POWER SUPPLY

Budgie ended up in a situation familiar to many cult bands - their style of music comes back in vogue, their influence shows up in their successors' music, but the inspiration's run out.

With the coming of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the late 70s, it should have been just right for Budgie to go from U.K. cult act to major band status. They'd released a number of classic albums that many NWOBHM bands idolized and emulated. Budgie even managed a headlining spot at Reading in 1982. So what happened ?

Well, as I said, the music wasn't up to the job. Power Supply had a short supply of great songs. It had one to be exact. Which was Gunslinger, its' arrangement bringing back memories of songs like Bona Pt I & II. The title track itself that followed the boogie hard rock tunes that the group had turned to as the earlier releases got some attention in the Southern U.S. . It wasn't bad. But it stood out from the rest of the album because it was at least O.K. . The rest just sounded like most of the second rate one album acts that proliferated in that era. Heck, Hellbender sounded like an out-take from the Tygers of Pan Tang's debut. Forearm Smash wouldn't have made it on to Raven's Rock until You Drop.

It would be easy to point to Tony Bourge's departure, but he was co-writer on Impeckable , which had but one decent tune with Pyramids.

Maybe they had mined all the great riffs they had in them. 'Cause their albums up to & including Britannia had their share of songs that stood in good stead with the best hard rock & metal there was.

Oh well, if you need to own everything Budgie put out, I'm sure you'll find something here to make you content. But then you might want to do some digging in the scene around that time. There's much better music, and many better acts ...

Or , if you can find Gunslinger on Amazon.com, get it. It is that good. But it's the only one here.