06. Angel - Angel (1975)
Angel were an east coast American band that were quickly branded as a kind of divine and angelic answer to the mighty
Kiss, largely due to their affinity with the colour white. The band had actually been discovered by
Gene Simmons of Kiss of all people who needless to say was a fan of the band. Marketing wise that Kiss connection was initially well used, as Kiss were of course one of the hottest properties in rock marketing around this time and selling out arenas wherever they went. Therefore image wise Angel would mostly dress in white, which was in stark contrast to their more daring east coast neighbours Kiss, who donned their famous black-dominated garb, but despite these links between the two bands this was where the similarities between the two ended.
As a band Angel went well beyond the basic confines of the good time rock & roll of the Kiss sound and its accompanying theatrics, and in turn gave us an interesting and sometimes deep-feeling amalgamation of AOR, progressive rock and melodic metal all merged together and then all topped off with the dominant keyboard sound of the band. The resulting product was one of the purest AOR releases so far on this listing as the essential ingredients for AOR are there in abundance, which for me come in the shape of energetic and epic rock.
The album cover in hindsight also now feels very AOR, rather than the metal or progressive guise that it could’ve passed for back then. Critics weren’t quite sure what to make of them either and as was often the case when this kind of thing happened preferred to just slam them critically. Also one of their biggest detractors was a certain
Frank Zappa who in true Zappa style, made them a subject of one of his songs “Punky’s Whips” where he derided their girly looking appearance.
This their debut album was literally head and shoulders above the rest of their discography and serves to show just how close metal and AOR actually were, as we’ve already discovered with the thin line as well between both progressive rock and the early rising of AOR at this time, it seems like all these styles along with others were a perfect fit for what would become AOR.
Angel were fronted by vocalist
Frank DiMino and the talented
Geoff Giuffria on keyboards/mellotron, along with the Queen-ish guitar sound of
Punky Meadows, all giving us an album that is littered with some great early melodic songs. These include tracks like “Tower” “Long Time” and “Broken Dreams” all full of proggy twists and swirling heavy keyboards, making these tracks instant standouts. In hindsight "Tower" just sounds like very early essential AOR, where the band sing about swords and epic knight adventures, almost pre-empting the epic song matter of say "Hydra" by
Toto. "Long Time" is classic 1970s fare with its melodic shifts and any number of bands would've been proud to have a song like this and there's even a hint of
Led Zeppelin about it as well. "Broken Dreams" is another accomplished track that sounds like a couple of different songs rolled into one. The classic sounding “Mariner” smacks of being an epic and its soft ballady tones pre-empts the type of songs that great AOR bands would excel at. Finally the likely Kiss comparison is mostly heard on “Rock and Rollers” which actually ends up as being the odd man out on this album musically and sits below the aforementioned songs in terms of quality, before the album closes out with a keyboard based theme track.
This album is a great collection of songs for anybody that likes re-visiting or discovering melodic gems from the 1970s, from a band that unknowingly drafted one of the earliest AOR examples. After their debut album and undoubtedly from considerable record label pressure, the band embarked on a less than interesting career on their following albums and their best success came with their fourth album
White Hot which did garner some success.
Interestingly the band later incorporated key AOR artists like
Fergie Frederiksen and
Ricky Phillips into their line-up, but sadly for Angel it was to no avail and core band members Frank DiMino and Geoff Giuffria would finally go onto other projects. Overall Angel failed to scale any great heights and along with the diminishing quality in their output they finally called it quits around the 1980 period.