| Format: | 2LP |
| Availability: | Out of stock |
LITA09713
21/05/2021
Purple coloured vinyl. Originally released in the UK as the 10 song album Five Symbols in 1980 and as The Evil One in 1981 (with 5 songs replaced), this definitive album gathers all 15 songs from the Stu Cook (Creedence Clearwater Revival) late 1977-79 produced sessions. Though it was produced at a time when Roky was struggling to cope with drugs and life on the outside, he hit form on his first post Elevators album-proper, 1981's The Evil One. It's a masterful collection of songs about zombies, demons, vampires and, yes, even the Creature With The Atom Brain. These tracks, inspired by schlock sci-fi and horror movies and coloured by Roky's distinctive, high-pitched vocal and squealing guitar, are among the maverick performer's best. At the time, Roky explained the album this way: “It’s gonna go back to the ferocious kind of rock ‘n’ roll of the Kinks, the Who and the Yardbirds. It’s the kind of music that makes you wish you were playing it or listening to it for the first time ‘way back when.’” But the record would not reach the mass audience of those bands, its success hampered by erratic release schedules and disastrously awkward press interviews. A year after its release, Erickson would become convinced that a Martian had inhabited his body. He would soon become obsessed with mail, and take to taping it, unopened, to his bedroom walls. Many of Erickson’s demons were yet to show their faces. But the B-movie demons he exorcised on this record gave us one of hard rock’s strangest, most inventive albums