Aphrodite's Child
666

"Anyone who has intelligence
May interpret the number of the beast.
It is a man's number.
This number is 666"

These words, taken from the Revelation of John, are engraved on the cover of this album. 5 years before the 666 of Black Sabbath (on the cover of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath) and 12 before the famous song by Iron Maiden (just to mention the most famous episodes), Aphrodite's Child ventured into a concept about the devil and the struggle between good and evil.

This French/Greek group included a young Evangelos Odyssey Papathanassiou, alias Vangelis. After gaining some European notoriety thanks to melodic tracks like "Rain and Tears" and "It's Five o'Clock", the group, due to internal tensions, dissolved. Their last testament is this posthumous album, to be considered the first solo album of Vangelis alone.

Vangelis takes inspiration for this work from a book by Costas Ferris, to whom the lyrics are also attributed. The style differs from that typical of the other 2 albums of the group, approaching progressive rock, which was already developing at the time, mixed with blues-rock, "Zappa-esque" influences, free-jazz... It’s impossible to analyze all 24 tracks, so I will describe those most noteworthy.

The album opens with the chorus "We've got the System, to fuck the System!", a deliberately ironic line, because one cannot "fuck" the system through another system, which is followed by "Babylon", with a tribal rhythm and trumpets of the Last Judgment; after the piano and chorus interlude "Loud Loud Loud", you reach "The Four Horsemen", where the verses are played only by bells, other instruments break in during the chorus, turning the finale into a wild blues jam, followed by the instrumental "The Lamb", with hints of Greek folklore. "Aegian Sea" is a slow and very evocative track with a beautiful guitar solo. From this moment on, the album takes a sharp acceleration, featuring many small tracks never exceeding 2.30 minutes, among which the esoteric "The Wakening Beast" stands out, also featuring flutes and piano, the hard rock/free-jazz improvisation of the duo "The Battle of the Locusts/Do It", the whimsical "The Beast", one of the few played by a real band, "Altamont", which recalls what happened at Altamont, a Rolling Stones concert, during which the Hell’s Angels, entrusted with security, killed a spectator.

This leads to "Infinity Symbol", in which the famous singer Irene Papas, reciting "I was, I am, I am to come", an inversion of the biblical verse "Who was, is, is to come" attributed to God, simulates an orgasm. In closing, there is the suite "All the Seats Were Occupied" and "Break", a sweet ballad for piano.