HEAVY

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.