Full Album - The Chemical Wedding

[Jer]

For sharing thoughts and ratings on the full album.

[Hessos]

A five star masterpiece, no doubt. The best band Bruce ever had (well, let’s restrict this claim to his solo work, shall we…) at their peak. Fantastic song material, great production, each musician on fire individually and as a band. Like I also wrote in the AoB topic, this feels like a band that rehearsed the songs together, and here they are playing that stuff together. Have to say though, I mostly prefer AoB’s “in your face” metal sound to that of The Chemical Wedding, but this album still sounds great and unique. The atmosphere is very touching throughout the album. The few spoken word sequences by Arthur Brown support it very well, as does the artwork from William Blake.

Again, my individual ratings are a bit lower – 4.3 – than what I’ve given the album. Be that as it may, I think “Machine Men” is the only somewhat weaker link, and that’s also a very good song per se, it’s just that it differs so much from the rest of the material, I think. On the other hand, “Book of Thel” is probably the brightest gem, with some other songs also belonging to “some of the best” by Bruce. But to me this album works best as a whole, listened to from track 1 to track 10 in order. (Which makes “The Alchemist” a heartbreaker.) Whereas AoB feels more like a collection of songs, some of them great, some a bit less. But on The Chemical Wedding, I find it hard to name the best songs. I love all of them.

All in all, what a masterpiece. I know I already said it, but it’s worth repeating.