Avalanche
View on Discogs
View on Wikipedia
Album Summary
Avalanche came roaring out in 1974 on Columbia Records, and let me tell you, this was Mountain digging deep and doing it their way. The band took the production reins themselves alongside the gifted engineer Phil Ramone, a man who knew how to capture power without losing that raw, living-breathing energy in the grooves. Cut during a time when the rock landscape was shifting under everybody's feet, Avalanche found Leslie West, Corky Laing, and the crew pressing forward with purpose — balancing the heavy, mountainous guitar sound that made them legends with a studio polish that spoke to where hard rock was headed in the mid-seventies.
Reception
- Avalanche posted a respectable showing on the Billboard 200, holding its own in a crowded and competitive hard rock marketplace during 1974.
- Critical response ran warm and cool in equal measure — reviewers tipped their hats to the musicianship on display but more than a few felt the album didn't quite hit the seismic low-end thunder of Mountain's earlier work.
Significance
- Avalanche stands as a genuine artifact of mid-seventies hard rock evolution, with Leslie West's guitar work continuing to demonstrate why the man was considered one of the most authoritative heavy players of his generation.
- The album captured Mountain navigating that delicate, soulful tension between commercial accessibility and sheer heavy instrumentation — a balancing act that defined the very best rock records of the 1974 era.
- With a setlist that stretched from a barn-burning take on 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' to the album-closing grace of 'Last Of The Sunshine Days,' Avalanche showcased the full emotional and sonic range Mountain was capable of delivering when they were locked in.
Tracklist
-
A1 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On —
5:05
-
A2 Sister Justice 119
3:58
-
A3 Alisan 143
4:41
-
A4 Swamp Boy 131
2:54
-
A5 Satisfaction 136
5:14
-
B1 Thumbsucker 100
3:20
-
B2 You Better Believe It 142
5:47
-
B3 I Love To See You Fly 102
3:46
-
B4 Back Where I Belong 151
2:56
-
B5 Last Of The Sunshine Days 97
3:47
Artist Details
Mountain was a thunderous hard rock outfit that rose up out of New York in the late 1960s, anchored by the mammoth guitar work of Leslie West and the production genius of Felix Pappalardi, who had already left his fingerprints on Cream's finest records. These cats were heavy before heavy had a name, laying down a thick, blues-drenched sound that put them right alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as founding fathers of hard rock and proto-metal, with their classic "Mississippi Queen" burning up the charts in 1970 and their legendary Woodstock performance cementing their place in rock history. Mountain never quite got the mainstream glory they deserved, but every guitarist who ever cranked an amp up to ten owes something to Leslie West's enormous, soulful tone.
