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Paladin - Charge! CD (album) cover

CHARGE!

Paladin

 

Crossover Prog

3.47 | 71 ratings

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stefro
Prog Reviewer
2 stars A short-lived outfit featuring the much-travelled keyboardist Pete Solley(Snafu, Procol Harum, Whitesnake) amongst their membership, Paladin's main claim-to-fame seems to be the uber- cool space-age artwork of Roger Dean that adorns the front of this 1972 album, the Yes-artist's snapshot of an extra-terrestial alien warrior charging into battle surely one of his most striking pieces. The group's second release, 'Charge!' pretty much picks up from where the group's self-titled debut left off, the bulk of the material blending bluesy rhythms and Solley's jazzy organ breaks with the occasional latin flourish. The start is strong - the pacey opener 'Give Me Your Hand' features a punchy, toe-tapping chorus and powerful vocals courtesy of bassist Peter Beckett - yet the rest album is less enthralling. Plus marks, however, are given for the group's use of slide guitar and conga's, these not-so-proggy instruments adding an unusually spicy flavour, whilst a couple of tracks do feature a real melodic invention, the groovy 'Anyway' and the ambitious nine-minute closer 'Watching The World Go By' showing a deft song-writing touch sadly absent from the rest of the album. The Problem is, however, they did it all before and did it a good deal better on 1971's 'Paladin', the group's superior first album, so, essentially, what we have here is a fairly undistinguished slice of perfectly-enjoyable early-seventies prog from a solid-if-unspectacular five-piece. But the artwork rocks. STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 1972
stefro | 2/5 |

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