The Devil Rides In – Spellbinding Satanic Magick & The Rockult 1967-1974
A pretty irresistible set on the surface – 3 discs focused on the weird, occult and devil-themed rock of the 60s and 70s with curly typefaces and alluring ladies dug out especially for cover duties. A quick look at the track listing and everything seems in order – several bands that regularly feature on Grapefruit’s deep dive comps and retrospectives – Zior; Third Ear Band; Tintern Abbey, plus stalwarts who dabbled briefly – Free; The Move; Jethro Tull, as well as more leftfield choices – Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch; Sandie Shaw; Genesis. Ostensibly, it seems all is well. And yet, there is malevolence afoot, and not from the Black Pit.
There’s a nice and probably much-needed mix of musical styles on offer here. Atomic Rooster and Free kick off with the expected guitar-based histrionics (though the temptation to sacrifice is unlikely to burn within you) but even by track 3 and Argent‘s ‘Dance in the Smoke’, we’re led down paths more paved with psych and folky sensibilities. Whilst British Freakbeat and psych sometimes feel a little daft compared to their grown-up American counterparts, you are able to believe that bearded intense musos from provincial English towns have turned to the dark side in order to make sense of their lives. Dancing naked around flames on National Trust property may still have local youths sniggering but who has the last laugh, eh? EH?
If electric guitars and hair are the most obvious signs of a passion for demons, let’s not overlook the organ, as it were. Organs Hammond and otherwise appear plentifully across this set, not least of Complex‘s ‘Witch’s Spell’, where it is much needed to cut through the murk of the track seemingly having been recorded in a distant water closet. Having an instrument similar to a church organ is about as daring as proceedings get on the collection. Absolutely no one suggests knowing off the Pope’s hat for a lark or calling nuns a naughty name, and here’s where you begin to realise that you’re sitting waiting for something that never materialises, despite your rune casting – it’s just lacking oomph. The devil’s oomph.
Writing on the Wall‘s ‘Lucifer Corpus’ promises significantly more than it delivers. “Everybody’s gonna die!” offers a knacker-grabbing falsetto which rather undermines any significant doom. Pre-Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’, the pop culture objet de choix, finding its way onto a shelf seemingly without anyone knowing how it got there, was a Dennis Wheatley novel or a Pan collection of horror/ghost stories. Almost as if your home had been built around, it, no one had any recollection of buying it, nor did anyone ever own up to having read it. They just existed, like nail scissors and egg slicers. The suggestion of culture was heady, and they were allowed to stay, only ever breaking free to haunt charity shops and car boot sales.
The tracks here also share that quality. Token offerings at an altar bedecked with cushions, lest you agitate your piles on the cold stone. The interesting tracks tend to be those which go for broke, or like Van Der Graaf Generator‘s ‘White Hammer’, take the concept so seriously that they break the 8-minute mark explaining the ins and outs of the Malleus Maleficarum. Zior is firmly in the other camp, screeching, riffing and speaking in tongues in the rip-roaring 2-minutes of ‘Entrance of the Devil’. Perhaps only on a compilation such as this could you find a band called Elias Hulk. Beyond some churning bass, that’s all you need to know about their contribution.
Disc 2 thankfully kicks off with a change to the hairy rock which was beginning to grate somewhat on disc 1. The Flying Machine‘s ‘The Devil Has Possession of Your Mind” has each band member seemingly receiving different memos, with strumming acoustic guitar disappearing under some frenetic percussion and choir bursts straddling Philly Soul and incantation. A real grower. The Easybeats‘ ‘Heaven and Hell’ take the devil theme to its tenuous limits, but it’s hard to be mean to some jolly harpsichord work and throwaway riff that quickly burrows like an eargrub.
Sything through some pub rock, it’s pleasing to find Icarus‘ ‘The Devil Rides Out’, not only because of its fruity flute flourishes but also because they jumped on the Hammer bandwagon by coattail riding on the 1968 Dennis Wheatley adaptation rather than taking the more obvious Drac route. Though there’s nothing musically to recommend it, I must mention The In-Be-Tween, firstly for their awfully punctuated band name and secondly for the title of their contribution – ‘Girl, I Am Your Evil Witchman’, which feels like a randomly generated song title for a 60s beat band. Once again, everything starts merging into a mush of poorly-recorded berk rock, though things pick up with The Move – not the most obvious inclusion – and ‘Night of Fear’. It’s not very satanic but it’s much needed. It’s almost worth sitting through Curved Air to get to the next doozie – Jacula! The Italian prog-doom band are pretty much what I’d hoped the whole of this comp would be like, and maybe at least it pre-empts a release of all their albums. ‘Long Black Magic Night’ is like a weird Eurovision entry played at 10rpm, with some wistful minor keys and heavily accented babbling. Bravo!
There’s been a distinct lack of female voices thus far, but this is rectified by Julian’s Treatments‘ ‘The Black Tower’, complete with a flute solo, organ pounding and an overwhelming mental image of a cameraman doing that completely over-the-top Jess Franco-esque zoom in, zoom out effect. This is followed by ‘Erotica’ by MAN, which features some orgasmic panting and some discordant faffing about. This was 1969 tbf. There’s no messing around from Coven and ‘Pact With Lucifer’, though the track doesn’t quite hit the commitment of everything else. The superb sleeve notes tell me that they were carried on stage in coffins and that they were the first to use the devil horns hand gesture – can this be so? Write in and let me know!* Disc 2 concludes with Comus, titans of daft Acid Folk and deliverers of flute frenzy. What on earth can remain for us?
*please don’t
I mean, it’s more of the same, obviously. Just a run through the artists tells you everything you need to know – Third Ear Band (the spooky and ritualistic ‘Devil’s Weed’); The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (‘Devil’s Grip’); Blodwyn Pig (‘The Modern Alchemist’) and, unsurprisingly, Cozy Powell (‘Dance with the Devil’, his accidental hit). It gets no more interesting with the lesser-known artists (Curtis Knight Zeus; Onyx) and it takes Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich to wrench the project from some very tame flames. ‘The Sun Goes Down’ is in some ways exactly what you should expect from a band which is never quite how you remember them – here they’re gloomy, squelchy and funereal, right down to the tolling bell outro.
It seems even the curators recognise that the set is flailing somewhat and duly, the big guns are brought out. Tear Gas‘ ‘Witches Come Today’ has a Page-ish monolithic riff and some barnstorming cloak swirling (I imagine). All hail Black Widow who are featured with, of course, ‘Come to the Sabbat’. No half-cocked dabbling with Ouija boards here, this is expensive black candles, funny-smelling incense sticks and an altar with a fancy tablecloth. That should in any other reality be the album closer but it’s a mark of this collection’s oddness that this honour goes to Titanic’s ‘Heia Valenga’, a track that has sod all to do with hell and torment…or maybe it does – Vålerenga is an Oslo-based football club with “Heia Valenga” being a colloquial way of saying, “Go Vålerenga”. Old Nick – you’re not singing any more.
Daz Lawrence
