KILLING FLOOR – KILLING FLOOR – 1969 (UK) hard rock

Listening to Killing Floor's debut LP today -- essentially rearranged Chicago blues songs given a bombastic heavy rock treatment -- you cannot dismiss the impact and influence of Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut, which was released six months earlier, in January 1969. The band's fledgling label, Spark, decided to them record "original" material during sessions in Pye Recording Studios, so vocalist Bill Thorndycraft reportedly spent several days thereafter in the studio's restroom, where he reluctantly rewrote all the group's lyrics. The only song that didn't end up as an "original" was their cover of Willie Dixon's "You Need Love" (retitled "Woman You Need Love"), the same song later purloined by Led Zeppelin for "Whole Lotta Love." The next track, "Nobody By My Side," repeats the same two-line riff from Zeppelin's "How Many More Times," which had been purloined by Zeppelin from Albert King's "The Hunter." "Come Home Baby," a honky tonk blues original, features pleasant ivory-tickling by Lou Martin (this song was later covered by bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon on Spoonful of Blues). The hymn-like "Sunday Morning" features Martin on harpsichord. Much of the rest of the album continues along in the same fashion. There are the occasional sloppy mistakes, both in the playing and the album's production, but, all in all, Killing Floor is a fine collection of B-level British blues-rock. The cover artwork -- a photo depicting jail cell doors with symbolic red ink splashed around like blood -- was changed for the original American release on Sire.

MICK CLARKE gtr
LOU MARTIN keyb'ds
STEWART McDONALD bs, vcls
BAS SMITH drms
BILL THORNYCROFT lead vcls, hrmnca
MICHAEL STEWART gtr
1 Woman You Need Love 4:47
2 Nobody by My Side 4:52
3 Come Home Baby 4:03
4 Bedtime Blues 7:27
5 Sunday Morning 1:00
6 Try to Understand 2:35
7 My Mind Can Ride Easy 2:28
8 Wet 0:41
9 Keep on Walking 4:56
10 Forget It! 5:30
11 Lou's Blues 2:37
12 People Change Your Mind 8:20

Rock the blues is right. Take peter green's Fleetwood Mac and match them up with a healthy dose of Yardbirds, Cream and American garage punk. Take out the piano and harmonica and you would have something similar to the u.k. answer of Blue Cheer.

Highly recommended!
Rip from CD 256@ (full artwork included)
Download link
http://link-protector.com/262450/