A thrilling, no-holds-barred, heavy rock treatment of a clutch of riff-based but fairly commercial pop tunes, Megaton'ssole album has plenty of admirers these days.
Perhaps this should be a rock label staple, but the LPs origins are more pop than that with more akin to those ranks of over looked production library classics recorded for one purpose and taking on a different guise and importance to collectors years later.
For Megaton is the creative inspiration of vocal harmony leader Les Humphries (as in The Les Humphries Singers, big hit makers in early 70'sGermany) and his writing partner/right hand LHS man, Jimmy Bilsbury.
Perhaps having the likes of future Uriah Heep vocalist John Lawton in the midst of the LHS was an inspiration, but whatever, Humphries nose for a commercial opportunity sniffed out the Free, Led Zep hard rock/ blues rock market and he duly delivered. A 1971 Deram release, first in Germany, other territories later inc. South America, and the UK -where today such a pressing can set you back over £700 ! RPM presents it'sfirst legitimate reissue on CD.

Back at the dawn of the 1970s, the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple came from nowhere to rule the nascent hard rock scene. Naturally enough, the level of success that such groups enjoyed inspired others to adopt their bluesy, proto-heavy metal blueprint. Some of those younger aspirant bands - Free being the most obvious example - would also make their mark, but the majority of acts who recorded a solitary LP in the same vein before fading away wouldn't really gain any attention until the Great Prog Rock Stampede of the mid to late '80s, when albums that couldn't be given away when they were made suddenly started to change hands for serious money. Amongst the forgotten jewels of the underground British hard rock/metal scene were albums by Leafhound, Elias Hulk-and Megaton, a mysterious combo who issued a self-titled LP in Germany in 1970 that belatedly appeared in Britain the following year on the highly collectable Deram label.
A thrilling, no-holds-barred, heavy rock treatment of a clutch of riff-based but fairly commercial pop tunes. Megaton's sole album has plenty of admirers these days. Nevertheless, the sleeve doesn't give much away in terms of the band's identities, and debate has raged over the last twenty years or so as to who exactly was behind the album - indeed, even the nationality of the musicians has been disputed, with some claiming them as a German outfit, others British. After extensive research (okay, we
Coogled one or two names and made a couple of phone calls), this definitive reissue of the Megaton album attempts to resolve some of those issues - although before we go any further, it should perhaps be acknowledged that many of the LP's secrets have disappeared along with Les Humphries, whose highly effective vanishing act made the national papers back in 1998, and his partner-in-crime Jimmy Bilsbury, who died of heart failure in 2003.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves already. Though some of the details of the tale remain elusive, the Megaton story really hinges around the peripatetic activities of Les Humphries, who had spent the first half of the '60s in the British Armed Forces. An accomplished singer and ja// pianist, he was a member of the Royal Marines Corps Band before being discharged from the Armed Services at the age of twenty-five. At the beginning of 1965 he moved into the pop world when he joined Brighton-based group Peter & the Headlines, who'd just released a couple of flop singles for Decca. With Humphries on board, the group moved away from R&B material to a more harmony-based sound. After passing an audition for Marquee Club boss Harold Pendleton, they appeared regularly at the venue under their new name of the Summer Set. The band released a single, a ie Beach Boys' 'Farmer's Daughter', gh EMI's Columbia imprint before relocating to Hamburg, where they gigged at the Top Ten Club and recorded as part of The Top Ten