Black Widow - Black Widow 1971

Black Widow's eponymous second album was a conscious attempt on the band's part to scale back the satanic trappings that had dominated its debut, and, in the process, redirect the media's focus away from the controversy and onto the group's music. Too bad their songwriting vision remained at worst unfocused, at best an enigma: a half-baked amalgam of progressive rock, folk music, British blues, and -- least of all -- a few very tenuous notions of hard rock and proto-metal that have since erroneously formed a common misconception of the band, due to their business ties to Black Sabbath and, of course, their on and off interest in the dark arts. The last is only really felt here in the creepy, gothic appeal of "Mary Clark," and the closest Black Widow come to really rocking out is with the refreshingly straightforward format of the driving "Wait Until Tomorrow." Elsewhere, it's sadly all about mostly forgettable ("The Journey," "Poser," "Legend of Creation") or derivative ("Tears and Wine" with its mellow, King Crimson-like vibe) examples of prog-lite, with a couple of pointless musical interludes ("Bridge Passage," "An Afterthought") thrown in as filler. But perhaps most telling of all is the second song, "The Gypsy," which, because it highlights Clive Jones' flute, inevitably recalls the contemporary work of Jethro Tull, yet never comes anywhere near replicating Ian Anderson's wide-eyed intensity, never mind his eloquently elliptical turns of phrase. If any song here could single-handedly epitomize Black Widow's underachieving status, this is it, but then, the entirety of this LP pretty much does the trick as well. AMG.

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