GRAVEDIGGER

Gravedigger by Janus finds the band playing in a psyche-tinged style of early progressive rock still entangled in the genre's roots in the 1960s underground - and emerged just as that style of prog was going out of fashion in favour of more polished and complex material, to the band's misfortune. It's an enjoyable enough album if you like the early prog style - dramatic opener Red Sun is particularly enjoyable - though I wouldn't say it's solid all the way through; in particular, the brash introduction to Watcha Trying to Do?, aside from being irritating, is also tonally inconsistent with the rest of the album, as is the rest of the song itself - it feels like someone else's song parachuted into the middle of the running order. In fact, with such a weak first side and a side two epic that doesn't really stand up next to the sort of material their peers in Van der Graaf Generator or Genesis was producing, the album isn't so much a neglected classic as it is a second-tier release which got about as much attention as it deserved.