voila_la_scorie Music journalist, Martin Popoff has divided metal history into three periods: invention (1970), reinvention (1976), and re-intensification (1984). Keeping in mind that the term heavy metal was coined to describe the music of bands like Sir Lord Baltimore, Grand Funk Railroad, and Dust, one must accept that bands who played a similar style of music were the original heavy metal bands, long before the genre rose to new fame and notoriety in the 1980's.

Sainte Anthony's Fyre were one of those early heavy metal bands who played an intensified, amped up version of rock. Chugging guitars, screaming solos, gruff shouted vocals, hard-hitting drums, and a thumping bass. Influenced by a mixture of British blues-based rock (Cream, Led Zeppelin), heavy psychedelic guitar rock (Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer), and a copious supply of LSD, Sainte Anthony's Fyre's sound comes from a similar mould as Sir Lord Baltimore. The opening track, "Love Over You" begins with a salute to the raucous fuzz tone riff that comes in after the wah-wah intro of Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile". The song sets the tone for much of the album with an attempt to lean to the radio friendly side of rock by singing catchy, melody-rich choruses with a coarse set of pipes while the instruments churn out hard grinding riffs and rhythm. You're not going to hear the Beach Boys on acid. But the rock and roll tone carries through many of the songs on the album in the same way that some songs by Dust, Grand Funk, and Humble Pie crank out bombastic hard rock at times.

The song that captures the "heavy" atmosphere best is "Lone Soul Road", which is a doomy chug of fuzz tone with raspy vocals. "Chance of Fate" also treads a solid rock path that suggests a more visceral approach to what Hendrix occasionally attempted. The style is primitive, greasy and sweaty. Naturally, there is room enough for guitar solos an battering drum fills and breaks.

The drawback to this album for me lies in the sound quality which is (as many obscure albums from this time are ) not as clean in their production as many more well-known acts with more money for recording. Sainte Anthony's Fyre couldn't get a label to back them so they self-produced the album. In the CD booklet, drummer Bob Sharples says he's very impressed with the remastering and how good it sounds. I give it a three out of five for sound quality myself, maybe slightly less okay than Budgie's debut.

You can find Sainte Anthony's Fyre on YouTube in case you are interested in checking them out. As a collector of proto-metal and early era heavy metal, I wanted to have this in my collection. If you are less an aficionado than I am you might chose to give this a cursory listen on the Internet first. For what it is, I give it three stars.