Reviews (page 5 of 7)
Eh, not the best, certainly not the worst.
Interesting album whose musical decision of long solos prevent a higher rating or daily rotation.
Great electric guitar and fuzzy amp sound. Not great overall.
Never heard of this band or album, but I'm always up for some early heavy metal. Should be interesting! Overall I enjoyed this and see the influence of it, but I found some of the songs outstayed their welcome. Probably not one I would re-listen to often.
Blue Cheer working that psychedelic blues rock formula. All the trappings of early hazy, slightly heavy jams are here. The best song on the record is the first and it is a cover of Summertime Blues. If you enjoy blissed out fuzz tones over blues scales, Blue Cheer are for you.
Love psychedelic rock but a little before my time, admittedly don’t know a deep inventory of the bands, seemed like a pretty solid representation, great electric guitar
This started terribly, but it sort of grew on me like an eruptum of mold
*rips bong*
Score: 60 Prototype music. Some pretty cool stuff in here, if the production was better or this album got a remaster it would definitely be better. Not really the albums fault for being released forever ago.
Typical sound of the time period
Tinny, silly, gutless...but yeah sure. I guess I can hear the metal roots underneath. Still...pretty rough listening. 2nd track is better. Got some soul to it. Gets better as it goes. Really underserved by the recording technology.
Very enjoyable hard rock, sophisticated but still heavy and distorted. Scratches that ear itch real good
60s rock with classic Summertime Blues
weird album, pretty good though
70s garage band. meh
Very unique at times, give me a Jimi Hendrix vibe. However “Out of Focus” is just a total mess for me. The guitar solo clashing with each other is a nope for me.
I've never heard of Blue Cheer, and all of the music from Vincebus Eruptum was new to me (with the exception that they did a cover of "Summertime Blues"). The album was okay. The music seemed to look towards psychodelia, but not fit into that genre. Blue Cheer also seemed to channel Jimi Hendrix throughout the album, even to the point of playing a few bars of his work in the middle of "Summertime Blues." The album was okay, but was getting too noisy for me on side two.
Never heard of this band before but it definitely felt like it was from a transition period in music. Still it was lacking something that would make it great.
Stand-outs: "Out of Focus," "Summertime Blues"
- Never heard of this - Very much ahead of its time, obvious influence on Sabbath - Preferred some of the jammier songs - Fav songs: Doctor Please, Second Time Around, Out of Focus
I guess there was a time for this
alright
Chill music for stiners
A mix of 13th Floor Elevators, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Iron Butterfly (complete with drum solo) and early Led Zeppelin, with a healthy dose of blues influences. All that and coming in at under 33 minutes to pack a healthy punch. What's not to like?
Ok
Liked the blues of track 2. Makes me think if the MC5 were a jam band, this would be it.
The hit on the album is good but just feels sorta middle of the road for me…
Quite passable
A whole lot of fuzz. Sounds like a whole lot of those other San Fran bands from the late 60s. Probably groundbreaking at the time but not something I would want to listen to on repeat.
Very advanced for the time, great and innovative sounds. Led Zepplinny. Very cool.
Not bad. Thundering drum set. Feels like if you took the members of Cream when they were still in high school and playing together in their garage before they really developed their skills, this is what you might get.
Never heard it but it sounds like something played to parody the 60s in San Francisco.
This is the White Stripes and Jack if he was jamming in the late 60's. Again - late 60's is a rough era for production but I'll give this a solid 3 for jazz infused rock and jam session.
Pretty good, interesting guitar (especially solos), drumming, and bass lines. Mixing felt really weird, with the music being much quieter than vocals.
Blue Cheer er aldeilis hressilegt band. Mjög rokkaður blús og alveg hægt að finna element sem síðar hafa verið skilgreind sem þungarokk. Áhugavert m.v. ártal útgáfu. Mæli með.
Not as Psychedelic as I was hoping
The whole album isn’t on a Spotify so I had to listen to a YouTube version where it was one long song. Pretty good 70’s rock
A cool mix of bluesy and hard rock! Some great guitar work and good vocals
It was fine. You can hear where some later heavier bands got some influence from this new style which was cool. Maybe if I heard this in 1968 I would have had my mind blown but it just felt like a more barebones version of newer metal and heavy rock.
Pretty good, reminds me of magic carpet ride and some other late 60s rocks.
New to me, good listen.
A decent rock album from the 60s. Summertime blues is a good song, heard it before, and felt like it was the focal point of the album. I didn’t see how this was the invention of metal music as it didn’t seem that hardcore and not nearly as sinister as Black Sabbath. Also the instrumentals weren’t anymore intense than some other bands in the 60s. But for an album overall it was fine. There was better music made that decade for sure. 5.9/10
Cool late 60’s fuzzy guitar sound
This album sounds like proto Black Sabbath with a bit of Cream and Jimi Hendrix mixed in. It is widely considered to be an important hard rock and early heavy metal album. To me, it sounds rough and unfinished. The guitar playing is sloppy and the guitarist is clearly listening to Hendrix but is unable to execute the style well. Regardless, the album is interesting because it is a transition work even if it’s execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Abans que Sabbath o Purple. Això sí és protometal en tota la seva intensitat. Blues Rock pesat i improvisat avançant les formes del rock dur dels 70 en plena época hippie. L'únic problema és que ells no tenien les cançons. Tan potent és l'actitud com millorable el contingut
Pretty good.
Interesting but a little tough to listen to.
Fun look at the earliest of hard rock. Screaming guitars. Ahead of its time.
Clearly groundbreaking for the time. Okay for now.
Felt like standard 60s rock music. Yet another completely average album. First song wasn’t bad
Interesting fuzzy raw blues rock? Kind of sounds like Cream but rougher around the edges. It wanders a bit but I was kind of into it.
Enjoyable in a Cream/Allman Brothers vein.
I like their sound, but the covers were poorly executed. Summertime Blues is not a psychedelic song. Best track: Doctor Please
Rocks hard. I like it
Too jammy, but props for keeping the energy high.
An ur-text for stoner rock. Deliberately dumb as a sack of rocks and just as heavy.
Some early metal. Interesting to listen to I guess, but not hugely exciting
Heavy. The closest I've heard to someone channeling Jimi Hendrix. Definitely on the leading edge of heavy, blues-based metal. 3 stars.
Olihan aikas jees. Siistejä riffittelyjä.
Jytiseehän se! Pitää ehkä kuunnella vielä uudestaan, mutta varovaisen positiivinen viba jäi. Annetaan nyt 3/5, ehkä myöhemmin voisi nousta neloseen.
I can tell that there is so much here that inspired some of the best music (sabbath, Grateful Dead, zeppelin, etc) but I just do t care for how this sounds.
When psychedelic rock goes on the extreme end into the hard blues of acid rock we saw of Cream and Joplin's Big Brother, it starts to take the form of proto-heavy metal. The songs hit really hard, like rockabilly taking LSD and going real crazy. It's not known for its songwriting, but with songs unmatched in distortion and intensity, it stands as one of the most influential albums in the vast genre of metal. The groove sounds a lot like 90s doom metal, and thus I could see the connection with Black Sabbath.
Solid blues
Very so-so for me; not much remarkable, but I probably wouldn't skip it if it came up on a random play. I generally like bluesy-rock like this, but the way Blue Cheer puts it together is just not my favorite.
not bad but sort of boring
Some gnarly, noisy blues for its time. Probably not something I would return to but can definitely appreciate how influential this must've been.
-A pretty good example of late-60s psych rock, and arguably one of the earliest heavy metal albums, though it doesn't bear much resemblance to what the term would come to mean. -It's loud, it's messy, and copious amounts of acid were involved in making this album; what more could you want? -It does feel pretty dated at times though, and aside from the Summertime Blues cover, lacks a big hook.
Pega os Beatles com 18 anos e o Jimi Handrix com 15, da nisso ai. Uma guitarrinha animada com uma voz de boyband 60tista.
A lot better than I expected, the link between Cream and Black Sabbath is really obvious here. Fuzzy, jammy, rocky music with some really interesting riffs. Sure it's a bit rough around the edges but for a debut, pretty solid.
Not really metal as such but still enjoyable. Great cover of Summertime Blues.
Album of covers but enjoyable enough.
Some good songs but a bad audio quality.
They sound a bit like Hendrix, with the guitar tuned down to give it a heavier sound. I appreciate the fact that this is proto metal and they would/could have influenced the sound bands like Zeppelin or Deep Purple. That said, the longer instrumental pieces are less inspired and technically inferior to their heirs.
Wiki informs me that Vincebus Eruptum means "Controlled chaos" in Latin. I also see that the band is a trio with only one guitarist but it sounded like a dozen guitars to me. The album sounds like it was recorded in someone's basement with no production values and with the mics buried deep in the Marshall amps. I must give it a knowing nod though, the thunderous blues guitar signals some pretty epic sounding proto-metal. Many have mentioned that they hear Black Sabbath and Cream , but I also hear Deep Purple which was formed around the same time. So despite the crudeness of the recording I'll bump my rating up to a 3 because of its provenance and influence on things to come.
Only partially available
Father of garage rock?
5/10
Some of the track listings have been lost to time on Spotify. Sad. Upside though, I love an overdriven el34 coupled with a fuzz face. There is something so limitless to the sound of this era. Pure tube goodness and the simple pleasures of free and easy songwriting. This one was all about the vintage amp sound for me. I'm a valve tragic!
Solid album.
I was not familiar with any of the songs but it definitely sounds like 60s rock.
Never heard of this band but I enjoyed the album. It's a great specimen of proto-metal with those buzz guitars and garage-style production! The opening cover is of Summertime Blues is awesome!
The cover of "Vincebus Eruptum" couldn't be more late-60s psychedelic rock if it tried. While I had never heard of Blue Cheer, I knew before hitting play what was coming. The album was apparently successful at the time, but seems to have been mostly lost in the annals of classic rock history. It's nice to see more of the musical depth of the late 60s than what we've gleamed from classic rock radio, but I think I can see why Blue Cheer hasn't made as much of a lasting impact. They take psychedelic rock to a bit of a heavier place, with a little less focus and tightness that made the genre work in spite of its drug-induced, free-wheelin' inspirations.
Who knew the origins of heavy metal would be so accessible? I mostly liked the sound on this album and could totally see it as the stepping stone to the harder rock to come. Some of the wankery (esp. on the last track) went a bit far for me, but I generally appreciated their musicianship, their lyrics and the power of their songs.
I like the sound here: bluesy and distorted. However, waaaay too much jamming.
short album. seemed ok, first listen.
Blues quase metal, valeu pelo cover.
decent, not amazing but I liked "Doctor Please"
Groovy.
pretty good
Some tasty licks, no question. With all due respect, I won't be back.
Rating: 6/10
Heavier (for the time) hard rock. As a general fan of metal I'm not quite as in to proto-metal / blues-inspired stuff. Black Sabbath put out stuff shortly after that's more my style of metal.
Interesting early heavy metal. Can hear where Led Zeppelin and The Who would have been inspired
Vg
Feels like a "missing link" sort of album branching between psychadellic/hard rock/blues rock and proto-metal. There's passion and urgency to the performances, but the songwriting is a little too predictable and jammy for my taste. Worth a listen, but maybe not too many more. Favourite track: Doctor Please
HARD. I can imagine reviews from 68 using words like explosive, muscular, unrelenting. The lead guitar tone is perfect 60s psych. I want whatever pedals this guy's using. And his musical abilities. They're borrowing a lot from Hendrix's vibe and then taking it even further and heavier. Each song feels like the intro to Foxy Lady but extended out and even sloppier. So good. Here's the inevitable part where I go negative - the singer is rough stuff. Janis Joplin's uncle that talks too much. No subtlty, no dynamics, just pterodactyl yelling over every incredible jam. I would put down big stars if this thing was instrumental. B+
I've always enjoyed this album, but generally find myself wanting MORE out of it. In some ways this is the album that birthed heavy metal, but it certainly doesn't sound like it as much as Black Sabbath just a few years later. You can hear the influence Blue Cheer had on Black Sabbath, so maybe Blue Cheer's role is as a foil to Sabbath. Blue Cheer asked "what is heavy metal and is this it?", and Ozzy replied by biting the head off a bat.
Listened to this several times but it didn’t get any better. Parts were alright but it descended into a racket. I’ll give it a low *** but it could be ** !
Niet alles kunnen draaien, maar klonk best cool!
Voorlopers van de harde rock en metal. Cool!
Nog nooit van gehoord, maar dit ga ik nog eens luisteren! Nogal gruizig, maar wel een duidelijke link met veel (stoner) rock bandjes van de laatste jaren.
Voor metal best te pruimen.
On par with Mountain's first two albums.
interesting and fun, can't see myself ever re-listening
Fine.
Reminded me of Jimmy pero, bien pero no es lo mismo
Guitarrero. Muy setentero.
Loudly bluesy. 5/10
Gros blues rock psychedelique un peu brouillon personellement. 3*
I was hoping for less blues rock and more psychedelic
Eh, not bad but ait forgettable, a very classic fuzzy-stoner intro though
I can hear how this would have blown peoples mind in the 60s, a little tamer now.
Makes me think of drinking in Murph's dads garage. Great background music for that atmosphere. Not mad at it.
leaning toward the "actually not so bad" end of "not my vibe"
musically this album was great but the singing and lyrics felt inconsistent, loud and very similar. solid psych punk rock. enjoyable.
Decent early garage rock LP, some tracks reminded me of Ty Segall and Oh Sees.
Cool.
-Interesting to see the change in music, keeps blues style tunes with heavy guitar effects.
Not terribly unique, but could be more influential from its time
not my style
An ounce of respect for being one of the first heavy metal albums, but other than Summertime Blues, this wasn't at all enjoyable.
yet another important influence from the 60s that helped shape Rock and Roll into what it is today..why do they all sound so similar LOL and never as good as the ones that 'made it' 2.5 here.
Big brother and the Holding Company without Janis. Hendrix without the genius. Sabbath without the songs (the devil has all the best tunes)...or Ozzy. The Stooges with the adventure...or Iggy. In the end your left with "controlled chaos" and a lot of fuzz bass.
OK. I listened. I can move on. 2/5
It did not sound good, but at least the sock themselves were bad as well. What's up with the listmaker's 60s-70s rock obsession?
i can hear why this is important, but i was pretty bored by it. in 1968, would i have been as bored? hard to say, but i've listened to plenty of music from that year and from centuries before that i love
Really wanted to like this one, and it has some moments with some crazy riffs, but overall it was foegettable.
Zzz
Idk, maybe this is here as an artifact of its time, but now it doesn't do anything for me. 2* Someone described this as another Jack White side project, and I can't unhear it.
This is why I follow this list - a band I'd genuinely never heard of! I actually found it a bit underwhelming, and in the wider span of the expanding heavy blues it really falls down a bit in comparison with Led Zeppelin, Cream and so forth.
The production is too fuzzy throughout for me. High 2.
The tone of the instruments and general aesthetic of Blue Cheer are tremendous. There’s a good energy to the performances which sound very fresh for 1968. Unfortunately the compositions don’t do anything for me and I found myself checking for when the album would be over when it’s only 32 minutes long. They sound like pioneers but not the finished article.
Y this on list
They certainly are noisy. It's very haphazard and the recording doesn't sound great. There isn't anything that stood out as something that I like. I suppose there are tinges of early metal and I'm sure some far better bands were influenced by the sound at some point.
Se oli aika rouheaa soundia. Varmaan taas sillon kuuskytäluvulla ollut melkoinen juttu. Nyt kuulosti vain siltä että tuotantovaiheessa on menny vähä vikaan.
Tää on taas sitä aikaa. Jotain psykerokin tapasta mikä ei oikein varmaan nappaa kiinni jos ei oo jotain henkilökohtasia siteitä kyseiseen levyyn. Kuulostaa todella raa'alta ja miksattu jotenkin ärsyttävästi. Kitarat on korvan sisällä ja rummut on jossain toisessa ulottuvuudessa, laulaja rääkyy täysiä päälle. Ei oikein istunut ainakaan tähän hetkeen, kerran kuunteli läpi, mutta tuskin tarvetta kuunnella tämän enempää.
🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 (rounded down for exhaustion) Went out on a limb with this one and was kind of disappointed about it. I normally love this type of music, which might be why I'm so harsh on it, but this feels like it's sort of the flattest version of 60s hard rock. Though the sounds are similar, this and Hendrix are night and day, right? And sure, maybe it's evil to compare Hendrix to this, but I mean... I don't know... Sabbath? Love? I don't know man. The vocals were fun and the guitars were fun but boy did nothing come of them. Ran me down by the end of it and put me in a bad mood. 1: Bad | 2: Okay, No Desire to Revisit | 3: Good, Conditionally (OR Inconsistent Mix of Qualities) | 4: Great (OR Technically amazing but missing the sauce emotionally) | 5: Amazing
Not bad musically, but the singers voice just doesn’t do it for me me.
I can see how this is a link in the evolution of music but on a personal level it was not for me
I think it is super cool this is the first heavy metal album! I didn’t enjoy any of their songs. I liked the riff in Parchment Farm, but that was the only thing that really stood out to me.
This is one of those albums that I can appreciate as being ahead of its time and inspirational without being a massive fan
I'd never heard of this but I enjoyed it - thought it was quite compact and attention-grabbing. Maybe not quite three starts but not far off
A touchstone but not a record I’ve ever been able to really love. Two stars. Tom.
eeeh
album #58 honk shoooooooooo (that's me sleeping) ꩜ album rating: ★★☆☆☆ ꩜ number of albums left to review: 1,031 ꩜ number of albums from the list that i agree with being on the list: 31 ꩜ albums from the list that I would consider on my list: 12 ꩜ albums from the list I won't include on my list: 46
def noise
J'ai pas du tout aimé
Not a good sign when I was looking through Wikipedia trying to figure out why this album was included. Apparently it’s very influential to future metal bands, which I guess makes sense but I can’t say I was super impressed with a bunch of guitar wanking covers of blues songs (though that may also describe Led Zeppelin so what do I know).
When Led Zeppelin exists, why bother with this trash
Ok. 2.5/5.
Not sure what to make of this, couldn’t quite get into it, as I thought I might, never heard of the band of album, so it made an interesting listen, summertime blues - not the best, Eddie Cochran or T.Rex.
60s psychedelic rock, sounds similar to a lot of other music in that time
I quite enjoyed this, but it felt VERY generic 60 sounds. The recording was pretty shit, which made it quite hard to listen to and appreciate. Too much like Hendrix to make it stand out.
Maybe revolutionary, but not for me
Maybe history doesn't look kindly on the early progenitors of a style, but more kindly on those that perfect the style, and Blue Cheer didn't do that.
They think they cooked in the jam outs but it’s not even that good.
Unfortunately forgettable- also this needs to be REMASTERED. The quality is atrocious
I mean, slightly more interesting now learning that this is most peoples' view of the first ever heavy metal album. However, at the end of the day, it just feels like a sludge-y distorted mess most of the time. I can see how this is pivotal and I can see why it's a cool/important listen, but I can't say I enjoyed it too much. Fave tracks: - Summertime Blues - Second Time Around
I have to admit - this album is heavy as fuck. I actually think this is more metal in sound than Black Sabbath's debut, which is generally considered the first metal album ever. This thing is raw, noisy and unfiltered. However, despite respecting this album a lot, I can't say I enjoy it that much. The production is kind of rough, sounds like they recorded it in a garage with the cheapest possible equipment. I'm sure that appeals to some people, but it just doesn't really work for me. It's funny, I like a lot of music with similar characteristics but this just doesn't click.
No blue cheer on this one. More like Blue Turmoil - Crapibus Eruptbum. This is just one big nasty elephant noise wasteland where the band manage to wrangle one good tune right at the start and it’s a cover anyway of Summertime Blues which you can find just as rockingly on The Who’s Live At Leeds. Everything else is garbage. If Deep Purple and Jimi Hendrix Experience stand the test of time like Casablanca then this is more like another movie made the same week as Casablanca that no one remembers.
Admittedly I was listening to this during work as background music, but the only moments that stood out to me were not because they were enjoyable.
Too much. One star.
4/10
The first track was great but the rest not so good. I'd not listen to the album again.
neat
Not my bag
I see how this is important in the development of metal in the late 60s and everything. I like metal for the most part, but like many early experiments, this is very rough around the edges by any standards--blues, metal, hard rock, whatever you want to call it. 2/5
Proto punk ish stuff that felt kinda like sloppy hippy stuff and didn't really grab me in either direction.
A third rate attempt at sounding like Hendrix and Zeppelin. Maybe at the time it was interesting, but it’s not that heavy, blues, or hard. And the recording is sub par.
Another generic late '60's psychadelic rock band with blues-ey tones.
Why? Why is this noteworthy? No, thank you anyways.
I'm sure this is influential and is really early to hear that sound, but man does it sound rough.
1. Summertime Blues - 7 It's not really stood the test of time but it's not a bad song either. Instrumentally the guitars on it sound a lot of fun. Very similar to a Jimi Hendrix style sound. Overall, solid track. 2. Rock Me Baby - 7 Exactly the same criticisms/critique as Summertime Blues but I think it has stood the test of time a little better. You get a lot of solid guitar sounds before the drums are given a mini-solo at the outro. Solid stuff. 3. Doctor Please - 4 It's long and lyrically not anything fantastic. More of a jam track, which is good, but gets quite old rather quickly. 4. Out Of Focus - 3 Instrumentally it's okay, a bit wild and uncontrolled and unstructured at times. Lyrically it's forgettable. 5. Parchment Farm - 5 This is like a three part song. First part is okay which the lyrics being alright. The second part is just a legendary guitar riff and an amazing sound. The third part is exactly like the first just sped up a little. It's hard to really get into the track since it's so fragmented but it's not bad. 6. Second Time Around - 2 Starts as a Hendrix-style sound with throwaway lyrics into a very repetitive drum solo before breaking down into a punk-style sound. Not particularly very good. Average Rating: 4.67 Adjusted to 5-Point Scale: 2.33 Rounded Down: 2 Stars
Interesting proto metal, but do we need it when these guys didn’t really influence anyone? Kind of existing between The Who and Black Sabbath with no real identity unto themselves.
I found it pretty basic with no real special moments.
I’ve heard that these guys were pretty heavy sounding. Summertime blues: 6.5/10 Vocals are very loud compared to the guitars. Sounded like the drums got mic’d up with microphones in the room next door. Rock me baby: 6/10 Doctor please: 5/10 Out of focus: 4.5/10 Parchment farm: 5/10 Second time around: 5.5/10 Pretty gnarly drum solo.
Hmm - I know why it’s in the book. But it’s definitely not very good
I Led Zeppelin farlocchi, che noia.
3/10
i respect what this is and it’s place in history. not a fan of the songwriting. you don’t realize metal is just evil blues most of the time. i bet this went crazy back in 1968
Nada que destacar
No thank you
Everything blended together, very dull
Overall: 3/10 This genuinely really sucked lol it was a lot of noodling and nonsense and the vocals were terrible. The best thing about it was that it was so short. Fav Song: Out of Focus
Why was this recorded under water? I think I’d like it more if it actually sounded like produced music. Not bad tho
pretty decent but never quite grabbed me. not sure i'll ever really be pressed to revisit but i wouldn't turn it off if it was playing.
Boring rock album.
Fav: summertime blues
I don’t really understand the significance of this.. I was able to finish it, but half of it are trash covers
01) Summertime Blues - 6,5 02) Rock Me Baby - 6,0 03) Doctor Please - 5,0 04) Out of Focus - 5,0 05) Parchment Farm - 5,0 06) Second Time Around - 5,0 TOTAL: 5,42 (54/100) Current ranking: 747/849
Just not very good
No, I'm okay.
It was quick. Not crazy good sadly
Not my jam. Long solos are torture.
3.0/10 Sort of sounded a bit like Jimi Hendrix...but not digging it. Won’t listen again.
My initial reaction, sustained throught the album: Your high school friend has this band he keeps talking about, who you havan't heard much but they sound kind of loud. He keeps saying they want to play concerts so you bug your mom into hiring them to play at your backyard graduation party. The band comes and it turns out they don't suck! The singer stays on key, the guitarist has some legitimate licks, the drummer is a bit nuts but fun to listen to, and they don't try to hide their flaws by turning everything to 11. But there's also the random rhythm changes, long guitar solos that meander to nowhere, and chaotic drum fills that high school garage bands with counter-cultural aspirations always indulge in. So you don't mind when they're done. Then you find out your sister recorded it on cassette, and that's what we're hearing now. Then I read all the comments about this being the original (proto-)heavy metal album. I can... kind of see that? They do sound sort of like heavier versions of Cream and Jimi Hendrix, and I can respect that Blue Cheer pushed their sound heavier than anyone else at the time. But Blue Cheer doesn't have the songs or the focus of those other great artists, nor the metal that followed.
An album touted as the start of heavy metal, it ostensibly has little inherent value other than being anchored to a moment in time. It presents as a crumbled, anachronistic monument to the past, and what's more the ruins are neither majestic nor impressive. Vincent Eruptus Ozymandius aequalis est. Ammirite?!! The album is mainly slugfest, with viscid pace. The guitar sound is the metaphorical manifestation of wading through deep, deep treacle. Not completely terrible. Just rather dull.
2.5/5
First heavy metal album or song. Ok i get it. Won't return but I get it
favs songs: summertime blues rock me baby fuzzy, jam, blown-out garage 50/100
Im over americana
Low rent Zepplin
This may have had significance at the time of release but there's a reason people still listen to Black Sabbath rather than Blue Cheer. The guitar solos have potential but they just feel forced and out of place. Not to mention the production quality is terrible. I want to love this a lot more than I do.
I appreciate hearing the roots of heavy metal. That being said, I don’t want to hear about his album ever again.
I find it funny how there's a recurring complaint about nobody british bands on this list. Yet not a peep about all these nobody American bands. This was boring, idc if they "invented" a new genre. It sounded like shit.
hearing "Summertime Blues" like this after growing up on the Alan Jackson version is so strange otherwise I'm lowkey bored, oops
Can understand why this album is on here as it was likely the blueprint for many rock artists over the following 50 years, however this album didn't age particularly well and there's a reason you don't hear much about blue cheer today
Really feels very box-ticky to have this on here. It's quite paint by numbers early hard rock. Like Black Sabbath but without the big tunes. Nothing especially wrong with it, but very little right with it either.
british 60s rock so overrepresented my god
I'm sure this is doing a disservice to them, but this sounds like one of those albums you'd find in a grab bin at walmart that sounds close to something more popular. Its distortion-laden blues riffs with vocals that sound like they're being sung behind a closed car window.
Boring and generic 60s distorted rock music. Hundreds of albums exist that sound identical to this one. Literally no reason to check it out unless you’re trying to hear every cover of Summertime Blues
Just not pleasant to listen to unfortunately. Very noisy.
I listened to this entire album, came back the next day and couldn't remember a single thing about it so I re-listened and ALMOST missed actually hearing it again. It's fine but truly and literally forgettable.
I could imagine that if you were a white male teenager in the midwest in the late 60s, this album would seem like a revelation. In 2026, it's kind of unremarkable. I can squint and see how it might have influenced the Black Keys or (as someone mentioned) Jack White - but generally a bit meh for me.
Não gostei muito.
Summertime Blues - 3.5/5 Rock Me Baby - 2.5/5 Doctor Please - 2.5/5 Out of Focus - 2.5/5 Parchment Farm - 2.5/5 Second Time Around - 2/5 I guess by technicality this is one of the first "heavy metal" albums. It has some promise at the beginning but falls off quickly due to feeling like the remaining songs are finishers that just keep going. These guys were probably good live but put into a studio their sounds gets too muddied. Overall: 2.5/5 Favorite(s): Summertime Blues
I zoned out for a bit and when I came to I was three songs further. Didn’t notice too much of a difference.
The wiki describes this as heavy thunderous blues that would later be described as heavy metal. And I would like to suggest we all start calling metal “thunder blues”. In terms of the music itself. It was kinda interesting to listen to but can’t say I particularly enjoyed it.
I don't have much to say about this other than I didn't enjoy this. The album would have been slightly better if the songs weren't so long. Doctor Please was especially a slog to get through.
Enjoy the raw vocal style, at times. Its a weird album, reminiscent of Jimmi Hemdrix, kind of hard rock, kind of grunge. At times it feels like there is dead space amongst the guitar, drums and vocals, like something was missed in the mix. I think the album had a lot of potential, just executed poorly
I genuinely did listen to this album but I cannot remember anything about it and I really don’t want to listen to it again.
Pretty typical early psych rock. Not really sure why it needed to be on here but wasn't unpleasant. Short and reasonably sweet.
I feel nothing listening to this album. The lyrics are shallow even for this period of music and the guitar solos are nothing to write home about. I've heard plenty of music from the same era of rock that have deeper lyrics and better guitar solos (as an example, Jimi Hendrix had already been an established musician by this point and was putting out far more enjoyable music that satisfies on both lyrics and solos). I didn't need to hear this album, it did nothing for me. If it was on in the background I wouldn't care but I would never intentionally put it on for myself to hear again. 2.25/5 listenable but I'd rather not
this website serves as a monolithic database of many influential projects in every area of the world but asian communities which i find ridiculous
covers are fun, Sad the group did not take off.
I think this album explores the limits of the effects of narcotics on songwriting. Turns out that you can be too high, even when you’re writing hippie music
Some interesting tracks, and cool to know a band I wasn’t familiar with, but agree with most sentiment here. Cool album for its time and place in music history, but I won’t be back to listen again
I couldn’t get into this!
I'm not going to argue with what anyone fighting in Vietnam wanted to listen to, but I don't need this in my life.
some highs and lows
First heavy metal record? Interesting period piece. 2.5 stars
Smorr
That was way too much drum solo for a 32 minute LP.
I hadn't heard of Blue Cheer before. It's said this was very early Heavy Metal. I can see that. There are numerous riffs and other sections of music that I recognise from that genre. Whilst some parts of the album were pretty good I found other sections that were best described as disorganised dissonant cacophony. I'm sure that some would say that is what Heavy Metal is! Overall, good to hear as an early example Heavy Metal but this won't be on my playlist.
Muddy, heavy, mercifully short.
Summertime Blues is an old favorite. It's nice to rediscover it. I love the low, rumbling, base line in the background. Rock Me Baby is remarkably blues-y. Ended a bit too chaotically for my preference. Not off-putting though. Doctor Please suffers from what I think a lot of longer songs suffer from: it has a cool riff, but then it's 7 minutes long and they have to move away from it. Especially here, with a more blues-y genre where moving away from the riff feels like just noodling around in nowheresville. Out of Focus is at least shorter. Solos still come off as noodly, which is, at least, appropriate given the song's name. Second Time Around was a nice end to the album at least.
Either they were heavily influenced by early rockers in the 60's or they influenced them. Wasn't a bad album but wasn't good either...
Not for me
The pseudo Latin title tells you everything you need to know. I was probably really heavy at the time but now it just sounds like some stoned kids in a garage that really don’t have any other vision. The whole did Summertime Blues better
Bit naff and pointless. Cool for its year I guess
2.5 stars Never heard of them and barely remember it. While I know this was revolutionary in a way, it also sounds kind of generic in retrospect. It’s a good document of the time but I wouldn’t put this on again. Can’t imagine I’d have a reason to. But I was glad it was just over 30 minutes.
I'd hoped for better with this one. Maybe it's another case of a foundational record sounding tame decades after its release, but I found this to be pretty typical '60s hard rock, only looser and more lo-fi. While I appreciate the influence Blue Cheer held, I won't be coming back to this one.
I really don't understand the Blue Cheer adoration by critics. Their muff was just bigger than the rest for the time? Hendrix, Zeppelin, and Sabbath were all in this time range and had like sweet songs, clever lyrics, good lyrics, and epic guitar playing, none of which I really hear here.
Typical late 60s psychedelic rock. Nothing stands out. 2.75
Of all the color proto-metal bands of the 60s - Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, King Crimson - Blue Cheer are not the least interesting, but absolutely inessential.
Another case of more important than good
Rock, but nothing remarkable
If you have to take a heroic dose of acid to even comprehend the beat of a given goddamn song, your band kinda sucks. I will admit that the sheer volume and amount of noise they manage to create is impressive. But fuck anyone claiming this is the origins of metal. This is still trash heap music that is meant solely for specific types of burnouts.
Every song was okay for the first quarter then they just started shredding on the guitars for WAYYY too long. At least the album was short.
Meh
A part "Rock me baby" qui est écoutable, le reste a bien mal veilli !
**An ok album, too many tracks with just noise (banging instruments and screaming vocals)
This album felt a little bit meh, nothing too exciting, nothing too great, but it was alright having it in the background, as it wasn't too annoying.
I can’t say that I completely dislike this…but it just isn’t very good. Sounds like a couple of high schoolers jamming in their parent’s basement. I can only give it two stars.
This is okay, but seems to not know what it wants to be. Was this really influential?
Bitch please. Black Sabbath invented heavy metal. This is just heavy stoner rock, and it’s not even that good.
I like it okay, bluesy and fun at times. Will I remember it in a month or 2? probably not
this band or this album-- haven't decided which-- is illustrative of what i perceive to be one of the biggest problems facing music today: there is a fucking label for literally every *sample* of sound. look, i had to google these guys. i won't pretend i've heard of them. here's their "genre" according to wikipedia's compiled list (I am too lazy to actually cite each individual source for each genre assignment, but i promise they exist and they're all more or less bullshit): hard rock, psychedelic rock, blues rock, acid rock, heavy metal, proto-punk, stoner rock, experimental rock. are you fuckin serious? one time the band Blue October wrote a song that reflects my feelings about this: "Or call it rock, or pop, or Bach, or fuck / Goddamn! Where did we go wrong? / Now there's a category for every song" (this is from Inner Glow, for those curious). yeah yeah, i get that Blue Cheer is trying a bunch of different things here, but honestly what this tells me more is that they couldn't find solid enough ground to establish a unique sonic character. instead, these songs feel, at least to me, like a half-baked attempt at being a little bit of everything popular on the cusp of some really monumental movements (for example, some people apparently call "Summertime Blues" the first metal song ever [what the fuck], and Black Sabbath's debut was around the corner in 1970). i wonder if the comparison to Jack White is unavoidable (several reviews housed on this website make such a comparison). i don't buy it. not all garage rock is created equally, and this lacks the soul, punch, and guitarwork of the early white stripes stuff. anyway, this shit's boring. 2/5 on a good day, which i guess today is.
Sounds like a parody of this era. No wonder the Beatles were so successful if this is what they were up against.
I'm pretty sure I didn’t hate this album but the "Summertime Blues" cover is one of the least tolerable pieces of music I've ever heard. Like... I'm being pedantic but taking out the end of the verses to replace with instrumentals kinda detracts from the whole point of the song. It's some kind of Hendrix meets Peter & The Wolf meets Peanuts nightmare where all the grownups are replaced by instruments. You called your congressman and he said, quote, "*drum fill*"? What did Eddie Cochran do to deserve that? The rest of the record is still a bit “jammy” for my liking, but is just controlled enough that I can find some sounds that I dig. Also, anything with this much fuzz and distortion in 1968 is probably pretty influential on a lot of the stuff I am into. On a lark, I googled “Blue Cheer Iggy Pop” and was unsurprised to learn that they and the MC5 (<3) had played together in 1968. Prooooobably not going in the rotation but I don’t regret listening and am not opposed to revisiting tracks 2 - 5.
Not very memorable. Lots of fuzz, for sure.
Bedroom garage blues punk. No idea. Drugs.
Oh how I wish I could go back and listen to this when it came out with no knowledge of what was to come. I wonder how heavy it would sound then. Now it doesn't really sound like much of a step up from Hendrix or the Electric Prunes. It's still plenty blistering though, just not enough to cover for the songwriting. The jammy moments and solos of "Doctor Please" rock, blasting the drums and chords into your brain. But the verses are clumsy. "Summertime Blues" and "Parchment Farm" sound similarly awkward with their transitions from verses to noise. In general the original songs - written to sound like this - work better than the covers. In its best moments this sounds like it could still rip your face off, but those moments don't last long, and what's left instead ranges from boring to ugly.
generic psychedelic 60's band. i like their drums... they only have 60k monthly listeners on Spotify... how iconic could they possibly be?
Not my thing, won't go back
Name something better than white dweebs from the Bay Area playing “the blues” - doesn’t exist.
I respect this for its influence, but it's not something I'd ever return to, and I didn't especially want to listen to it while it was playing. I don't mind self-indulgence in rock music, but this wasn't my flavor of it, y'know?
2,5
This album wasn't any better than the last album I reviewed. "Vincebus Eruptum" is a product of its time with songs that once sounded cool. It's similar to Gratful Dead's live album, another lousy effort. I liked the sound of some of the tracks. There's a decent song that isn't on the original release. 2 stars for "Vincebus Eruptum".
Cool album I liked it 👍🏿
die liste (und glaub musigjournis allgemein) isch obsessed mit punk und sine vorläufer. vlt tuen ich blue cheer etz unrecht. aber am erste song ah tönts wie sehr e hössigi 60er band wo punk beiflusst het. rock me baby tönt wie schlechter gspielte led zeppelin. ok wiki nennts proto-heavy metal. finds reeecht ass. aso so ich sött jo gern bluesrock haa. aber s isch seehr unorganisiert und nöd uf die cool art. mega afoch versueche lärm mache mit de gitarre und s groovt nöd würklich. biah parchment farm isch au so fucking lang. bruudi. ha etz nochli über s album noglese und jo mega wegwiisend und unglaublich luut für ihri ziit. aber ich check nöd so ganz. es isch nöd guet.
Knock off Jimi Hendrix experience with less talent and songwriting ability. Drummer was pretty awesome but other than that it seemed unoriginal
Playing is hard and loud, but the songcraft is very lacking. Interesting for being proto-metal or early metal, or even an originator of metal, but beyond that the interest is not there.
Cool to hear some Hard Rock from the late 60s but it's also kinda whatever.
Mediocre
I see... middle finger. social oprør. skrammelspade, en solo der er et lille raseri. Jo jo. Fint. Har muligvis dannet skole for noget psychrock? Ikke noget, der rockede min verden.
Of all of the needless versions of Summertime Blues this one was the worst I’ve heard, and unfortunately it was the highlight of this one for me.
Cited as the wellspring of heavy metal, a trio, thumping drums very similar in approach to Cream. Interesting artefact.
Well, its obvious why I've never heard of them.
Gets some props for being one of the first to do it, although you can very much make the argument that they’re just copying Hendrix, who did it better. This one falls off hard after the first two songs. There’s a lot of overindulgence, which doesn’t work without the talent of a Hendrix.
Meh, bad instrumentation, not great songwriting either. Forgettable
This was a snooze
This was partly kinda enjoyable, partly hard to listen to. I'm not a terribly huge fan of blues-rock riffing so the noisyness redeemed it for a while until it really tipped over the edge. 1 point for brevity and 1 point for influence.
Every album released in the 60s that has heavy drums was apparently received as an indication of Satan's influence upon the youth, a harbinger of death, a sign that humanity is descending into chaos. It's so unbelievably stupid in retrospect that it really makes me reconsider a lot of things in my life, in a negative way. This opens with "Summertime Blues" for Christ's sake
60s acid rock
Fairly uniform all-volume no-dynamics 60s hard rock. Meandering and bloated. The heaviness is the only remarkable feature.
This sounds like a mashup of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, but not as good as either. I can hear where they are kind of bridging the gap between acid rock and metal, but this lacks the darker sound that groups like Black Sabbath did so well. This isn't a terrible album, but the 2nd half drags and some of the guitar solos cross the line into self-indulgent. I appreciate the influence this album and this group had, but I'm not sure I would listen to this one again.
2nd rate Doors anyone?
People say this is part of the bands that shaped what metal would become, summertime blues do sound like it would be, other songs, not so much...
I was born way too late for this. Or I'm not enjoying a spliff quite often enough to enjoy this. Probably both.
meh
No thanks
Not for me
Un álbum interesante de rock psicodélico, bastante común para la época en la que fue publicado. No tiene nada realmente especial pero tampoco es malo. 2'5/5
Oldie "son of flowers" stuff. Nice play with audio channels. Lot of distorted guitar though.
Decent drum patterns and feels like almost an inspiration for a lotta early punk rock. Shows its age though!
eh
1001albumsgenerator project: Album 5 - Vincebus Eruptum by Blue Cheer I don't know what to say here honestly. I don't have much to say for this album. As influential as it can be, to me it sounds like many other blues rock albums except this one feels like it was recorded in a tin can. The guitar freakouts are pretty good admittedly but that guitar is actually TOO loud and ends up burying the drums and the bass, which is the album's biggest problem of this album. Led Zeppelin's debut album came out just one year after this and it doesn't have such rough mixing. The Stooges' debut album came out one year after this one as well, and it doesn't have such a bad mixing. There's really no excuse for this one. I'm positive the song would sound much better with different production, and Summertime Blues is actually pretty good despite all the production's flaws. So I think the songs aren't necessarily bad (although they really lack creativity and can get boring quickly), but the record is a tough listen and not only by today's standards. Either way, this is just my opinion. So try not to pay too much attention to it.
not sure, all the songs sounded pretty similar for me.
Though I don’t think I’ll be listening again, I was surprised that the angry, chaotic, drunken heavy metal vibe wasn’t that bad. Could see it being somewhat cathartic haha