Jewels Of The Forest : Green Eyed God Plus

Although it ironically coincided with the compact disc format's slow but inexorable march toward likely extinction, the third millennium's first decade witnessed an incredible boom in CD reissues of obscure ‘70s hard rock bands; bands whose careers quickly floundered or never even took off due to any number of reasons, like the subject of this review, London's Steel Mill. Like many of these commercially failed entities, Steel Mill made the fatal mistake of attempting to partake in the relatively isolated worlds of both progressive and heavy rock, instead of committing to just one or the other, and so their sole LP, 1972's Green Eyed God, fell through the cracks of consumer tastes and wasn't even released in the U.K. until 1975, three years after the group's demise. Be that as it may, few heavy prog bands favored such a dramatic clash between their artier musical pretensions and more visceral instrumental instincts than this London quintet, resulting in fascinatingly schizophrenic numbers boasting as much inner city grime and bluster as they do pastoral purity and whimsy. Tone-setting opener "Blood Runs Deep" alternates between the bludgeoning Neanderthal riffing of Black Sabbath and the horn- and keyboard-sparked refinements of a Genesis or Atomic Rooster; "Mijo and the Laying of the Witch" moves from portentous King Crimson horn lines to a North African Bedouin camp luau before settling into an insistent heavy trudge marked by histrionic vocals à la Sir Lord Baltimore; the title track prefaces its own proto-metallic freakout with a pagan toast featuring wooden blocks and woodland flutes sounding like Jethro Tull at their most eerie, and these qualities are also shared with the pernicious bolero "Black Jewel of the Forest." Among the more linear compositions, "Summer's Child" plays it far too safe and never escapes its subdued folk/jazz idyll; "Treadmill" delivers a shockingly literal commentary on slavery punctuated by rhythmic chants, grunts, and dragging chains; and the comparatively lively "Turn the Page Over" finally shows some true single potential, thanks to its memorable vocals and snaking guitar lines, underpinned by driving piano chords. The latter also ultimately explained why Steel Mill's shortsighted independent label saw little commercial promise in the group and decided to shelve Green Eyed God until 1975 (and its limited German release in 1972 obviously didn't change their minds), but one has to wonder if things might have turned out differently for the group if this truly impressive opus had been given a chance during what we now know was the golden era of the long-playing album. At least this is how it feels with the benefit of hindsight, following the record's 2010 reissue through Rise Above Relics, now under the expanded title of Jewels of the Forest (Green Eyed God Plus), and augmented with non-LP single A- and B-sides, early demos, and, astonishingly, even a new track recorded by two surviving bandmembers. Whereas most of these belated ‘70s hard rock reissues reveal bands that were simply inferior or unoriginal, capable of nothing more than trailing the era's leading lights, Steel Mill possessed a recognizable spark of imagination and talent that can be appreciated even decades later. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia|