Granicus - Granicus (Official Album Stream)

Listen to the full-length self-titled debut album from Granicus.

00:00 You're In America
04:14 Bad Talk
07:05 Twilight
10:34 Prayer
21:43 Cleveland, Ohio
25:14 Nightmare
33:36 When You're Movin'
36:57 Paradise

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GRANICUS transcends the genre of early ‘70s progressive hard rock, they will thrill somebody hungry for a killer in that department but are so creatively explosive anybody into any brand of hard rock from classic, metal, punk, prog up into the wild beyond will get caught up in the band’s whirlpool of manic energy. You get to relax here and there but most of the time they come at you so decisively you gotta hang on to your brain. For my money these guys delivered an LP on level with the best famous bands of the day, contemporaries like Led Zep, Rush, Deep Purple, Sabbath... based on the power and variety captured here it is clearly only a lack of promotion that kept Granicus off the charts. It has hard prog moves in spades but also over the top energy with outrageous vocal moves powerful enough to have scored a big bullseye in teenage wasteland America 1973.

Woody Leffel had a long history in bands out of Cleveland like the Tree Stumps, Black Rose Outsiders, Renaissance Fair and success in Detroit at the Grande Ballroom opening for Cream, Bob Seger System, Blues Magoos and others. He came back to Cleveland in 1969 and heard high energy rock coming out of a house down the street, it was Allen Pinell on guitar and Joe
Battaglia on drums, soon to be joined by Dale Bedford on bass and Wayne Anderson on lead guitar, with Woody on lead vocals. Rather than concentrate on gigging like most local Cleveland bands, Granicus set up in a local warehouse and spent the next year developing original material. They moved to a house in upstate New York and perfected their sound, also
heading down to NYC to perform, attracting attention enough to get signed by RCA Records. After about 10 days in the studio this beast of an LP was in the can and they started playing shows to promote it opening for acts like Cactus, Bob Seger, Spirit. With no significant promotion, the LP was released in 1973 and sank without a trace. The band went back to
Cleveland, recorded an unissued second LP and broke up. By the late ‘70s the Granicus LP was already pulling premium $$ in NYC collector shops due to their following in western New York State, soon after that it’s reach went global as the market for vintage hard progressive underground rock exploded in the ‘80s. Half a century on Granicus sounds more potent than
ever, clearly a highlight for the genre and more... while many of it’s elements are familiar, the power of the band and Woody’s scorching vocals take this into extreme sonic sports territory. No doubt a bit disorienting at first but when you get on board you will be dizzy gasping for air by the end of side one, barely able to focus and flip it over for side two. Seriously, this flirts with heavy prog rock complexity but kicks adrenalin ass to the point of outrageousness!

As the liner notes on the sleeve declare... “Granicus puts forward a musically cohesive, emotionally compelling vision of growing up wasted in America, searching desperately for and occasionally glimpsing spiritual truth, in a climate foreshadowing Armageddon”. Granicus is named after a battle in 334 BC where Alexander The Great defeated the Persian Empire. This album has more than enough ammo to defeat your head right now, they take you deep down into the sordid demonic underbelly of America 1973, ending the LP with an ultimate rock and roll exorcism. Appropriate to say fasten your seatbelts for this ride!

Words by Paul Major

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