posted: 2024-09-06 Hall of the Mountain Grill Hawkwind

The band’s best studio album, coming off of the success of Space Ritual. The group’s rock roots are juxtaposed effectively with the swelling synthesizer flourishes and pretentious song ideas, creating the quintessential guitar-oriented space rock record. The highlight was the live recording of “You’d Better Believe It,” with its crunchy guitars, but nobody minded keyboardman Simon House’s languid synthesizer-laden “Hall of the Mountain Grill” (especially as it was followed by the Lemmy-sung “Lost Johnny,” a great all-out rocker).

The sound, especially the mix of ballsy high-volume guitar playing and soaring electronic keyboards (“The Psychedelic Warlords,” “D-Rider”), would later get co-opted by outfits such as Blue Öyster Cult (“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”) and Kansas. Overall, this is the sound and imagery that the punkier kids and druggies who went to shows like Laserium were looking for, and if the producers of Laserium had devised something hooked around this record, it could have run 20 years or better.

Bruce Eder, AllMusic