Flower Travellin' Band - Satori (1972)

"Satori" is the second album, after they had changed their name. It contains five long songs, titled "Satori Part I-V". The whole album had a very special atmosphere. It's not easy to describe, maybe mystical, dark and melancholic are some words I like to drop. In some songs, as in "Satori Part I", they play some kind of a proto epic Doom, brutal heavy riffs with nice tempo-changes. The clear and high voice of singer Joe completes this great song. But it's different to BLACK SABBATH. I think, you can hear, that FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND are strongly influenced through ancient Japanese/Eastern music. Like the second song "Satori II" , an instrumental, which starts with a hypnotic psychedelic guitarsound and then turns into a instrumental part with Eastern percussion. But the song doesn't "freak-out" into a endless jam. The band played still very compact. "Satori III" is a very doomy instrumental. The song is like a crossover between Doom/Heavyrock and this typical ancient touch. It changes into a heavy groovy part which goes into something experimental and then back to the opening theme with an oriental-like ending. Really fantastic! "Satori IV"starts more progressive to change then into a groovy Blues part with a harmonica. Joe had a very unique vocal-style on "Satori Part V", maybe not everybodys flavour. The album closes with this song, that goes more in it the Heavy-Prog direction. At least, the production sounds very clear and powerful. Finally,I will give you the advice to discover the world of FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND, if you're into early 70's Heavyrock. The original is not easy to find, but there is a CD re-release on WEA, only released in Japan.
Review taken from cosmiclava.de/FLOWER_TRAVELLIN__BAND.27.0.html