WARRIOR ON THE EDGE OF TIME (1975)

This time they lost Dettmar and added a second drummer (Alan Powell) to sit beside King, allowing Simon to throw out fills, runs, and filigree to concentrate solely on the beat. Lemmy's here, but you don't notice him as much (this is not good).

There are some classics of the canon hereon -- "Assault and Battery/The Golden Void" and "Magnu" most significantly -- but the afflatus evident on Hall Of The Mountain Grill is spreading.

Most distressing are Michael Moorcock's and Nik Turner's declamatory bits in the spaces where Robert Calvert once appeared; the musical settings are weak noodlings by House with Powell and King tapping and banging a bit on the side, and Turner/Moorcock carry a scant fraction of the menace and presence Calvert conveyed.

Even worse, Moorcock's tales tend to be of a masturbatory teenage Dungeons and Dragons ilk, where Calvert's focussed on more "adult" sf visions. This is the type of album that's nice to have on CD so you can blip some tracks to listen to the core chunky BLANGA bits.

BLANGA SCORE: 6.