PhilPaine.com

If I were to pick one band to illus­trate the con­vo­luted rock trends of the 1980’s, it would be The Cult. This noto­ri­ously frac­tious, unpre­dictable, and peri­patetic band usu­ally hov­ered some­where in between the Doors and AC/DC in its over­all sound, but ven­tured into all sorts of oth­er moods. Despite their noto­ri­ous inter­nal bick­er­ing and tem­po­rary split-ups, they have man­aged to remain a force in rock for a quar­ter cen­tury. Any­one with a seri­ous rock col­lec­tion is like­ly to own copies of Love (my own favourite) and Son­ic Tem­ple. Their Cana­dian tour last year still pulled in huge crowds, espe­cially here in Toron­to. Dur­ing one of their tem­po­rary split-ups, lead singer Ian Ast­bury start­ed up a garage band called Holy Bar­bar­ians, which record­ed only this one album, in 1999. Cream is a decent album, worth play­ing now and then, but it illus­trates how much The Cult ben­e­fit­ed from the fine gui­tar play­ing of Bil­ly Duffy. With­out him to bal­ance Ast­bury, the singer often comes across too heavy-hand­ed. Some of the songs seem stagy and melo­dra­matic. But “Opi­um” is first rate, and “Broth­er Fights” is quite good, too. If you are a Cult fan, pick up this album, not only for the sake of com­plete­ness, but to show, by con­trast, just how the com­bi­na­tion of Duffy and Ast­bury worked.