HEAVY

3.5 stars really!!!

This quintet is hailing from the LA psychedelic scene and is more of a local band than most of the groups hanging out in LA is hope of exposure. The LA scene at the time also had The Doors, Love, Spirit and a few others, and it was a major scene so much that most of the San Francisco scene came down to record their albums in the city (interestingly enough, SF did not have recording studios in the 60's) and if the LA Sunset strip did not catch public imagination like the Haight Ashbury scene, the psychedelic rock was just as vivid as can be attested by the groups mentioned above. Interestingly enough also, LA was also a very strong Garage rock scene (check out the NUGGETS box-set in our Various Artists section for this), and as those groups became more adventurous and heavier, they also became psychedelic. In this regard, one can actually make a link between Garage rock and proto- progressive rock, and Iron Butterfly is one of those bands that help this transformation.

This quintet had ambitions high enough to make popular pop music change into rock as we know it today. Deliberately choosing an intriguing and heavy name, they chose Iron Butterfly and to make their point come across more clearly, they named their debit album Heavy. By today's standards though, this might make most young progheads laugh or at least smirk. Actually, this reviewer never really found IB particularly heavy, but if you were not old enough to remember when those albums came out (as I was), they received plenty of praise for their groundbreaking and heavy approach. This debut album was quite an impressive one, and its striking artwork sure helped out the imagination of the listeners back then, and had quite an impact nationally as it stayed on the Billboard for 50 weeks a fact rendered even greater that the album contained no obvious hit , but was a very even collection of good songs. The first two tracks appeared also in a movie (Savage Green). Lead by keyboard man Doug Ingle, the music is a pure psych sound that one can assimilate to a cross of HP Lovecraft or early Jefferson Airplane, but with a definite slice of garage rock (all songs are rather short) and a slight Soul touch also.

Opener Possession is one of those signature track (it does remind of HP Lovecraft's sound, though) with instantly recognizable Ingle-played organ. Follow-up Unconscious Power is a lot more upbeat and has a good bass line. Both tracks were part of the movie mentioned above. The next few tracks on the first vinyl side are very much in the crossroad ogf garage rock and would nicely fit on that Nuggets compilation: sometimes sounding like The Seeds, The Electric Prunes, Chocolate Watch Band, Thirteenth Floor Elevators etc..

The second side is off to a soulish (almost Doo-wop vocal) start, but a much better Looking For The Sun (must be hard, through the LA smog ;-) but apparently a successful one, since the next track is Fields Of Sun. Stamped Ideas is for me the highlight of this album side with its fuzz guitar and Ingle great organs. Most of the tracks on the album are on a 4/4 basis and stay relatively simple, but particularly enjoyable is the closing IB Theme. As the album opens on two great track and closes on another two, it is a bit unfortunate that the middle of it, is not up to those. The two bonus tracks on the Repertoire re-issue are a bit different sounding of the rest of the album, but there is nothing shocking.

With the release of the album, apparently there were heavy dissentions in the musical directions and three members left leaving Ingle and drummer Bushy (both mainstays and the only non-LA natives) at the helm. Not clearly of an interest to recent progheads, this album is of an historical significance for most of rock music. But hardly essential to progheads, though

I think this is one of those albums where you had to have been there at the time of the release to really enjoy it today. Listening to this today as a new listener I think it´s really dated and not that good. I know Iron Butterfly is a very famous band, but with this debut release I´m not quite sure why. There were so many other good albums released in 1968 that I don´t understand why I should bother listening any more to this one.

The music is basically blues rock with what sounds like a very wasted singer and lots of organ. Some times there are some heavy sounding guitars, but don´t expect Black Sabbath heavy. Songs like Possesion, Unconscious Power and Iron Butterfly Theme are pretty good songs, but songs like the repetitive Get Out of My Life, Woman and Stamped Ideas drag this album down IMO.

The sound is muddy sixties quality and not very impressive.

This is a 2 star album for me and I don´t think it´s very progressive. Maybe for the time this was really heavy stuff, but the quality in the compositions are not good enough to satisfy my modern ears.

This debut album was very well received in the US: it peaked in the Bilboard at the respectable 78th spot. Although it is awfully short, even for the era (less than thirty minutes), it holds some fine music, but the whole is not consistent.

The album opens brilliantly on Possession which is a moving song thanks to its vocals and great and hypnotic keyboards; this will be a constancy throughout the album.

The heavy / bluesy mood displayed in this album is not far from the Fudge (Get Out Of My Life, Woman). But what is available is mostly some heavy psychedelia which is very much Doors oriented like the upbeat Gentle As It May Seem or the melancholic and psyche You Can't Win. The good Look For The Sun is another one of these. The hypnotic keyboards really sound like Manzarek ones.

There is even a light track featured: So-Lo which is a soft-rock and candid piece of music. Childish vocals and syrupy backings aren't quite convincing. But let's remind that this work is forty years old. I am reviewing this album shortly after the debut one from Family; and the same conclusion is valid for Heavy: it is rather difficult to imagine the impact of such a work today.

The start of Iron Butterfly Theme is almost a rip off from Backdoor Man, but it is a fine proposal with heavy organ and weird sounds. Rather disjointed and loaded.

The sound is very old but IB should be considered as a pioneer of heavy music and therefore be respected as such. Fans of heavy blues, psychedelic rock like The Doors or the early Jefferson Airplane, this album might suit you.

Three stars.

In this first incarnation of the band, I can almost feel the internal tensions that must have been building between bandmembers as there's some variations of style concerning the tracklist and vocalist Darryl DeLoach sings on only half of the tracks but doesn't contribute instrumentally. This sort of disparate set of ideals can lead to almost humerous results, with songs about searching within yourself to achieve inner peace followed by "COME HERE WOMAN!" rants that crush any sort of meditative experience. It also makes listening to the album entertaining as well, since I was never sure how the next song would play out the first time I heard it.

Heavy is bookended by its best tracks. Possession has a good riff, a catchy chorus and spooked out vocals by Doug Ingle. Doug was clearly the superior vocalist, and it would be no surprise that Darryl would soon leave the group. It's as if the band saw fellow psychedelic rockers The Strawberry Alarm Clock's situation, in which a guest vocalist sang Incense and Peppermints with a baritone delivery, helping that song become their biggest hit by far while their regular singer, whose voice was typical of the West Coast "Nuggets" variety (much like Darryl) had to watch from the sidelines with his eventual string of much lesser and somewhat forgotten hits. The final track, the band's apparent instrumental theme song, is an awesome representation of late 60s acid/space rock with a great distorted fuzzbox guitar tone. Some quirky toying around with a delay pedal is thrown in here and there to assist in the 'freakout'. It's fun, and definately worthy of the album's title. Speaking of the guitar tones and effects, Danny Weis was quite a capable and talented performer throughout this album, and could have have been a much bigger name in the business if he could've stuck it out with Iron Butterfly rather than joining the ill-fated Rhinoceros.

The tracks in-between are varied in style and quality, with tunes sung mainly by Doug being preferable to me. You Can't Win has some catchy melodies drenched in that acid guitar sound, and Fields Of Sun has a cool guitar riff accompanied by some sweet bass playing. Some of the other tracks don't fare nearly as well such as Gentle As It May Seem's sub- garage level workout or Look For The Sun's failed attempt at emulating early CCR musically. Of course, with song lengths being reasonably short, sitting through the muck to get to the better tracks is not such a chore.

As far as being loud or even proto-metal, this album does have that cool fuzzy guitar tone in quite a few of its tracks, but don't expect anything particularly heavy except for the last track, but Heavy is a pretty cool time capsule of the late 60s, even if their next album would make them quite famous and sell literally tons of copies. In fat, I kinda enjoy Heavy more than In A Gadda Da Vida to be honest.

Through many years I was very curious about this debut album by proto proggers Iron Butterfly. Heavy was mentioned on the liner notes of the famous In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, but was never released in Brazil. So only recently I had the chance to listen to the album, some 40 years after I had their second iconic LP. All I can say about it now that it was indeed quite a promising album. The band was already finding their own sound but not quite got it on Heavy: the first two tracks, Possession and Unconscious Power, they showed their real strength: heavy (for the time) guitar and organ interplay laced with Doug Ingle´s fine, dramatic vocals. Unfortunately they also had mediocre tracks like Get Out Of My Life, Woman and, worse, three tunes that are sung by Darryl DeLoach, a weak singer that was no match to Ingle.

Overall I liked the album. Although they were still finding their own sound and had yet to honey their songwriting skills in some ways, they did a pretty good job as a whole for a debut. Of curse the lesser tracks are just pastiches of other contemporary organ-led groups like The Doors and Vanilla Fudge. You can´t Win is another fine track that showed what would be the IB sound, along with the instrumental closing Iron Butterfly Theme. There are also some short interesting instrumental parts on the other songs, but as one can expect this is the famous case of hit or miss. And there were slightly more hits than misses. The lesson was learned as their next album would prove, even if at the expense of three original members.

Nice debut with a few promising ideas that, fortunately, would be developed on their following works.

Rating: 3 stars. Good, but non essential.