Another autumn mini-edition of Record Store Day came and went this past Black Friday. It must be said: Like many other LPs in the current "vinyl revival," the pricing on some of the special releases is getting pretty ridiculous. Around $30 for a four-track Johnny Thunders 10-inch EP? C'mon. That being said, the high prices at least serve one purpose -- some of us who would probably come home with a stack of goofy stuff must do some serious thinking about what records one really can't live without.
It probably will tell the reader something about my taste in music that the only disc that came home with me on Black Friday was an Iron Butterfly album. An early forerunner in the metal sweepstakes for "heaviest-sounding band name we can think of," the band went so far as to call its debut album Heavy. Yeah, it's pretty goofy.
The album is kinda goofy too, but it's always been a personal favorite despite the absolutely atrocious-sounding stereo pressings I've encountered over the years. Granted, the stereo copies of Heavy I've owned have all been the dreaded Columbia Terre Haute (CTH) pressed/mastered version, which for '60s Atlantic/Atco albums are often sonically of lesser quality than albums mastered elsewhere ... but every copy of this album I've heard has sounded like something went dreadfully wrong somewhere in the recording or mastering process. The balance of the stereo mix itself is okay, but the whole thing is muddy, with a layer of weird distortion over much of the music.
The new reissue by Rhino had a couple major signifiers of quality going for it right off the bat. The disc was pressed by one of the more reliable plants out there right now, RTI, from parts made at Bernie Grundman Mastering. (It's not noted on the packaging's violator sticker, but the lacquers were cut by Chris Bellman.) Even better, the new Heavy uses the very hard to find mono mix. The album came out in 1968, at the very tail end of the mono era, so there aren't many vintage copies out there; in several decades of digging, I've never actually seen in person the mono version in any condition.
Musically, even though it's the band's debut, Heavy is not the first album I would suggest to those unfamiliar with Iron Butterfly. That is, and will always be, the zillion-seller In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, possibly the perfect encapsulation of the majesty and excesses of psychedelic hard rock circa 1968.
On Heavy, the group has the elements of their organ-plus-skronky guitar sound firmly in place, but lyrically the songs only at times hit the menacing groove of their best work. That's partly because the group here is quite a bit different than on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, most notably due to the singing and lyrics of Darryl DeLoach. He has a much lighter vocal sound than organist Doug Ingle, who did most of the lead singing after DeLoach left.
That caveat aside, I'm happy to report all the signs of goodness are dead-on for this reissue; Rhino knocked it out of the park. The pressing and packaging are great, and replicate the original but for modern label/cataloging information. In a nice touch, the Rhino catalog number is actually a variation of the original Atco numbering. And, better still, the mono mix sounds great. None of the weird, yucky sound problems of the stereo copies I've owned over the years are present on this version.
It's a pretty nice sounding '60s rock record, actually, which is a pleasant surprise after making do with those crusty stereo pressings all these years. (Rhino R1-33227, 2014)
