Granicus

GRANICUS transcends the genre of early ‘70s progressive hard rock, they will thrill somebody hungry for a killer in that department but are so creatively explosive anybody into any brand of hard rock from classic, metal, punk, prog up into the wild beyond will get caught up in the band’s whirlpool of manic energy. You get to relax here and there but most of the time they come at you so decisively you gotta hang on to your brain. For my money these guys delivered an LP on level with the best famous bands of the day, contemporaries like Led Zep, Rush, Deep Purple, Sabbath... based on the power and variety captured here it is clearly only a lack of promotion that kept Granicus off the charts. It has hard prog moves in spades but also over the top energy with outrageous vocal moves powerful enough to have scored a big bullseye in teenage wasteland America 1973.

As the liner notes on the sleeve declare... “Granicus puts forward a musically cohesive, emotionally compelling vision of growing up wasted in America, searching desperately for and occasionally glimpsing spiritual truth, in a climate foreshadowing Armageddon”. Granicus is named after a battle in 334 BC where Alexander The Great defeated the Persian Empire. This album has more than enough ammo to defeat your head right now, they take you deep down into the sordid demonic underbelly of America 1973, ending the LP with an ultimate rock and roll exorcism. Appropriate to say fasten your seatbelts for this ride!