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.
 

 
More Pink Mice after the jump…

Lucifer’s Friend was a seventies prog-metal band that… OK, you stopped reading at “prog-metal.” I know, I know. But hear me out… these guys were one of the best of the whole lot, and are criminally underrated. I heard their album Banquet a couple years ago, and it’s irresistible, like Sammy Davis Jr. fronted Traffic or something.

Allmusic gives the backstory:

A German outfit fronted by a British singer, Lucifer’s Friend first gained minor notoriety, and later major cult status, as both early practitioners of heavy metal and progressive rock. Formed in 1970 Hamburg, by former German Bonds members Peter Hesslein (guitar), Peter Hecht (keyboards), Dieter Horns (bass), and Joachim Rietenbach (drums), the group was initially dubbed Asterix and recorded an entire album’s worth of material before connecting with singer John Lawton, whose then band, Stonewall, was playing a residency at the city’s famed Top Ten Club. Lawton’s vocals would grace Asterix’s only, eponymous album later the same year, and all involved were excited enough by the results that they immediately began collaborating on more material with which to relaunch the band under the provocative new moniker of Lucifer’s Friend…

Click the sample track below?