|
|
666 - The Number of the Beast is a double album by psychedelic/progressive art rock group Aphrodite's Child. That is one of the early cult albums in rock history, still popular among fans today. It was published in 1971, and was the primary vehicle/effort for this Vangelis project. It had a minor Album Oriented Radio hit in The Four Horsemen, and a nearly pop hit with Break. The album was ostensibly an adaptation of Biblical passages from the book of the same name, but was also very experimental in lyrics and composition, including a curious piece of performance art which seems to be a woman struggling to chant a mantra while coming to climax. Current fans and critics typically rate 666 as the group's finest effort, allmusic.com gives it 4-1/2 stars (although their review does say "the entire set eventually becomes too overwhelming to sit through"). At the time of its release, it shocked religious people and still does. It is still listed by theology teachers in Greek high schools as evidence of why rock music is "satanic". Given the infantile state of the Greek rock scene, the instrumentation is interesting; Demis Roussos' vocal performance are often ferocious, combining the frenetic with the melodic, enchanting while being bizarre, and some of the more comforting sections foreshadow Vangelis's future work. Perhaps the weakest song when first exploring this is actually the very first (The System), but it begins the incredible guitar and sound-scape construction this album will deliver. The album begins to grow dramatically after that. In 1971, it was a very full four-side record. The CD version is also 2 fairly full two CDs. Spoken voice, lyrics, musical themes weave in and out of many of the songs throughout the album, referencing each other in an amazing way. It is a remarkably coherent body of work. The way the songs blend into one another indicates that the band was inspired by The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was issued several years before, although the two bands followed entirely different musican genres. 666 takes songs with unusual and eastern-sounding thumping rhythms, wild saxophone, equally wild guitar work, and unusual Biblical-sounding lyrics (themes from the St. John's Apocalypse) sung in eastern-sounding melodic wailings, blending them with slower chanting of apocalyptic lyrics and usually still very dramatic slower instrumentation--and other indescribable styles as well. It references '666' so strongly that the biblical influence evokes something basic and primal. It can only be experienced, without a trace of rationality. The performance art mentioned in the opening section of this Wikipedia entry, the song "Infinity Symbol", can be fairly shocking, but repeated experience of the album as a whole can transform the song into a true work of art with no intention of pornography, base physical sexual arousal, instead it can touch something powerful and deep in the core of our physical beings in possibly a very enlightening way. Almost at the end is a song ("All The Seats Were Occupied") that is almost 20 minutes long, a bizarre and incredible montage. Some of it (including the beginning) is original, that is, it's a separately written song, and has an incredible driving rhythmic beat of many instruments, but, in true progressive rock fashion, its pace keeps changing, and weaving in and out are samples from the rest of the songs, it quotes just about everything on the album in a sensorial maelstrom. Even "The System", that apparantly weak first song, is quoted in a way that fully justifies it on the album. It has many apparant false lead-ins into an ending section, and after and unbelievably long time finally ends in a remarkable combination of a quieter ending magically combined with a driving rhythm. Track listing
Disc one
Disc two
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/
|
|
|||||||||||||||||