The Dawning Of The Age Of Nefarious

A small series in which I try to sidestep my January blues by any means necessary, Part 4: Satan.

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But first, a word of warning to any other folk tempted to follow my path invoking the dark lord of annihilation, these devil worshipping chaps can be awfully insistent.

Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there
Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there
Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there
Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there
Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there
Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there
Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there
Come, come, come to the Sabbat
Come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there

Maybe it was wise of me to only play Black Widow Sacrifice in broad daylight today.

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Hailing from Leicester Black Widow seem to have suffered rather a lot by comparison with fellow Midlanders Black sabbath over the ages, or by knownothing dweebs like me assuming because of their name and subject matter they were metal. They released their debut LP Sacrifice in 1970 a month after Black Sabbath hit the shelves and reached #32 in the UK album charts, which surprised me. There was clearly a ready audience in our green and pleasant land for a bit of the old down below stuff whipped up by Hammer Horror and Dennis Wheatley.

What is immediately apparent is that Sacrifice is a Hammond organ and flute driven light prog album, rather than anything more meaty. The playing throughout is high quality, especially Zoot Taylor on organ, but rather mannered for my tastes; you might be able to make comparisons with Jethro Tull I suppose*.

Sacrifice starts well with ‘In Ancient Days’ which has shades of Deep Purple about the intro and then veers off into something a little more Californian. Kip Trevor’s vocals sell the tale of forbidden eldritch knowledge nicely as Clive Jones adds some nicely melodic sax to proceedings.

For the sake of positivity we will skip straight to the absolute barnstormer here, ‘Come To The Sabbat’ where Black Widow start to live up to their name and put in a proper eerie turn. Hell, I admit even the flute works on this one. The track builds its own momentum, part-silly/part-sinister which is exactly how I prefer to take my devil worshippers. Fittingly the band and crew manage to work themselves into a proper lather towards the end**.

Discard your clothes and come on foot,
Through streams and fields and moonlit moors,
Your bodies soaked in secret oils,
Perfumed herbs will heal your sores

‘Come To The Sabbat’ is terribly enjoyable, in fact it rather puts me in mind of possibly my favourite Hammer Horror movie The Witches, a twitching of evil beneath a pastoral idyll.

Then … hmm, how to put this. The remainder of the LP, despite some solidly promising track titles such as ‘Conjuration’ and ‘Attack Of The Demon’ reminds me of nothing so much as the musical Hair; this is truly the dawning of the Age of Nefarious.

Seriously, it’s pretty bad. Take ‘Seduction’, sorry but this peculiarly queasy cocktail jazz wouldn’t provoke any trouser stirrings on my part and even with my historically low bachelor standards, to paraphrase Groucho Marx I am not sure I would want to bonk anyone who was rendered bonkable by this track. It is better than what follows, how on Earth can you not hit the back of the net with a track called ‘Attack Of The Demon’?

Okay so ‘Sacrifice’ does give it a bit of Santana, Leicester-stylee and again there are some pleasing Jon Lord tones to the organ workout – the way it bounces around with the bass is very Lord-Glover, but it isn’t enough.

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Despite looking to invoke the soul-eater who lurks in the hereafter just to boost me through to January payday I am by nature a positive person so let’s put on Sacrifice and just groove on down to ‘In Ancient Days’ and ‘Come To The Sabbat’.

Sadly, my January blues are not much abated I may need to find a stronger channel to the dark one than Black Widow; the band swiftly moved away from Satan in their next few LPs. If I wasn’t frightened of them this might be the time to play Comus.

I am also rather smitten with the cover and gatefold art of Sacrifice, it’s not often you get a UK Top 30 LP with sunken undead dugs on the cover and analingus depicted in the gatefold – trust me, rudity and nudity on LP covers is a specialist subject of mine.

1120 Down (in the pits of Hell).

*I can’t, as I really don’t like them.

**seek out the demo version on the (coughs awkwardly) CD, it’s sillier and smacks of genuine derangement.