Clotho's Flail
Iron Duke

Unknown project lost among the progressive upheavals of the period, Clotho's Flail take their name from the Three Fates reminiscent of ELP.

A pointless group, lacking great technical abilities, led by a crazy character with a noble name, Whilelm H. Beatty; for many, this surname will mean nothing, but this young bassist and singer boasts an illustrious lineage, that of an aristocratic family whose most famous member was Rear Admiral David Beatty, a controversial protagonist of the gigantic Battle of Jutland fought in 1916.

And it is precisely the Jutland that inspires Clotho's Flail for their first and only album, a cheap and unpleasant mishmash, accompanied by obtuse arrangements and delirious lyrics.

The band, besides the aforementioned Beatty, who also takes care of the few guitar parts, is composed of keyboardist Harry Ramilles and drummer Mike Bethell. These three figures, mad and a bit unlucky, strive to compose an album of music frankly difficult to listen to all the way through, coarse and often unpleasant, with experiments based on disjointed drums, amateurish keyboards, and a touch of absurd warlike fury that makes the lyrics quite ridiculous.

As already mentioned, "Iron Duke" is inspired by the naval battle fought in the North Sea on May 31, 1916, between the Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet. And indeed it begins with the presentation of the two opposing fleets: Armies of Waves is a monotonous chant marked by skewed bass blows and an oppressive organ riff, with the snare drum mimicking a military drum while Beatty's dull and uninterested voice lists for a full six minutes the name, tonnage, and main armaments of all the major battleships present at the battle, first the British, then the German; we are talking about over sixty ships, so one can imagine what effect such a song might have.

We continue with the horrific Battlecruisers, which describes the moment when the English and the Germans come to blows, and the former see two modern ships sink: all of which is narrated by a crazed voice with grotesque inserts of distorted guitar and drums trying to mimic cannon shots: the whole is obscene and disturbing. To North describes the moment when the Germans feel victory in their grasp and close in with their ships, the voice here belongs to the incompetent Bethell while the piano is tumultuous and disconnected, often there are rhythmic clashes with the bass and only the guitar proves decent in its mundane and slow chords. Also terrible is Encounter, depicting the British in the act of blocking their opponents with a wall of battleships: an exalted Beatty sings the praises of his illustrious ancestor, while the others try to craft a triumphalist march with pitiful results; the instrumental Firepower is an indescribable turmoil intended to give the idea of a bloody battle, but in reality, it gives the impression of instruments played at random by three idiots, and that is probably exactly the case. The delirium continues with a more relaxed track, Escape, which tells of the moment when the Germans manage to escape and a sudden calm falls over the sea: it is meant to be a lyrical and poetic moment, but Beatty seems drunk, and one cannot help but laugh at the insipid choruses and the organ that plays scales and other similar exercises.

One is frightened by the utterly messed-up attack of Dying for the Empire, with a completely crazy and out-of-time drum, an atrociously arpeggiated guitar, and a piano that seems to be played with hammer blows; even to cause chaos you need a certain intelligence, but here all of that's missing. The singing is terribly out-of-tune and tells us about the suffering of the sailors with words like, "They live... Then they are died... A game of death... I can't feel my legs... An head rains... Here, for the Empire." Absolutely aberrant.

The end comes to save our minds with the twelve-minute mini-suite La Nuit De Juin (Lutzow, Six Fights, On The Way Home); the reason why this last track is in French is incomprehensible, but so be it. The battle is over, the three sections respectively describe the loss of the German battlecruiser Lutzow, self-sunk due to the damage suffered, the night clashes, and finally the return home with the Germans managing to vanish into the night. The composition is more elaborate and perhaps a tad more polished than what preceded it, but the level remains abysmal, even though Ramilles adds a part for an out-of-tune and incredibly poorly played Mellotron, Beatty gives an almost non-obscene performance with the voice interpreting various states of mind, such as fatigue, the relief of escape, the anger of dying at the last moment on the way home. The bass is only audible at times, the drum seems to work well even if its sound changes multiple times and is often off-tempo: evidently the result of overdubs done poorly. There is a very brief and very simple organ solo in "Six Fights", for the rest, the piece remains monotonous, without developments, and somewhat all the same. The suite ends with Bethell's solo, horrible voice reciting a kind of prayer for the dead dedicated to the "Gods Of The Abyss".

A truly terrible, untraceable album and practically unknown, moreover not credited to anyone, recorded in 1972 but distributed only two years later, "Iron Duke" is appreciable for its paroxysmal roughness, the fascinating amateurism, the originality of the conceptual plot, the latent madness of the musicians who produced it. An obscure wreck of the golden years, which amid splendors of all kinds also saw the birth of immense pearls of absurdity.