No one ever plummeted between two stools quite so vertiginously as Locomotive, hard-gigging proto-ska Brummies who gave themselves a pendulous rock makeover circa 1969 and somehow alienated everyone in the world in the process. Hindsight defines their sole album, 1970’s We Are Everything You See, as a stone classic of its late-psych-with- brass kind. Its palm-sweating scarcity in original Parlophone format is shared by Den Of Iniquity, released the following year by Locomotive keyboardist Norman Haines and a clutch of eager new bandmates.
Despite lacking certain key elements that made the Locomotive album so irresistible – the lysergic brass for starters, and a wah-wah Hammond at the top of the mix – the soulful, thick-set rock to be found on Den Of Iniquity fully deserves a seat at the table. The title track, Finding My Way Home and the 13-minute Rabbits contain some sublime kazoo-toned lead guitar from Neil Clarke, bassist Andy Hughes provides an album highlight with the feathery acoustica of Bourgeois, and Haines himself is in great stentorian voice throughout.
Best of all, Esoteric’s expanded reissue appends several essential bonus tracks from the same period, of which the percussion-heavy loungeadelica of Daffodil and I Really Need A Friend hit the spot most resoundingly.
