I spent some time in a weird corner of the internet where people argued that this record and Warpig’s self-titled debut were just as important as music by Zeppelin, Purple and Black Sabbath. Before I get to the actual music on this record I do want to point out the following:

• Zeppelin had released three albums (cout’em) prior to this record coming out.
• Black Sabbath had released two albums (count’em) prior to this record coming out.
• Deep Purple in Rock (i.e. their left turn into heavy metal) was released in June, 6 months before this record came out.

So can we drop the clearly false idea that this album is as important as those records?

This record is, at its loudest, very much in the Blue Cheer/”heavy psych” mold, only it’s louder because, um, it’s been nearly three years since Blue Cheer basically invented heavy metal and the sound has evolved and gotten louder. (Thanks to, um, the bands that Sir Lord Baltimore is supposedly just as big a deal as….) Sir Lord Baltimore are more diverse than Blue Cheer but that is a very low bar.

You’ll be shocked to learn that a band you’ve never heard of doesn’t have as good songs as Zeppelin or Purple, and you’re likely equally shocked to hear that they don’t have the same kind of clearly metal aesthetic as Sabbath. They sound “older” than Sabbath and they don’t have the material of the other two Holy Trinity bands.

I don’t care if some Creem journalist used “heavy metal” for this record for the first time. (If that’s even provable.) It’s not the first heavy metal record by any stretch of the imagination. And it’s clearly inferior in terms of songs or aesthetic to contemporary heavy metal records. So why are their people on the internet claiming otherwise?

7/10