SQUAWK

The flight of the Budgie continues, with next to no changes compared to the debut. The only one would be a slightly lesser dependence on Black Sabbath. Their most original feature is probably that they were the first metal band with a band name consisting of only one word. Lol.

Whiskey River kicks of the album in almost exactly the same way as Guts on the debut. The recipe is easy, take a chugging riff of Whole Lotta Love signature, add some heavily throbbing bass and a hoarse Plant wail. On a rare moment, it's almost a Halford shriek.

One of the things that Budgie is very apt at is cute little mellow moments like Make Me Happy, it's a kind of thing that is easy to write but difficult to pull of tastefully. There's not much noteworthy here except for more nice heavy rocking on Drugstore Woman and that one more adventurous song Young Is The World. At the base it's an extended ballad similar in tone to those of mid 70's Scorpions, a band that learned more then a trick or two from Budgie. The song feature some mellotron, a section with heavier riffing after each verse and an adequate blues solo guitar in the second half.

It doesn't register as prog on my radar, but just like the debut, the best songs might please the same folks who like the early albums from Heep, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Priest or Scorpions. A thin 3 star.