A FIERCE NATURE

High Tide came back to recording life in the late 80's (but they had never really stopped existing as a band either , just lived without recording contracts) after a mythical two album run in the early 70's. But the groundbreaking nature of their music was by now fairly eroded to the point that this album sounds completely dated and suffers from the same flaw as the historical albums : poor sound and shoddy production.

We are dealing with a fairly basic hard rock blues with correct musicianship , rather burried- in (and IMHO rather poor) vocals and no very imaginative at that. The long (12 min+) Tribute track is a blues riff repeated endlessly and seems to last longer than all four sides of Yes's TFTO and there are reminders of that very same riff in Incitement which last another 9 min.

We are a far distance from such promising albums of their pioneering days. Best avoided but can still please some not-too-demanding fans. OK give it another halfstar , because it is not awfull either.