LABELS: "RARE EARTH" MOTOWN RECORD CORP
CAT #: RS 516 (HS-1769-1)
MATRIX Side A: Z4RS-3652-1/HS-1769-1 (MOTHER STAMP 1V) RS-516
What a weird bundle of circumstances this is. Signed inexplicably to the Motown label, this crew of ambitious Sabbath/Purple heavies issued their one and only album to almost zero response. Given the band’s unwieldy moniker and the fact that no one was expecting something like this from the company that brought us Marvin Gaye, it’s failure is not especially surprising. But based on the actual guts of the record, The Gospel According To Zeus, it deserved much better. The fusion of sound here is not altogether lacking in R&B ideas, but that’s mostly in the vocals and in the occasionally funky beats present. But you gotta add in lots of squalling Hammond organ and tough guitars to the mix as well, all of which combine to make this record nothing if not surprising.
To be totally fair, we must thank hip-hop DJs that the album has any cache these days at all. Listen to the drum intro of “Sorcery Of Isis (The Ritual Of The Mole)” and you might recognize it from any number of B-boy mixes. The tune soon shifts into a dreamy but driving slide through sandy lysergia, and is among the album’s best tunes, showing off all the band’s powers intently. “No Time” and “In The Night” are more typical of early seventies heaviness, but the former especially strikes a great riff/groove that sticks to the ribs pleasingly. “Realize” also features some lucid jamming that wouldn’t have been out of place on an Iron Butterfly record, only with focus and restraint applied. There are a few mellow cuts, which are actually pretty negligible, as well as some sections that dead ringers for Rod Evans era Deep Purple (“In The Night”) that will either disgust or amaze depending on your feelings about the band’s most divisive era. The classic on board, however, must be “It Couldn’t Be Me,” a slamming and well penned cut that makes best use of the band’s vocal talents, it also brings us everything that was great about this band into one, compact package. Great stuff.
(Review culled from RYM.com)