Trespass" than to, say, Grand Funk Railroad's "E Pluribus Funk". Next comes the longest and most complex piece in the album, 'Endless Dream'. Starting with eerie organ minimal layers, a simple bass sequence serves as an intro to the main motif, a melancholic semi- bombastic episode in which the influences of Pink Floyd's languid psychedelia and genesis' melancholic vibration are combined. The interlude gives room for the emergence of alternate organ and guitar solos that may bring the expert listener memories of early Nektar. Tracks 2 and 3 are the most notable gems in the album. The next two pieces, all segued in a continuum, find the band exploring their rock side more consistently on a mid-tempo pace. All in all, they never forget the occasional keyboard adornments that bring a casual extra symphonic appeal to the overall sound: for instance, the piano and mellotron in the middle section of 'Seagull'. 'Always Ned You' is a rock ballad with featured piano and added guitar riffs, somewhat Procol Harum- influenced but also bearing similarities to the regular slow songs by Doobie Brothers. The 7 ½ minute long 'Quicksilver Clay' closes down the album as a moderately majestic semi-ballad, comprising an accurate recapitulation of the moods displayed in the previous three songs, partially recapturing the colorfulness of track 3. Well, "Leviathan" is a very good album that reveals an interesting, albeit undeveloped vision of art-rock, an effort that should be regarded as a serious attempt at scoring a cornerstone in the early prog scene of the USA.

Leviathan are a forgotten one-shot American band formed in the early seventies in Memphis, although most of the members hailed from Little Rock, Arkansas. They recorded this album shortly before scoring a major coup as opening act for an Electric Light Orchestra American tour (‘Face the Music’, I believe), then pretty much vanished after that. There was another album recorded with the working title ‘The Life Cycle’, but to my knowledge it was never released.

There are too many influences here to mention all of them, but several are readily apparent: Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, a little Grand Funk Railroad and Uriah Heep, even some Moody Blues. I’ve read comparisons to very early Kansas (ala the Proto-Kaw ‘Early Recordings’), and while I doubt that group was an influence, there are certainly some similarities on a few tracks (“Quicksilver Clay”, “Endless Dream”). In a few spots there’s even a hint of Bad Company. So you get the idea – mellotron and Hammond in swirling amidst plenty of bluesy hard-rock riffs and a poor-man’s version of Robert Plant on vocals. While I can’t say there is anything particularly original here, this is still a very good album and a great example of that uniquely American transformation of the more high-brow British progressive music of the early seventies. It’s an acquired taste, to be sure.

The opening track is entitled “Arabesque”, which among other things means a whimsical and opulent musical piece written for piano. Well there is indeed piano on this track (and throughout the album), but I’m not sure the term ‘whimsical‘ applies. I suspect the band simply thought this was a sufficiently pretentious title for an album that aspired to symphonic leanings. The band had three keyboardists, so the interplay of mellotron (flute mostly), piano, and Hammond gets involved enough to seem almost muddled at times, but the percussion and electric guitar really dominate this work despite all the keyboards. Vocalist Peter Richardson vacillates between Paul Rodgers and Robert Plant, but wears both of these quite well.

“Angels” is actually a more piano-driven piece than “Arabesque”, and this tune borders on being a rock ballad for the most part. Bassist Wain Bradley lends vocal harmonies as well as a heavy bass line throughout.

The longest and most interesting piece is “Endless Dream”, which reminds me quite a bit of about half the tracks on the Proto-Kaw/Kansas ‘Early Recordings’ album mentioned earlier. The keyboards overwhelm quite a bit of this song, but here again there is a heavy and repetitive guitar riff reminiscent of most of Deep Purple’s work of the same period.

“Seagull” is the most straightforward rocking tune on the album, mostly guitars for the first half of the arrangement, but some Hammond here as well. Richardson is in full Plant-mode throughout, and the track transitions well into a mellotron-laden sequence that brings things to a mellow close.

Richardson and Bradley haul out the vocals harmonies again on “Angel of Death”, and this is the track that hints that the band had at least a passing familiarity with Uriah Heep’s body of work.

“Always Need You” is a title that sounds like a country tune, and there is a distinctly American feel to this arrangement. Other than a pretty decent buildup of keyboards toward the end, this one is very much seventies radio-rock.

The final track “Quicksilver Clay” would be my second choice after “Endless Dream” for strongest track. The vocals here almost border on Greg Rollie-era Journey, while the keyboards and rhythm is much closer to a slow and slightly unambitious Kansas tune – pleasant enough, but it’s not really surprising this stuff didn’t stand out much when it first released.

The band was relatively short-lived, thanks to among other things a small label with little ability to promote them, and no really flashy gimmicks to distinguish them from the crowd (although they did manage some notable gigs including opening for ELO at one point). I've read they recorded another album, but have never seen any indication it was ever released.

Bradley and a couple other band members went on to form a band called Companion, who themselves released only one album then disappeared. Bradley (who came to Leviathan from a late sixties psychedelic garage band named Changin’ Tymes) is a video engineer today and plays in the praise group of his local church. Richardson also went the gospel route, and today boasts a rather lengthy discography that he continues to add to from his home in Alaska. Drummer Shof Beavers formed a short-lived industrial-rock band named Sharkbait, and is still involved in music via production and music-based software engineering. Swearington is currently involved in "pure electronic" music according to Beavers. Sadler seems to have dropped out of sight.

This is one of those albums that you like to have in your collection, especially if you have a soft spot for well-made but forgotten bluesy and marginally progressive bands of those days when it was still cool to be in such a band. I would note though that the original vinyl is probably impossible to find, and the Texas label that released it claims that Akarma Records bootlegged the CD version that is now about the only version available. Not sure if that’s true, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

I’ll give this 3.6 stars just for being interesting, well played, and worth picking up if you run across it. Well recommended if you like a little heavy blues mixed in your cup of prog.

peace

Vintage Rock

The opening track "Arabesque" is quite promising as prog tune as it is a mellotron-drenched song. Not only that, the mood is also changing as the music flows even though it does not sound like in a cohesive way. The vocal job by Wain Bradley and Peter Richardson represents what vintage rock music is all about. It reminds me to the classic rock music like Cactus, Humble Pie, Moxy, early Deep Purple, Tea, Mountain. The guitar riffs and singing style are true representation of classic rock music. "Angela" is a mellow song with heavy mellotron work at background and acoustic guitar serves as main rhythm section. "Endless Dream" is still mellow in style. The opening part with bass guitar reminds me to Styx "Castle Walls" but of course this song is longer in duration. The nuance created by this song is dark with mellotron as background and singing style. The music tends to be more complex in the middle with soaring sounds of organ / Hammond. "Seagull" is a song with good melody and nice piano work, combined with mellotron. The vocal work is really like Deep Purple's Glenn Hughes. "Angel of Death" is a straight classic rocker with good (and classic!) guitar riffs. "Always Need You" opening drum work and nuance reminds me to King Crimson's "In The Court of The Crimson King". The album concludes with "Quicksilver Clay" which the organ work reminds me to Uriah Heep's Ken Hensley.

Listening to this album will refresh your memories back to the past. The days when rock music was widely accepted by all types of people, regardless they like or they don't like rock music. The recording quality represents the vintage of this music. Keep on proggin' ..!

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