RAW TO THE BONE

From the cover one would expect some kind of very heavy metal from that period, something like Abattoir - Vicious Attack, Destruction - Infernal Overkill, Exodus - Bonded by Blood, Grave Digger - Witch Hunter, Omen - Warning of Danger, Piledriver - Metal Inquisition, Savatage - Power of the Night, Slayer - Hell Awaits, Trouble - The Skull, Venom - Possessed etc.

Instead it is a band with Folk, Celtic, Grateful Dead and a bit of Blues in them trying desperately to sound Heavy Metal.

Personally, I blame the music media who took a few comments from members of certain metal bands who in their youth/teens went to Wishbone Ash concerts or saw them on TV in the early to mid 1970s, saw the twin leads, which was unique at that time, particularly in the early 1970's, and claimed Wish Bone Ash was an influence on them because of this.

The same Music Media then started to refer to Wishbone As as a hard rock/heavy metal band, which if they ever bothered to listen to their records, nothing could be farther from the truth

What happens is the record company and management gets hold of this, and heavy metal being very profitable in record sales at that time, presses the band to make a hard rock/heavy metal recording.

It was sort of like the same record companies and management in the 1940's and 1950's pressing Swing Bands to make fashionable Bebop recordings, or recently, pressing traditional Heavy Metal bands in the 1990's to make fashionable Grunge style music, or sadly a number of progressive rock bands in the late 1970s attempting to be fashionably new wave, love those synth drums, Love Beach Anyone?

In most cases, only a few are good, most are mediocre to bad because the band/performer's hearts are not in it.

One of the biggest proof of this is WA's horrible hard rock cover of Lowell George of Little Feat Rocket in My Pocket, which since Ash also had a little bit of Feat in them, especially the slide work, could have be great, but horrible in trying to hard rock the tune.

That said, given this is a review in a progressive rock website, it could only be worth two stars, but it is not a bad recording, just a mediocre for reasons above

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