Warlock - 1972 - Warlock

Warlock

1972

Warlock

01. Music Box / Struggling Man 4:23

02. So Can Woman 3:30

03. Putting Life Together 5:16

04. You've Been My Rock 2:54

05. Thrills Of Love 3:16

06. Love Girl 5:52

07. As You Die / Music Box 14:35

Joey Finazzo (lead vocals)

Jack Burningtree (guitar, bass, vocals)

Mike Mujadin (drums)

I bought this album for the cover alone expecting it to sound like more traditional heavy psych or blues rock, and it is definitely not that. It has a sound much closer to a group like Spooky Tooth than Black Sabbath or Stray. So that was quite a surprise.

The album starts with a shouty and soulful song and then moves through Side A pretty smoothly, with a lot of sax and funky bass underneath. The fourth track almost sounds like something you'd hear during the disco era, not from 1972! It was rather jarring after the more somber and occasionally creepy atmosphere the band was building for the first three songs. You've Been My Rock is much better as a stand alone song than it is on the album, but it's still enjoyable - and the atmosphere returns after it anyway.

The B Side has a pretty unmemorable song with Love Girl but then kicks off the 14 minute long epic As You Die, which sounds much more at home in 1972. This song takes everything that made the A Side unique (this band's brand of funk and soul) and combines it with contemporary proggish keyboard riffs, especially towards the second half of the song. The 14 minutes go by pretty quickly, the song doesn't drag on at any point... it's definitely a high point of the album. If more of that prog influence were felt on the A Side I probably would have rated the album hig

One of the stranger chapters of the Holland-Dozier-Holland story of the early 70s – and one of the coolest, too! Warlock are a jazzy rock combo with plenty of soul – a bit like a twisted version of Blood Sweat & Tears, but with all the sinister energy you'd guess from the image on the cover! Most of the numbers have a nasty scratchy sort of vocal – almost Alice Cooper-ish, in keeping with the Warlock name of the group – but a few others get a bit more soulful and funky, belying the HDH connection of the group – sometimes even showing a righteous jazzy vibe, as kind of an odd echo of the Detroit Tribe Records scene. The best tracks have some jazzy phrasing in the mix, and let the guitars go off to the side – and titles include "Love Girl", "You've Been My Rock", "So Can Woman", "Thrills Of Love", and the 14 minute jammer "As You Die/Music Box", which almost has a Colosseum build to it!