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…