Killer French doomy progressive rarity with tremendous fuzzy leads, wild roaring Hammond, effects, dark vocals. Under the direction of the master, Jean Pierre Massiera.

The brainchild of Jean-Pierre Massiera, much travelled record producer and musician (see "Behind The Scenes" section for the full story) who had the vision to create his own supergroup who would be the epitome of French progressive rock. The cast was certainly impressive, and the music was inspiring, yet the music (to these ears at least) doesn't sound so French, but much more like the psychedelic/progressive sound of Italian bands like Formula 3 or New Trolls, powerful with real guts and very complex too, with great use of Vanilla Fudge styled vocal harmonies. I suppose the Formula 3 similarity is not so surprising when one considers that the album opens with a stunning rock rendition of "Die Irae" given the same spirit as the earlier version Formula 3 recorded. Sometimes it is totally French however, with buzzing synthesizers, space-rock and jazz-fusion intermixing as only the French know how.Closely related to this are the albums by Horrific Child and Atlantide. There's also a later band called Visitors under the aegis of Jean-Pierre Massiera, however that was a much more conventional rock album closer to his JPM & Co. project.

"Dies Irae" is actually some old medieval hymn, and Visitors and Formula 3 weren't the only ones who took on this song. Argent took on this on their 1974 album Nexus with "The Coming of Kohoutek"/"Once Upon a Sun"/"Infinite Wanderer" (it was disguised as three songs on the album, it sounded like one to me) and apparently even The Enid did a version, but I don't know where (I only have In the Region of the Summer Stars and Aerie Faerie Nonsense and I hadn't listened to either in a while, and they released a bunch more well into the 1980s that I hadn't heard).