Warhorse
Warhorse

Growing in the shadow of a band like the Deep Purple must not have been easy for Warhorse in the early seventies, being led by Nick Simper after his departure from Deep Purple. Certainly a cult band, not exactly the band you would easily find on the shelves of a mainstream store.

Their proposal - if we wanted to label it, we might dare a Hard Progressive - was very enjoyable, even though it paid a certain, let's say affinity, with Deep Purple themselves, paradoxically from the post-Simper period - In Rock had already been released -; but if we want, even from the period when Simper was part of the Purple, thanks to late-psychedelic echoes that characterized the Purple before the year of Our Lord 1970.

Nothing groundbreaking in essence, but an interesting proposal: "Vulture Blood" begins with a pastoral and very vintage organ intro, but which also presents sinister nuances that will pave the way for the piece, a Hard very close to the earliest Black Sabbath and with Ashley Holt's raspy voice typical of the English Hard of the period: you immediately perceive it's British folks. Very nice is the harmonized unison interlude between guitar and organ, very neo-classical but at the same time not particularly original... Inside there is also a nice guitar solo that instead recalls American guitarists like John Cipollina or James Gurley of Big Brother and the Holding Company. Onto the second track "No Chance", the usual structure: pastoral organ intro that this time supports a mid-tempo ballad with apocalyptic and nostalgic tones. Moving forward we come to "Solitude", a typical ballad of the period with psychedelic-melancholic hues and very dark tones, which seems to give a good brush-up to the Strawbs of the wakemanian period.

Anyway, the whole album maintains these levels: "St. Louis", "Ritual", and "Woman of the Devil" could easily be found on one of the records of Deep Purple's MK II; it's not an exaggeration from a sound point of view. They could be mistaken for them from a structural and sonic point of view, even though, going into specifics and details, the differences are indeed felt.

Overall it is a very enjoyable album, played without excesses, without pretensions, dirty enough, not essential but still important for those in search of the cult.