Lucifer´s Friend-Banquet (1974)

The history of the German band Lucifer's Friend has been marked by diverse musical directions. They were never content to remain within a single defined style, but rather always preferred to explore new avenues with each subsequent album. They navigated brilliantly from the heavy prog of their roots to hard rock, passing through jazz rock, though always with a clear progressive perspective. In 1974, the band released their fourth album, "Banquet", where they moved away from the heavy sounds of their first two albums to delve into the realm of jazz rock, but without definitively abandoning their heavy rock roots. The compositions on this album remain powerful but with a different nature, partly replacing the sharp, dark guitar riffs with the sounds of electric piano, synthesizers, string instruments, and elaborate brass arrangements. Here, the guitars are more focused on solos than riffs, and the fact that pure hard rock is almost entirely absent does not mean that the overall tone of the album is any less powerful. Tracks like "Spanish Galleon" or "Sorrow" are a clear example of that orientation towards the realms of jazz rock, while "Thus Spoke Oberon" is closer to classic progressive rock, and in a similar tone appears the energetic and baroque "Dirty Old Town", with which they ended a muscular and forceful album, almost as much as any of the best hard rock albums of the time.