Live 1978

Album Review

It's been a long time coming, but after years of putting up with substandard and/or harshly edited recordings of the Hawklords in full flight, the full text of their November 1978 show at the Brunel University on the outskirts of London has now materialized and it's as great as we always suspected it would be. With the Hawklords' 25 Years On album then fresh on the shelves (as, indeed, it was again when this arrived, reappearing in a deluxe edition just months earlier), the band was guaranteed a loyal, loud audience. What the audience wasn't sure of was how it would be rewarded for that loyalty. For all the similarities in personnel, etc, the Hawklords were a very different proposition to the hawks that spawned them, just as the album was a distinct step away from even the mothership's most recent recordings. And so it transpired, with a set that barely glanced back towards the band's commercial glory days, and focused instead on the here and now. Six tracks from this performance have seen the light of day in the past: the opening salvo of "Automaton," "25 Years," "High Rise," "Death Trap," and, from a little later in the show, "Spirit of the Age" and "Sonic Attack." New to your ears, then, are "The Age of the Micro Man," "Urban Guerrilla," "Psi Power," and the closing firestorm of "Brainstorm," truly one of the most ferocious performances that song has ever witnessed. Add exemplary sound quality and a booklet that oozes the customary Atomhenge attention to detail, and another piece of the mighty Hawkwind jigsaw slips seamlessly into place.