Mountain announce their arrival on the rock scene with a crash and a boom and a bang, so that many regard this as the band's finest hour and one of the Top Three hard rock albums of 1970 (a year pretty rich on HR classics by itself - Live At Leeds, Paranoid, Deep Purple In Rock... need I go on?) I'm pretty fond of it, myself: while Flowers Of Evil is certainly a better introduction to the band's unique sound and a little stronger on a song-for-song basis, Climbing! might easily make it judging by the freshness and the force alone. After all, who needed a wimpy wussy debut album in 1970, the year of hard rock par excellence?
Nobody, and that's why the record crashes into and out of your speakers with the powerful 'Mississippi Queen', the trademark Mountain tune and still the only 'radio classic' in the entire catalog of the band, as far as I know (here's one more chance to remind you that I never listen to the radio). Corky Laing introduces the song with his trusty cowbells, and Leslie breaks out a riff that's completely generic, I admit, but he lashes it out with such tremendous power as if he were pounding his poor guitar with a mallet. It's not 'heavy' in the Tony Iommi sense - which equates 'heavy' with 'low' rather than 'loud', but it's not just stupid loudness, either. It's more like the Hammer of the Gods, you understand: the God of Thunder coming down from the mountains and confessing his love to the Mississippi Queen. A short and verrry convincing confession, indeed. An all-time classic; the only complaint is that the song really overshadowed the rest of Mountain's output and so became a stone round their neck rather than just one of their worthy contributions.
So do not forget that there are eight more songs on the record - not all of them are equally good, of course, and some are even annoying, but anyway, a song never makes an entire album, be it 'Satisfaction' or 'Baby One More Time'. Climbing! does not have such an obvious division of the record into a Leslie part and a Felix part, as on some of the subsequent albums; still, it is evident that some of the songs bear a more psychedelic, hippie flavour, courtesy of Felix, while others lean towards the give-it-yer-all unsophisticated rip-roaring, courtesy of Leslie. Both ideally complement each other, of course. Leslie's contributions on here are mostly in the same vein as 'Queen' and often just as enjoyable: the level of energy on 'Never In My Life' is simply incredible, and don't miss the drumming - Corky Laing bashes like a real powerhouse, and he never misses a beat. Likewise, 'Sittin' On A Rainbow' is another fun riff-fest, with a little charming, almost childish, melody, complemented by the relentless tom-tom-tom-tom of our trusty drummer.
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