Metamorphosis - IRON BUTTERFLY***

Free Flight/New Day/Shady Lady/Best Years Of Our Lives/Slower Than Guns/Stone Believer/Soldier In Our Town/Easy Rider/Butterfly Bleu

The final high placed chart entry for hard rock group Iron Butterfly came with Metamorphosis. Personnel changes and a new musical direction did little to halt their slide in popularity. (US:16)

"The majority of songs on this LP can be categorized as fairly generic early-70s hard rock, burdened by rather plodding rhythms. The two exceptions are Slower Than Guns, a droning, sitar-laden slice of psychedelia with anti-pollution lyrics, and Butterfly Bleu, a 14-minute prog-psych opus."

"This third generation line-up is considerably off the pace of earlier ones. Most of these tracks still have a fairly hard rock, guitar driven sound, but are overly dependent on the vocals. Also, totally missing is the fabulous period flavour of their first three releases."

"Iron Butterfly shouldn't be playing regular rock music, a huge step away from their awesome psychedelic stuff."

"The Butterfly go for a more rock direction - the bass and organ are kept well under control here - and they nearly pull it off. It's not a bad album, as with all their releases there are some good tracks (and some not so good)."

"The sound of Iron Butterfly was changing, unavoidably with the new decade, the 1970s: the guitars sound more robust, the drums and the bass lost their 60s taste, and fill the sound with more density. The organ, which dominated the atmosphere and even the riffs, is much more balanced in its incursions, in a word: the technical improvements make this band sound better on Metamorphosis. On the other hand, it loses its grace and distinctive flavour. To accompany this, there aren't any catchy tracks here."

"Metamorphosis is the weakest album that I've heard from Iron Butterfly. Changing musical style can be a good thing but not in this case. Why leave that awesome psych and move towards chaos like the A-side of this album?"

"By 1970 the Butterfly where heading in a slightly more hard rock direction and the results can be very good. Kind of like Grand Funk smashing into Steppenwolf over at Iron Butterfly's house."