CHURCH OF HAWKWIND

Okay, USUALLY most of the PROG stuff I like has been the more esoteric, complex bands such as Crimson, Mahavishnu, etc., and I frigg'n LOVE 'OZRIC TENTACLES' and 'JETHRO TULL'! So, when I first stumbled on HAWKWIND a couple of years ago I wasn't really sure what to expect.

Now, in all fairness I also REALLY like Space Rock too. As I listened to more and more of HAWKWIND'S albums I found that a lot of the time I was surprisingly disappointed because at least the first several albums I heard quite honestly almost all sounded the same with some EXTREMELY repetitive phrase going on forever and some rather bland vocals with echo overlaying them. A lot of it really sounded pretty repetitive (the operative word) and very boring, at least to me. However, as I listened to more albums I began to notice that certain albums were more interesting.

That brings us to this one; I was really surprised to see such a low rating on this album. Now to ME personally, at least the first several songs on this album are HUGELY refreshing because, granted they are heavily electronic which is likely why hard core fans don't care for it as much, the album comes across SO stimulating and quite inspiring. The song with the JFK voice-overs is GREAT! The spacey transitions are TRULY spacey transitions and NOT the stupidly boring ones that I kept hearing on a lot of their albums where some guy was reciting some goofy 'SPACE 1999' worthy 'lyrics' if you can call them that.

Not necessarily being quite the overall fan that many here may be, from if I may humbly call it a more 'objective outsider' viewpoint, I really liked this album more than most of theirs and I would say that as long as you do not have an aversion to electronically influenced songs, I would indeed highly recommend this one as TRULY atmospheric, spacey, futuristic (NOT corny futuristic like many of their albums) and really entertaining. It is not as complex as some of their other better ones, and may come across as more simplistic. But, if you are into the electro-spacey groove it's pretty fun! Only to the hard core fans who likely prefer the more repetitive guitar oriented stuff I would say you probably will not like this album as much