I have a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.
Immortal comedy sketches aside, I’ve never been too terribly aware of Blue Öyster Cult. So my expectations for Agents of Fortune were a blank slate.
heavy metal
Record #315: Deep Purple & the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra- Concerto for Group and Orchestra (1969)
Classic music and metal have always has a strange sort of kinship. Both explore the outer reaches of human emotion through big, dramatic bombast. When you think about it, metal is sort of like the long haired, torn jeaned cousin to the straightlaced, tuxedoed classical music. They may argue over Thanksgiving dinner, but at the end of the day, they still love eachother.
And on Concerto for Group and Orchestra, we’re in for a family reunion.
Record #280: Jethro Tull – Aqualung (1971)
“Yeah AQUALUNG,” quoth Ron Burgundy during his epic flute solo, a nod to the group’s place in rock history as “that metal band with the flute dude.” Which is a little reductive, especially considering that the flute is prominently featured exactly ZERO times in the title track. Also because Jethro Tull isn’t exactly metal.
Record #48: Black Sabbath – Paranoid (1970)
Black Sabbath is often cited as one of the founders of the popular rock subgenre “metal,” but you’d never guess if you compared it to the drop-D tuned, breakdown plagued, double-kick-drum fury of today’s metal.
This is too melodic, lacking the palm muted chunks of contemporary metal, instead favoring dark (for the time) lyrics put over heavily distorted (again, for the time) blues rock.
But don’t take that as a criticism of the music, only of modern semantics.
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