A.F.T.

Absolutely brilliant one-time project from this mostly instrumental foursome released by Charisma in 1976, the dual guitar lines of Paul A. MacDonnell & Robert Cross, bass and drums of Trevor Darks and Dave Ball weaved together neo-classical metallics in a way no one had yet attempted - save Brian May - and predates Michael Schenker's Bachian fugues, Uli Roth's Paganini chops and Yngwie's chiming compressed harmonics by several years. 'The Great Panjandrum Wheel' parts 1 and 2 encompasses nearly a half hour and makes up the bulk of the album, a hugely ambitious undertaking for a quartet of headbangers in '76, and is jam packed with slippery, painfully well-conceived harmonies, laserbeam tech guitar bravado, heady time signatures, and reliable, unobtrusive rhythm from Darks and Ball. 'Gladioli' has more contrapuntals and playful constructs and the record continues to cook, smoldering along with rarely a slow or unsure moment, always surprising, and would quite easily hold its own against the lot of Baroque-style hard rock. A must for almost any faithful Progmetalhead or Prog Metal historian, hearing AFT is like discovering someone did Psychedelic rock before Syd Barrett was walking.