April Wine - The Nature of the Beast

The Nature of the Beast was third album from the classic five man iteration of April Wine. The triple threat on guitar: Myles Goodwin who sang most of the songs, Brian Greenway, and Gary Moffet who were backed by the ever rock solid rhythm section of Steve Lang on bass and Jerry Mercer on drums. When I think of the band this is the line up that gets my motor running. 

April Wine was by this point well established here in Canada, having eight studio albums and two live albums under their belts. You'd think they would have started to coast and rest on their laurels a little. Nope. The band hit height of their commercial and creative peak with their 1981 release The Nature of the Beast. It was quite a feat too - as I loved First Glance, especially "Roller" then the band dropped Harder...Faster and the one two gut punch of "I Like to Rock" and that three guitar medley at the end of the song just blew my mind and "Say Hello" were amazing. I mean could they get any better?

Yes they could. They were still hungry and had something to prove and they weren't about to slow down. The Nature of the Beast came out at the start of the year, and I remember getting it as soon as I could find a copy. I put it on, having no idea what to expect. The opening riff to "All Over Town" always felt like a middle finger to Toni Basil's "Mickey" and then settled into a wicked groove. The first couple of songs were decent, and then "Sign of the Gypsy Queen" came blasting through the speakers. This song blew me away. If there's a song I associate with the album, this is the one. Heck even though I remember feeling the guitar solo was borrowed from David Gilmour's bag of tricks, I still loved the song. The song wasn't written by Myles or any of the guys in the band. Apparently it was a remake of an older song by Lorence Hud who had released it in the early '70s. It was followed by "Just Between You and Me" another in a long line of April Wine ballads that didn't disappoint. This was just the first side.

My buddy Gord who was also a fan of the band knew I got the album and asked me if it was worth getting. I told him not to bother. It was okay, but save his money. 

Yeah, I was a bit of a contrarian.

I was also full of shit. I really did like it - even the weird spacey "pew pew pew" nonsense in "Caught in the Crossfire" but I kept coming back to the album. This was different than Harder ...Faster, just like it was different than First Glance. The boys weren't content to stay in one place and keep rehashing the same four chords. The songs this time around were a blend of hard rock tinged with new wave, and sometimes it was amazing, sometimes not - but I kept listening. "Crash and Burn" is still just about as much fun as you can have in two and a half minutes. That song rocks - hard. Frankly a lot of the songs are pretty crunchy which was pretty cool. The last song "One More Time" is a fitting closer and has some great guitar work, especially the slide solo. The whole thing is a lot of fun. 

The album was produced by Myles and Mike Stone and this was a great sounding record. I just wish the credits had a better map of who played what on guitar. I know Myles was a great player, Gary was a monster too, and dang even Brian could rip it up. My CD has zero credits, and the record I have just has a plain insert, if there were more notes I can't remember what my original LP had. Oh well, there's always the internet.

If anyone other than Gord was to ask about this one I generally say it's a great album with some awesome songs and that's the truth. 

Sorry Gord.

This really was the band at their peak.They'd put out two more albums but this was really as good as it got for them. Oddly the last album by the classic line up Animal Grace is one I really liked, or at the very least one I remember as being really good. Then again I may just be thinking about "Sons of the Pioneers" - I told you I was a bit of a contrarian.