Flowers Of Evil
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Album Summary
"Flowers of Evil" stands as Mountain's third studio album, laid down and released in 1971 on the Windfall Records label. The band took the production reins themselves, working alongside the gifted engineer Phil Ramone to capture that thick, churning sound that had already made Mountain one of the most commanding heavy rock outfits breathing air in the early seventies. Coming off the momentum of "Climbing!" the year before, Leslie West and company stepped back into the studio with something to prove — and what they delivered was a record soaked in blues-drenched, bone-crushing hard rock, with West's guitar work cutting like a hot knife and Mark Clarke's bass lines hitting like a freight train rolling downhill.
Reception
- The album found its footing on the Billboard 200, giving Mountain a continued commercial presence in a hard rock market that was hungry for exactly the kind of muscular, blues-rooted sound the band delivered.
- Critical response recognized "Flowers of Evil" as a worthy entry in Mountain's catalog, though the long shadow cast by the massive success of "Mississippi Queen" from the previous album made it a tough act to follow in the eyes of the music press.
Significance
- "Flowers of Evil" is a genuine artifact of that beautiful, dangerous moment when the blues-rock tradition was hardening into something heavier — Mountain rode that wave with authority, and this album captures that transformation in real time.
- With tracks like "Crossroader" and "Pride And Passion" sitting alongside the medley of "King's Chorale" and "One Last Cold Kiss," the album showed Mountain's range — not just brute force, but a band capable of texture, dynamics, and genuine musical depth.
- The album reinforced Mountain's place in the lineage running from the Delta blues through British heavy rock and straight into the emerging American heavy metal scene, a contribution that serious students of the genre have long recognized.
Tracklist
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A1 Flowers Of Evil —
4:53
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A2a King's Chorale —
1:04
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A2b One Last Cold Kiss —
3:45
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A3 Crossroader 89
4:47
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A4 Pride And Passion —
7:05
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B2 Mississippi Queen 139
3:53
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.
