THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD

David Bowie

Prog Related

4.00 | 455 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

I accidentally came across this album and was pleasantly surprised. The title song is well known and is very good, but what's more important, most of the album is even better; what a surprise!

I've never expected experiencing Bowie as a hard rocker, this is, at many moments, on pair with Black Sabbath, mostly due to heavy guitar and bass riffs, but also due to not-so-very-inspiring dark themes - madness, evil, death, drugs, corruption, nobody loves me, the world is cruel and I'm very angry/sad, discontent, discontent, discontent! - standard, nothing really groundbreaking - definitely the weakest point of the album (I apologise if I got something wrong here). That's why I usually don't care much about this kind of lyrics no matter how well they're written - they often spoil the music.

Anyway, lets get back to the music which is almost groundbreaking: progressive elements are noticeable, but discrete, just the way they should be on an album such as this one; glam and early metal elements come more to expression which actually squeezes this among those proto-metal albums. Well, what do you know, Bowie as a metalhead!

His vocal delivery is great and theatrical; similar to Hammill and Gabriel, but I don't think he was influenced by either of them (this is 1970 album); it's his own style. Songs are fresh, diverse, enjoyable and of high quality, only Running gun blues doesn't get my attention. She shook me cold clearly shows Hendrix's influence on Ronson's playing and Visconti is particulary good on keyboards.

Overall, a very decent heavy-prog album and probably Bowie's best.

Mlaen | 4/5 | 2008-8-23

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