HEAD FIRST

I guess this album won't please many prog fans, as it is quite clearly a hard-rock album of the 1980's instead of art rock record. I am not so fond of the sonic aesthetics of that era, but I think this album has some nice qualities. There are some pleasant ideas on the compositions, and the album forms quite fine two LP-sides of continuous music. The opener "The Other Side of Midnight" is quite catchy hit song (how perverse!), and the band has played it still on their gigs even at the 21th century. The A-side of the LP has few typical Heep-fillers before the last song of the side; "Love is Blind" being quite nice powerful tune. The B-side of the LP is much better, beginning a movie soundtrack sounding orchestral intro, which leads to "Red Lights", an exciting rock song for the hectic highways. The music continues without stops to "Rollin' The Rock", which has nice quiet and loud parts forming great hold and release contrasts. This song is followed by a ballad "Straight Through the Heart", which is without doubt very, very sweet, but I liked it still. The ending song "Weekend Warriors" is also ok. I had quite silly impression from that song, as I first misheard the verse going as "Viking Warriors", well that might have fitted as well. Though I liked this albumit, a prog listener should be very careful with it. Don't buy it without prelistening first carefully.