Iron Butterfly - Heavy

If Steppenwolf is the motorcycles and attitude half of the equation, then solving for x gives us Iron Butterfly. Heavy is their first album, contact the William Morris Agency for booking.

They played shows and shows and shows, and their debut album reached 78 on the Billboard Charts without a single. By the numbers, they were the biggest group signed to Atlantic up to that point. They were booked to play Woodstock, but their management blew it. They also had to find new members almost evey year. Doesn't really matter.

Heavy is a pretty diverse album, but it's shrouded in an almost tunnel vision reverby low-mid blanket. In other words, it sounds stoned. So stoned you've lost peripheral processing...such pretty colors...no idea what he's singing about, but isn't it trippy?

Any other band and this would have stayed completely underground, but it's so obvious why everybody just instantly ate up this almost textural, but not actually intimidating weirdness. It's like you're at a house party, and you know you know who's house it is, but you can't remember her name at the moment, and half the people have passed out already, but the other half is spazzing out, and band is singing something about trees being soldiers, and then the room starts spinning and the universe explodes and you flatline.

Fun times.

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