Brain Salad Surgery kind of tricks people into playing it, the fist thing that will hit you with this album is the cover, with the artwork by H. R. Giger. The album cover itself is rather typical to the Swiss painter, with its theme of life, death, and machine in one. If you own the record on vinyl, then you will see that you are able to blah, blah, blah, whatever, review time.
The opening track of the album is just something, it's of a cover of the unofficial national anthem of England, that being Jerusalem in the style of what is apparently is progressive rock, but saying that, it more seems like something someone working at the music department of Doctor Who might make while having a breakdown.
I will admit, it is a change from most of the versions of the hymn, but I fear that it almost treads a thin line between an almost bad novelty song.
Following the title track we have Toccata, an example of a song that is so bad that it hurts. It feels like someone picked a random number of musicians, put sound cancelling headphones on this, and wished them the best. To say it is bad is an understatement, honestly, trying to play this in one go is a hard, real hard. It's random, loud, and unfun to hear.
Never has I wanted to pick up a record more, and fling it across my garden more because of a song.
After the horrible experiences of Toccata, we have Still...You Turn Me On, a very different song from the last. It's almost akin to being punched in the bollocks by someone, who then hands you ice cream straight afterwards, in other words, it doesn't really mix well.
The song is just under three minutes, although it doesn't really fell that way, it more feels like it's sixty seconds long. The song has a mixture of real bass, with (what I'm guessing is) an electronic piano; I'm not really sure if it flows as it should. If it was bass only then it might work. It's quite a sweet song thinking about it, and on its own it sounds kind of nice.
Flowing this we have Benny the Bouncer, a song that might just work as a B-Side for Chas & Dave, but for this album? Eh.
This was the point where I needed to take a break.