Black Widow
Album: Sacrifice (deluxe edition) (CDs & DVD)
Label: Repertoire
Tracks: 8+8+7
Website: http://www.repertoirerecords.com

Notorious. Banned. Think back to 1970, and what an absolute outrage this daring concept album caused when it appeared. There's not the space here to go deeply into the social history of the time, but suffice to say that a stage presentation which unashamedly embraced depiction of its ritual sacrifice and - shock, horror! a naked lady! - was anathema to the establishment, however carefully managed and seriously intentioned.

The actual music, while not exactly tame, wasn't especially horse-frightening either, being a fair representation of prog-rock with cautious dippings of jazz and blues, and the record stands up well enough today. The lead track, Come To The Sabbat, was cunningly retitled from Astaroth and issued as a single as well as on the second of CBS's Rock Machine budget compilations. History-wise, Black Widow arose out of local (Leicester) outfit Pesky Gee!, who during the late 60s had mutated from a soul combo into a pretty respectable, if impoverished, embryonic prog-rock band. Then they hit on the bright idea of using black magic as the basis for their stage act, and the theme was vigorously pursued in their music, meeting with not inconsiderable commercial success before the outrage took over…

This release from German label Repertoire is, as far as I know, the third to come out on CD, and it's billed as definitive - though I can't say I agree - and here's why: The first CD incarnation I recall, back in 2003, was a Castle anthology which presented on its two discs the whole album plus early demo versions of all seven of its tracks. The second, out on Sanctuary the following year and titled The Ultimate Sacrifice, squeezed most of the contents of the earlier edition onto one disc by omitting two of the shorter demo tracks. This latest, a three-disc package, presents on disc one a further remastered version of the original album plus the single edit; and on disc two the remastered album with interpolated contextual "interludes" added last year by band members Clive Jones and Geoff Griffith. Disc three delivers a comparatively recently rediscovered DVD of Sacrifice's final presentation, a live performance filmed in late May 1970 for the German TV show Beat Club but never broadcast; it's been cleaned up and restored (though it's credited as having been originally released in the UK on a Mystic DVD back in 2007). So, is this the final word? Probably - although I'd rather have seen Disc Two replaced with the aforementioned demos, which sport significant differences from the final versions of these tracks and the new interludes don't really add anything in my opinion; but for the completists, I guess a four-disc edition would really have been the ultimate word!

David Kidman