Zior
Every Inch a Man

Paraphrasing a 1992 Italian film..."We wanted to be the Black Sabbath".

Maybe that's exactly what Keith Bonsor and his friends thought when they started to bring to life their heavy blues project tainted with dark shades. Bonsor was no ordinary fool, and besides being a skilled multi-instrumentalist, he had years of experience behind the mixer, so when he pulled his drummer friend Pete Brewer in 1968, along with guitarist John Truba and bassist Barry Skeels, both recruited by correspondence, he was already able to propose a multimedia show. Light and shadow play, images of sacrificial rites, invocations to the evil amid smoke, the smell of sulfur, and unwanted guitar explosions! Let's say that wacky types like these were not looked upon kindly for their subliminal satanic message, and they had difficulty finding labels willing to invest in them, thus they lingered for years in the smoky limbo of live shows without finding a record breakthrough...at least until Black Sabbath's success legitimized the degenerate Ossianic style. Signed with Nephanta (which had the folk Dulcimer in its ranks) and after a self-titled album in 1971, mephistopheleanly suspended between hard blues heaviness and lightness induced by psychedelic acid with a splash of Traffic-like folk, the Zior entity decisively veers towards the Sabbatian heavy with the following "Every Inch a Man".

 But beware that, compared to the straightforward riff of Iommi, Bonsor roams across the album with devastating effects: fuzz flashes, wahawah, and distorted keyboards. A striking example is the opener "Entrance of the Devil" with those obscene screams and theatrical laughs embellishing the possessed work of the instruments. I imagine it as the showpiece in the unhealthy atmosphere of their live performances, amid sulfuric explosions and flashes. And there's nothing more fitting than the psychotic hard blues of "The Chicago Spline" to continue without losing momentum: think of the opening riff of "Born to be wild" by Steppenwolf bent to the will no longer of the road but of the Devil, and you'll get an idea. Zior's blues origin is evident in the robust theme of "Evolution" with Bonsor's voice more ferocious than usual and the others barking the blasphemous chorus evolution...evolution...evolution!!! While listening to a devastation immersed in psychedelic acid like "Angel of the Highway" brings to mind another great Luciferian character like Brian Kild, who was also morbidly attracted to highway accidents.

 Elsewhere, Zior demonstrate (as they did on their first album) they are capable of writing Led Zeppelin-like singles ("Strange Kind of Magic"), timeless beautiful folksy ballads ("Time is the Reason"), impure blues such as "Cat's eye" and "She'll take you down". But also giving with no anxiety a progressive treatment to the compositions ("Suspended Animation") or dressing them with Doors-like echoes (!) like when Morrison performs over Manzarek's keys (the title track).

 I don't know if Zior really wanted to be Black Sabbath, but perhaps you have realized that their approach to rock music, though starting from Osbourne and company's dark gothic frenzies, is much more varied but less homogeneous and incisive. The Black Sabbath in its monolithic nature invented a genre copied by thousands of bands, and it is fitting that Tony Iommi still stands on stage delivering the big riff and Ozzy gobbles bats. It's no coincidence that the four Zior, after recording another good album under the name Monument, decided to devote themselves to selling musical instruments (Brewer) or hippie crafts (Skeels). Only Bonsor, with his expertise with tapes and various gadgets, remained in the field as a sound engineer and producer (see the label 53rd & 3rd Records).