Customer Reviews

Hall of the Mountain Grill

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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In the record store I stood and on a whim I figured I'd finally buy a Hawkwind album, since their legend had persevered through decades. I asked the record store guy where to start, since the Hawkwind catalogue is intimidatingly immense. Without hesitation, he whipped out this album and said this was the absolute best place to start. And so for you who have yet to discover Hawkwind like I have recently, BOY ARE YOU IN FOR A SURPRISE. This album is a fine balance of introspective mellotron drenched songs and caveman stomp. These songs are beyond the heavier stuff of Space Ritual and Doremi Fasol Latido. The opener, 'Psychedelic Warlords' comes across like a slick/apocolyptic BOC song, a desert hallucination if you will. To continue the desert mood, is "Wind of Change", my favorite song on the album. When there are comparisons to King Crimson being made, this song is one of the reasons why; both cosmic and ethereal, it is one of the most gorgeous mellotron songs you will ever hear. 'Web Weaver' is a nice piece of accoustic, pseudo-Pink Floyd psychedelia. Other more ballsier songs are the awesome guitar driven 'You'd Better Believe It', the phazed, metallic psychedelia of 3D-Rider, the short (comparably) but punchy 'Lost Johnny' (the rhythm part is definitely a template for many of the glam-metal bands to come a decade later), and finally the mind blowing 'Paradox' where you will hear this heavy, heavy distorted rhythm guitar duel it out with a mellotron! There are two more mellotron-dominated songs: the pastoral 'Goat Willow', which which features a sci-fi sounding synthesizer, a harpsichord, and a synthesized flute, and the title song, which has a nice piano duet with the mellotron (and that sci-fi sound again in the background) along with a string section. The bonus tracks are mostly edited down versions of the album rockers. "It's So Easy" has a heavy Mott the Hoople feel and is an appropriate closer for this remastered album. Although notorious for heavy sci-fi themes (which I suspect is what queered their chances of mainstream acceptance), the science fiction takes a back seat to the musicianship. This is an album by a band at the height of its powers of creativity.

Now THIS is good. Not only did Hawkwind still have Lemmy, but they went and got ex-High Tidesman Simon House and incorporated fiddle and Mellotron (YAY!) into their already voluminous wall of sound. The spacy whooshiness of DOREMI FASOL LATIDO morphed into a more 70s proggish atmosphere- -probably inevitible given the new instrumentation and Zeitgeist (heh heh)- -which served the band well. Some of the Hawkers' best material is here: Nik Turner's 'D-Rider', Lemmy's own pre-Motorhead 'Lost Johnny' and the stunning, live seven-minute hooter 'You'd Better Believe It', the title of which is probably good advice coming as it does from the ragged throat of Mr. Kilmister. The bonus tracks aren't absolutely essential (the mediocre live 'It's So Easy' was the B-Side to a tragically truncated 'You'd Better Believe It') but still nice to have around, and some of the tracks ('Psychedelic Warlords', 'Paradox') lumber on longer than they really need to. But the Hawkwind of the 70s never strived for economy anyway, and anything worth doing is worth over-doing, eh? Besides, the shorter instrumental tracks, especially House's title track, make up for it. Play this back-to-back (or side-by-side) with 1975's WARRIOR ON THE EDGE OF TIME and see what happens.

growing up in the seventies near Glastonbury meant lotsa hawkwind. My school had regular trips to glastonbury,reading etc. For anyone who can recall the lovely Stacia doing her thing this album must bring a smile. We added a whole chapter to The legend of BeanzonToste, i've got it somewhere.
this is the quintessential hawkwind album, plenty of that ethereal space rock sound. The grill has it all from the pounding heavy metal of the earlier Space Ritual through to the gorgeous synth washed sounds that would define later works like spirit of the age. For an Hawkwind beginner i would suggest this album as a taster, although you can hear the newer direction that the band were heading in. Does anyone remember the Hawklords ?

Often snubbed in favor of 'Space Ritual' or 'Doremi...', this album really deserves to be revered alongside those albums as one of the best from the 'Lemmy' period. In many ways one could argue that this is the quintessential Hawkwind album. It encapsulates just about every tangent of their long, strange trip. Speaker-shredding Blanga, progressive pomp, metallic doom gloom, hippy trippy freakout jam, face-painted Glam theatrics, proto-punk Spit-on-the-Man blastitude, spacey electro-blip drift, it's all here on one shiney, spinning UFO-shaped disc.

How can anyone in their right mind not like Hawkwind? This band, in many ways the British Space-Rock version of the Grateful Dead, has throughout its long and tumultous history, produced a number of crunching moronic songs embellished with spacey effects without the least bit of self-conscieness, pretention or shame.

The Hall of the Mountain Grill is proto-punk, proto-prog, proto-space. All the elements mix together in music that ranges from three chord jamming to five chord jamming. Standout Simon House is on this album, a wolf among stoner sheep, who lifts the band out of its wonderful sludge with his playing. Dave Brock and Nik Turner either needed everyone's help or no one's, however, and unbowed by talent or convention, they and their bandmates created in Hall of Mountain King a work of Art that so captures the time and place of its making, that to listen to it now, in the over-planned, stunted, and pre-fab "outrages" of our current music, is to witness what true revolution and outrage is about. Weep for us, weep for Hawkwind.

If only they would rerelease "Warrior on the Edge of Time." Come back Lemmy! Rise from the dead Robert Calvert! Eternity beckons! Hawkind! What more need anyone say?

'Hall of The Mountain Grill' was, of course the landmark 1974 lp by Hawkwind that violinist Simon House had joined up. A few might say that House's addition mellowed the band out a bit, but I believe it took the long-running UK ensemble in a somewhat new direction. "D-Rider" is the outstanding Nik Turner track that he STILL plays in some of his live sets to this day. "Lost Johnny" was penned my Lemmy and the lp's two gems are "You'd Better Believe It" and "Psychedelic Warlords". The EMI edition of this reissue tags on four bonus tracks that are for the most part single edits of a couple of the tunes I've already mentioned in this review. Comes in both standard jewel case and digipack. A must have.

I first bought this album when I hosted "The Mellow Sounds" (an all-metal program) on KXLU-FM (88.9 in LA) in the mid-70s. While there are more than a few records I have trashed since then, Hawkwind still does it for me, and I'm sure other Friends of Jef™. They were unique then, they still are 30 years later. Got to love that Mellotron! Great tunes to "space out" to. I've long since copied my vinyl to MP3 and was playing it at work. All these young pups are going "wow - great music. Who is it?".
If you're new to Hawkwind, as other reviewers have said, you just can't go wrong with Hall of the Mountain Grill! It kicks! Long live Beenzon Toste!

This is definitely the most "musical" of the earlier Hawkwind catalog.Lost Johnny is the standout track for me,with vocals lent from Lemmy(later of Motorhead fame).it's more of a song structured album as opposed to the earlier spacey 13 minute dabblings of previous recordings.A great introduction to any interested party.Definitely a must have for any rock collection.

"Mountain Grill" would prove to be the band's highest charting album in the U.S. coming after the now legendary live album "Space Ritual" that propelled Hawkwind from a cult band into the charts. The album also features one of the coolest album covers of the 70's in my opinion. Long before I ever delved into Hawkwind I had seen this album cover in record bins for years and always thought about picking it up just for the cover alone. Many Hawkwind fans consider this their best studio album and I would agree that it ranks right up there. The band are in fine form and continue their space rock explorations here. This album would go on to influence bands like Blue Oyster Cult and even glam bands like Mott The Hoople. Highlights include "The Psychedelic Warlords", the live "You Better Believe It", "Hall Of The Mountain Grill", and Lemmy's straight forward rocker "Lost Johnny". This is a very good Hawkwind album and a great example of top notch space / psyche / stoner rock.

The strange space rock instrumental jams of the earlier Hawkwind albums are noticeably absent on this release, and now we have a more straight forward, but still very creative and diverse, hard rock album from the mid 70's.

The one thing that immediately caught my attention is how Hawkwind chose to make Hall of the Mountain Grill more about solid vocal melodies.

This album is a classic in the same way Black Sabbath's Sabotage and Nazareth's Hair of the Dog are classics- every single song is catchy, interesting, and holds up very well through repeated listens. Those are VERY important things for a rock band to have, and this Hawkwind album has that and more.

Call me crazy, but songs like "You'd Better Believe" and "D-Rider" remind me of the Talking Heads. I don't know if the Heads were around yet, in this point in time. My favorite song on here is probably the opener "The Psychedelic Warlords" with a VERY good verse melody, catchy chorus, and creative arrangements.

"Wind of Change", not related to the Scorpions song, is another fantastic song with a focus on build-up of classical elements and instrumental melody. Solid effort.