BANDOLIER

Bandolier was a large improvement over the early Budgie albums from the production perspective. Also the vocal and instrumental skills of the band had matured a lot since they begun in the very early 70's. However, while the execution has improved the quality of the songs is much lower here. Only one song here is very good and a further one is decent but the rest are quite forgettable or even worse. Budgie are still very much the Led Zeppelin clone they always were and always will be.

The opening track is a straightforward Blues rocker that rambles on for over seven minutes without anything out of the ordinary happening at all. The second track is a nice acoustically driven ballad with good vocals and a decent melody. I detect a slight jazzy feel in this one! It is nothing too impressive or particularly memorable, but it is actually one of the better songs on this album. Who Do You Want For Your Love is another overlong track with a running time of six minutes. This one is a funky semi-ballad that, again, rambles on without introducing anything particularly interesting over and above a few expected tempo changes. It reminds a bit of the Canadian band Triumph. I Can't See My Feelings is too a pretty straightforward Hard Rock song and I Ain't No Mountain is a Blues standard. There is nothing progressive about these songs.

The only song that is really worth hearing here is the closer Napoleon Bona Part 1 & 2. This is a lovely song with a slightly progressive sound and feel to it. It begins with a lovely acoustic part with strong vocals and a jazzy feel, it then builds and introduces a pretty good and heavy riff. This is clearly the best song on this album.

In general, this is not a very good album and it is certainly not Prog by any means. Don't be fooled by the relatively long tracks as they are pretty basic Blues rockers for the most part. If you are new to Budgie, I would not start with this album. The previous In For The Kill is a much better choice.

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