LIVE CHRONICLES

Hawkwind's Live Chronicles is a good but not exceptional live album, notable for providing a warmer rendition of songs drawn mainly from the "space metal" era of Hawkwind from Sonic Attack through to Chronicle of the Black Sword. Though the album is a very different prospect to the classic space rock albums of Hawkwind's most creatively successful period, it goes a long way towards rehabilitating the band's sound from the rut it had got into in the mid-1980s. If you're interested, I highly recommend going for the Atomhenge reissue which gives the complete concert, including Michael Moorcock's narration from between the songs. It won't ever displace Space Ritual in my estimation, but it's a worthy neo-space rock 1980s revival of the old "concept concert" approach that that album took and has grown on me over the years despite my initial disappointment that the sound wasn't as meaty as Space Ritual's.