voila_la_scorie Cactus were quite simply a heavy-guitar oriented blues-based rock band with a singer on the Neanderthal-rough-edged voice side.

I stumbled across “Rumblin’ Man” on YouTube while checking out a playlist of proto-metal and was immediately intrigued by the excessive distortion and utter heaviness of the song. I did a quick check on Wikipedia and discovered that Tim Bogart and Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge were in the band and also read that Jeff Beck was originally supposed to be the guitarist until he had a motor accident that left him out of commission for a year. This sounded like it could be a band worth checking out.

My next step was to check iTunes where I found the band’s four studio albums plus this compilation and some other albums too. I listened to the samples of each song from each album just to get an idea of what kind of music Cactus made. But I was perhaps too hasty in my sampling. Any song with a good heavy guitar sound got noted and I soon found that I had listed about four songs per album, and then I saw that this compilation included all but one of the songs I had listed but it did include “Rumblin’ Man”, an outtake from the "Cactus" album sessions. My fingers flew to Amazon and a couple of weeks later I had the eagerly awaited album.

But I was to be disappointed. Too hastily had I been in checking out the music. I knew to expect that there was going to be some blues-based music but it was much more than I had imagined.

The first three albums (Cactus, One Way… Or Another, Restrictions) follow the same style of music: heavy guitar blues-based rock. There are moments when you might think that the guitar sound is really driving and gritty, and the vocals sounding like they are oiled with phlegm in order to keep that gruff troll-like sound. And of course the rhythm section is doing just fine with the two former Fudgers in control. But at many times I got the impression that this was just yet another band doing what Led Zeppelin and Nazareth were doing or had already done. Only on the few songs from their final album "‘Ot ‘N’ ‘Sweaty” is there a change in sound a little as the vocalist has changed from Rusty Day to Peter French (of Atomic Rooster) and a keyboardist has been added.

I became rather disappointed at first since I had been looking for real proto-metal that was more metal and not so bluesy. I also felt there was a lack of creativity when I saw song titles like “Feel So Good” and “Feel So Bad” or “Sweet Little 16” and “Sweet Sixteen”. Then I heard the lyrics to “Alaska” and when Rusty Day sang “Home of the penguin” I nearly stopped dead in my tracks (I was walking and using my iPhone) and couldn’t believe how uneducated that sounded. Even “Rumblin’ Man” which I had greatly looked forward to hearing was not up to my expectations when I realized that it was just a Neanderthal rock version of Link Wray’s “Rumble” with lyrics added and sung by a cave man.

Well, I hated to think that I wasted my money, so I listened again to all the songs, this time knowing what I was going to get and it seems that there are a dozen songs or so that I actually enjoyed this time round. From “Cactus”: Their version of “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover” is actually pretty well done. “Oleo” features some very distorted bass and a decent drum solo and it has a nice live studio feel to it. “Feel So Good” has some great hard rock guitar and strangely sounds a bit like “I’m a Man” by the Spencer Davis Group. “Rumblin’ Man” is just fun to listen to now as I see it for what it was meant to be: a studio outtake of outlandish heaviness and savage rock.

From “One Way… Or Another”: “Rock Out, Whatever You Feel Like” is just a good 70’s guitar rock song with an Bon Scott approach to singing with some half spoken lyrics (did Bon ever hear this song?). “Song for Aries” is a very pretty instrumental with acoustic guitar and very gentle electric guitar. My favourite is “One Way… Or Another” which is likely the best example of proto-metal, or at least heavy guitar rock. My choice for best song overall, too.

From “Restrictions” and “’Ot ‘N’ Sweaty”: “Guiltless Glider” is a surprisingly long song at over eight minutes. It keeps the blues base but blends in some good simple hard rock. “Evil” is also a good example of Cactus’ more gritty sound but still in the heavy Led Zeppelin vein. “Bag Drag” is another decent heavy rock number. From “’Ot ‘N’ Sweaty” the hard rock/heavy rock style continues but with organ, and “Bad Stuff” is the one stand out track for me on this one.

Overall, not a bad collection of music as long as you take it for what it is. It’s not what I was looking for or what I am into these days but I still found enough enjoyable songs to have made the purchase worthy, though I wouldn’t have felt I was missing out if I hadn’t bought it if I had been more familiar with the music.

One final thing, this double compilation does not come with any booklet detailing the band history. The inlay card opens to one page only with basic details about the songs and personnel, but nothing meaty. I would have at least liked a historical account of the band to go with this compilation.