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Of all the proto-metal albums I have been exploring recently, Jerusalem’s debut and only album released before they broke up is one of the best I have procured. The original three members decided to form a band in the 60’s after having seen John Mayall perform. No one knew how to play but they worked hard and later began performing live, playing their own compositions as they didn’t know many songs to cover (a detailed band history is in the booklet that comes with the CD). By the late 60’s they really began exploring the music trends and moved away from the blues and more into what we now call proto-metal. They expanded their line-up to a five-piece, and Ian Gillan of Deep Purple took an interest in them and produced their one and only album.
The album alternates between guitar-driven heavy rock with shifting rhythm and tempo and heavy hitters with pounding drums and lots of fuzz on the guitar. There are moments when they seem to spend a decent amount of time approaching the progressive rock game while at other times it seems the band just wants you to crash your head into the table.
Vocalist Lynden Williams sings with slightly rough-edged rock vocals on some songs, low and haunting on others (as in “Beyond the Grave”) and sometimes positively rips his throat apart as in “Hooded Eagle”. The true pounding heavy number here is “Primitive Man” with lots of fuzz on the guitar and the drums are slugged hard enough to break the sticks, you’d think. Most other tracks have less fuzz and therefore have a less metal guitar sound, but in tone and composition the music is more metal than a lot of contemporary bands who played with more fuzz but followed a blues-rock path. There is a good variation in the music and the overall impression is that things aren’t allowed to drift along in the same style for too long. Three songs that I personally love are “Frustration”, “Midnight Steamer” (with the ear-perking line “Your captain is a skeleton!”), and “Beyond the Grave”.
This CD also comes with five bonus tracks, including the single “Kamakazi Moth” (a short and simple but heavy number), and demo and single versions of four other songs. Again, there were bands using more distortion for their guitar sounds at the time but Jerusalem had the right idea for composing music and songs that fit the metal framework. The music is at times complex and polyrhythmic and at other times more straightforward and aggressive. One wonders what they might have achieved had they reached the elusive but milestone third album.