BLACK WIDOW III

Though the choice of title does needlessly muddle the Black Widow discography (there's a self-titled Black Widow album, a Black Widow III, but no Black Widow II!), this third album from the group does at least find them settling on a new musical direction after they more or less entirely abandoned the approach of their breakthrough debut album, Sacrifice, in the wake of massive controversy surrounding its Satanic themes and their ritualistic live show. Their first self-titled album found them casting about a bit in search of a new direction; here, they seem to have found it.

Essentially, whilst their earliest work (under the name of Pesky Gee) saw them taking extensive inspiration from This Was/Stand Up-era Jethro Tull, right about the time when Tull themselves were about to shift away from that approach, this album finds them drawing extensively on the Yes sound circa 1970-1971; sure, their sound is a little rougher, they don't have that distinctive Chris Squire bass sound, and though the contributions of Clive Jones they feature flute and saxophone more extensively. But just listen to the opening of The Battle and tell me with a straight face that doesn't remind you strongly of the opening to Yours Is No Disgrace - you can't do it, can you?

In some respects it's a bit of a shame to hear Black Widow once again jumping on the bandwagon of larger progressive acts in the hopes of snagging a wider audience, especially when their most famous album, Sacrifice, had a much more original approach. On the other hand, this is far from a bland and unimaginative cloning of the Yes sound - it comes across more like they've had The Yes Album on heavy rotation and they've absorbed its musical lessons into their own structure.

If you come to this expecting another Sacrifice, you'll be disappointed, because Black Widow never really went back to that creative well - and that is, I admit, a shame. Nonetheless, if you really enjoy early Yes, and want to hear a folk-psych inflected take on it by musicians who were contemporaries of Yes rather than latter-day retro-prog nostalgia merchants, Black Widow III is pretty good - in retrospect, surprisingly good for a band who were hurtling towards disintegration at the time of its release.