Steeple

Steeple

England’s Wolf People take age-old ‘70s hard progressive rock and maintain the heaviness without being stuffy about it. The crystalline guitar leads break through the numbing power chords and molten riffs holding the rhythm section together. “Silbury Sands” adds some dark coven vocals to a sound that matches Black Sabbath with Cream in a blues-based trudge-a-thon. “Tiny Circle” adds the Jethro Tull syncopated flute to emphasize their early-‘70s idolatry. “Painted Cross” kicks up a Frijid Pink-Iron Butterfly atmosphere with a tighter, livelier backbeat. “Morning Born” works between the weirdness of the era and their own grand dynamic. It’s easy to imagine this as one big put-on, but the riffs are huge and the guitar solos are truly manic (“Cromlech”). Tracks such as “One By One from Dorney Beach,” “Castle Keep” and the two parts of “Bank of Sweet Dundee” may have a tongue somewhere in cheek, but they also have some great jams and the kind of playing that rock bands haven’t much tried in decades.

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