Lucifer's Friend
Mind Exploding

When speaking of Lucifer's Friend, the mind immediately conjures up the dark and grotesque cover of that gem which was the self-titled debut album from 1970, an album that every true lover of '70s hard rock (and not only) should own. Yet, the Anglo-German group continued to produce excellent records throughout the '70s and the early '80s. Not only that, already from their second album, they embarked on an incredible evolution that would definitively liberate them from comparisons with the models from across the Channel and lead them to embrace prog (already partially present in the debut), jazz-fusion, heavy metal, and even AOR (in the splendid and magnificently anachronistic "Sumogrip" from '94 released under the name Lucifer's Friend II).

Let's take a few steps back to 1976, the year in which this "Mind Exploding" was released, the last chapter, as far as the '70s are concerned, with John Lawton on vocals before he left "Lucifer's friend" (it seems that actually the name refers to the so-called Swedish matches) to join the more famous Uriah Heep for a short period.
In the album, superbly produced, a newfound hard rock grit magnificently marries with the prog sounds and especially fusion of their recent past, in what effectively appears as a summary of the various musical phases the group has gone through up to that point.

It begins energetically with the dynamic "Moonshine Rider", moving through the melodic "Blind Boy" and the Uriah Heep reminiscences in "Broken Toys". Spectacular is the performance of Lawton, perfectly at ease following the sometimes quirky harmonic evolutions where the arrangements move in a more marked jazz-fusion direction as in "Free Hooker" or in the complex "Fugitive" featuring the nimble bass of Dieter Horns prominently. The wild rock 'n' roll of "Natural Born Mover" surprises, opened by a sophisticated riff of guitarist Peter Hesslein who also delights in a slide solo here. Excellent is the showcasing by keyboardist Peter Hecht and session drummer Curt Cress.

The album closes with the splendid "Yesterday's Ideals", a sort of epic and romantic ballad introduced by a narrating voice and disquieting sounds of drums and piano: the two instruments chase each other, search for each other, a surreal prelude to the actual song. After almost four minutes the piece "disintegrates" and the musicians find the space for an instrumental frenzy guided by a soprano sax solo before the return of John "The Voice" Lawton who in the finale bids us farewell with a virtuosic vocalize ending with an unexpected yet reassuring "picardy third" (the use of ending a minor key piece with a major chord). The classic track that justifies purchasing the album and, I dare say, the pinnacle of this incredible group's entire discography.