Music Review: Captain Beyond - Captain Beyond

Captain Beyond should have been Rock Gods. Had they been more commercially successful, they could probably have gone down in the books as rivaling Black Sabbath’s reign over early 70s Hard Rock/Metal. It’s baffling when one looks at Captain Beyond’s eponymous debut, at its grandeur, depth, and sheer "heavyocity", to think that for the six years Captain Beyond was creating ear-splitting hard rock, they flew completely under the commercial radar.

All the pieces of the puzzle were there. The band, itself, was one of the first hard rock supergroups. Rod Evans (the original lead singer of Deep Purple until his replacement by Ian Gillian in 1969) on vocals, Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt and Lee Dorman (original members of Iron Butterfly) playing guitars and bass, respectively, and Johnny Winter’s drummer Bobby Caldwell. Not only is each individual member of this group considered to be the pre-eminent players in their field, at the time, but as a group they were tight, solid, and soulful.

They were also something new. Very few bands were playing music this heavy in 1972. Let alone in this complex a manner (sure Sabbath was heavy, but how often did they play did they play in atypical time signatures?) Unfortunately after a second, much more jazz-rock-influenced record and a third disastrous prog. album, Captain Beyond called it quits, never to release another full-length ever again.

But none of this stops Captain Beyond from being a hard rock masterpiece from start to finish. Clocking in at just over 35 minutes, Captain Beyond seems to be a very short album spread out over a hefty number of tracks (13, to be exact). But even on the first listen, it is evident that this was not how the band had envisioned the track list. Many of the tracks segue into each other, narrowing the final “song” count to a mere 5 (with tracks 4 & 5 being the only two that can be listened to as separate entities). This, alone, makes the album come across as an epic undertaking,. The album opens with the atypical rhythm of Caldwell’s drums on “Dancing Madly Backwards”, and then soon erupts into a blues-infested hard rock riff that tears you out of your seat and melts your eardrums to your record player (just imagine it’s 1972 and record players are still around. It’ll help the mood, I promise). Rod Evan’s bluesy rocker-croon was the carnivore of early 70s rock voices, hiding no emotion and leaving no measure of energy untapped.

Article Author: Rylee Strange

Rylee Strange, a US-born Londoner, is as delusional as he is unique. He currently resides in Hollywood, CA and sings in multiple music projects.

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