Spartacus Workout Music

Presumably Spartacus is a progressive-rock band since this self-titled archival CD release comes on progressive label, Black Rills Records, but you can't really make that out through the live bootleg sound quality. One can only imagine what the original studio tracks sounded like. Because the studio time was expensive, all the songs on Spartacus' unreleased 1978 LP were unusually short. For this release, Black Rills opted to use the much better-quality, and extended, live tracks. Still, the sound is terribly murky, which is likely the reason that Black Rills issued Spartacus as a special 1998 Christmas release, a limited, hand-made special edition of 95 CDs, never to be reprinted again, instead of an official release. Honestly, you can't really even make out how good a band Spartacus were. Everything sounds raw and a little messy. But that actually serves to even out any flaws that would have come through loud-and-clear on a studio recording, and, frankly, adds a sense of immediacy and skill to the music (which it might not really deserve). It all comes out sounding like late-'60s garage band, all exuberance and heightened sense of purpose and importance, all eerie organ, noodly psyche-styled guitar, and ham-fisted progressive surf drums, with the band putting all its sloppy heart into some extended psychedelic ravers, rather than the crystal-clear chimera of progressive rock. From this perspective, that's not bad at all. Pretty decent, in fact. Better than the alternative could have been, at least. So if you can listen past the less-than-stellar sound quality, sit back and think "1968, 1968, 1968..."