voila_la_scorie Holy crap, but these guys know how to start off an album! Pick slides, power chords, and crashing cymbals pierced by a high shrieking vocal. Within seconds you’re carried into an all-out ass buster. Take your most rockinest rollinest KISS and inject a powerful dose of Uriah Heep and there you have “Sacrifice”, the opening track of Sorcery’s 1978 album, “Stunt Rock”.

Sorcery were one of two concurrent bands in late seventies America with the same name that were playing hard rock, with one leaning more toward heavy psychedelic rock and the other ripping up the vinyl grooves with hard charging rock. Their debut album, “Stunt Rock”, served as a movie soundtrack for an Italian movie of the same name.

But sure, any band can rip your face off with the album opener. What about the rest of the album? Ballads and blues? No way! Sorcery stick to a solid hard rock core and with a total Satanic/sacrificial theme. With song titles like “Sacrifice”, “Wizards Council”, “Talking with the Devil”, “Burned Alive”, “Book of Magic”, and “Mark of the Beast”, Sorcery take a late seventies hard rock approach to black magic and devilish deviation. The music is kick ass but too fun to be really dark in spite of the lyrics. Again, imagine KISS meets Uriah Heep.

This album pretty much sticks to its powerhouse rock sound with “The Bird Song” being the only exception as most of it is acoustic before bringing it to a close with a Uriah Heep-like ending. The CD version comes with a bonus track, “Power Mad”. I had to order mine as a near-mint used copy from Italy. The recording does sound at times like it came off a very good piece of vinyl, but I honestly don’t notice it except on the title track and a couple of others.

If you have a chance to give this a listen you’re in for a solid dose of kick ass hard rock. Great guitar sound! Some late seventies rock clichés. Overall great stuff!