Each week on ‘Throwback Thursday’ we dust off a crucial but underrated album, without which heavy metal’s evolution would have turned out quite differently.
This week’s chosen relic endured decades of neglect before reemerging as one of the most vital documents of heavy metal’s first global assault: Sir Lord Baltimore’s combustible Kingdom Come.
Band Name: Sir Lord Baltimore
Origins: Brooklyn, NY, USA
Album Title: Kingdom Come
Release Date: December, 1970
Why is it so damn important?
Of all the overlooked albums released during heavy metal's birthing pains, perhaps none has proven itself as retroactively impressive and influential as Kingdom Come – the devastating debut from Brooklyn, New York's Sir Lord Baltimore. Indeed, like pirates of the Gowanus Canal – Brooklyn’s notoriously toxic industrial waterway – SLB apparently pressed every tormented ghost into service on the haunted schooner gracing Kingdom Come’s gatefold sleeve, because there's no other way to explain how lead vocalist/drummer John Garner, guitarist Louis Dambra, and bassist Gary Justin sound so utterly possessed on these recordings.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhm4UIV7GY8[/youtube]
So what does it sound like, exactly?
The teeth-rattling bass line opening "Master Heartache" (and therefore the album) sounds like a foreshadowing of Motörhead, and along with subsequent sonic hellraisers like "Lady of Fire" and "Pumped Up," shares the same sort of wild-eyed abandon with Lemmy Kilmister's much loved MC5 – another band that, like SLB, stood at the crossroads of proto-metal AND early punk. On the other hand, Kingdom Come's title track takes a more lumbering, doom-laden approach a la Black Sabbath, while the wholesale departure into mystical, harpsichord balladry that is "Lake Isle of Innesfree" originated with SLB manager, Mike Appel (who wrote the song and went on to discover Bruce Springsteen!), but additional manic outbursts like "Hell Hound" and "Helium Head (I Got A Love)" show where SLB's musical gut instincts were really at.
In other words…
Ultimately, it's this marauding proto-metal aggression that allowed Sir Lord Baltimore's pirate schooner to haunt heavy metal down the decades, reminding all who listen to Kingdom Come that the music’s origins owe so very much to Sir Lord Baltimore’s rough-hewn metallic masterpiece.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgrziQyW-DE[/youtube]
Key Song: "Hell Hound"
Frankly, there are any number of songs on Kingdom Come that could comfortably carry this responsibility – the LP is that consistent – but, for the sake of introducing new listeners to the band's full-throttle attack, capped by John Garner's histrionic vocal exhortations, we'll go with the self-explanatory "Hell Hound."
Final Thoughts:
Although it would inexplicably sink into decades of obscurity shortly after its original release – even amongst dedicated metal heads – Kingdom Come was eventually “rediscovered” by the 1990s stoner rock community, which proceeded to spread its gospel far and wide. Even former SLB manager, Mike Appel, was shocked to hear the band called name-checked as a key influence while talking business with a record label, some 30 years after the band’s dissolution. But in retrospect, it’s no coincidence that a contemporary review of Kingdom Come in Creem Magazine included the first, documented use of the term "heavy metal" to describe this style of music.
