SONIC ATTACK

Hawkwind had a short and exciting fling with artsy punk in the 1977-1979 years. But in 1980 they returned to their usual hard rocking space flare with their solid Levitation. So I really had my hopes up for this one.

And indeed, after 5 minutes of sonic poetry the album finally kicks off with Rocky Paths, a fun blast of space hardrock with a steady upbeat pace, good vocals and piercing guitar soloing. All of it drowned in an abundant cosmic synth soup. A classic!

But there's a notable difference with Levitation. Ginger Baker, who kicked the hell out of his kit on Levitation has left the spaceship and his replacement Martin Griffin restricts himself to basic rock rhythms. The drumkit also suffers from the typical 80's gated drums production (the big reverbed snare-syndrome). It kills off the attack and dynamism, for a drum aficionado like me, that's always a big loss.

A second problem with this album is the lack of ideas. Unless you get a kick out of sci-fi poetry, Sonic Attack, Psychosonia, Virgin of the World and Coded Language won't register any higher then filler status. And Tim Blake is surely missed on the unimaginative synth sequencing of Virgin of The World.

Next to Rocky Paths there's one other memorable song here: Angels of Death, which is also featured on each of the 34 subsequent live albums Hawkwind released since. The remainder of the songs are painful to listen to, seemingly thrown together from half-baked rock clichés with invariably recitative vocals and predictable arrangements. There's an occasional groove as on Trans-dimensional Man but they don't manage to do much with it.

Sonic Coma would have been a more suitable title.