If the early works of prog-metal eclecticists Lucifer’s Friend aren’t on your radar, you’re missing out. Their incredible self-titled debut sat comfortably between Sabbath, Purple, and Zeppelin, and easily equaled all three bands on the mohs scale, establishing norms that would eventually serve as an acknowledged influence on plenty of underground metal to follow, especially doom. (The horn parts on “Ride the Sky” also sparked a still unsettled debate over whether they or Zeppelin ripped off “Bali Ha’i” first…) Their second album, Where the Groupies Killed the Blues, spiked that sound with tricky, meandering, jazz-inspired passages, adding another layer of depth. It was pretty much all downhill from there—I’m Just a Rock ‘n’ Roll Singer was a disappointing stab at commercial hard rock that just sounds like better-Styx-meets-worse-Grand-Funk, and though they’d rebound with 1974’s Banquet, they never again reached their early heights. The predominately German band’s lone English member, singer John Lawton, bailed in the mid-‘70s to join swords-and-sorcery-rockers Uriah Heep, and the band continued with various lineups until 1982. A 1994 reunion under the name Lucifer’s Friend II wasn’t worth the trouble, and they released another reunion album, Awakening, earlier this year. I haven’t heard it, but the fact that keyboardist Peter Hecht isn’t on it doesn’t bode well. I could be wrong.
 

That’s Lawton on the left. You can disregard him for the rest of this post.
 

 
Contemporary to the band’s early, top-shelf work, Lucifer’s Friend minus Lawton had a lesser-known symphonic rock project called the Pink Mice, whose two albums, In Action and In Synthesizer Sound, are both worth digging for. Both albums are entirely comprised of rock versions of classical pieces, but unlike ELP’s tediously bombastic, showoffy take on that shopworn prog conceit, Pink Mice actually ROCK. Check out their update of Beethoven’s indelible “Für Elise” and “Moonlight Sonata.” Shit gets hectic about five and a half minutes in…
 

 
Here’s “Anita’s Dance, ” from Edvard Grieg’s music for Peer Gynt, act 4. Awesome, but even though a million other prog bands have done it, I wish they’d also recorded “Hall of the Mountain King” from act 2. You’d know it if you heard it.
 

 
Things get less rock but more bonkers on their second LP, In Synthesizer Sound. As the name implies, it’s a much more synth-heavy album, whereas the debut leaned more on guitar and organ solos. Of course, the ‘60s and ‘70s saw no shortage of albums wherein the classical canon was updated on synths, and this definitely veers unavoidably toward Switched On territory, but see if you don’t think this is… different. Bassist Dieter Horns plays his ASS off on the Badinerie from Bach’s second orchestral suite, with the synth standing in for the familiar flute solo:
 

 
An admirable variety of oscillator tones make this the single most bongrip-worthy “Magic Flute” I know of:
 

 
I was unable to find any live footage of the band—it may well be that they never gigged. So I’ll leave you with Bach pieces from the two different albums for comparison—a piano and organ-heavy piece drawn from the Italian Concerto for In Action, and a synth freakout from Brandenburg Concerto #3 found on In Synthesizer Sound.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Moog Plays ABBA’: Australian synthesizer record rarity is fantastic goofy fun
Thomas Dolby (sort of) explains how synthesizers work
1968 synth psych single by Bert Sommer and Walter Carlos: Brink of Death