Van Der Graaf Generator - Godbluff - worth hearing?

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Van der Graaf Generator / Peter Hammill S& D, C or D?

It's one of their better albums - except the last track, which stinks

Godbluff might be my favourite from that version of the band. If you like the other two from that period (Still Life and World Record), definitely check it out.

Godbluff is genius, incredibly heavy and emotionally affecting. If you haven't heard this version of VDGG, I'd say their definitely a group you either can't live with or without. I probably marginally prefer Still Life, but both albums are definitely worth hearing. And that last track, "The Sleepwalkers" is great. If I had to lose one, I'd prob'ly least miss "Scorched Earth", which is still brilliant.

The first side of Godbluff is probably the best VdGG ever achieved, IMO: "The horizon calls with its parallel lines..."

The second side doesn't do it so much for me. "Arrow" gets a lot of props, though Hammill's voice is incredibly abrasive (yes, even for him).

Arrow is my fave VDGG song

Just listened to Arrow and it's pretty rockin'. The feedback squeal at the end is greatly kickass.

I'm not a massive VDGG fan really, but Arrow is godlike. It's got these totally ridiculous over the top lyrics, declaimed by Hammill in a style no-one else had the balls to attempt. I shall now reprint them in full :

Stub towers in the distance, riders the blasted moor
against the horizon
Fickle promises of treaty, fatal harbingers of war,
futile horisons
swirl as one in this flight, this mad chase,
this surge across the marshy mud landscape
until the meaning is forgotten.
Hood masks the eager face, skin stretched
and sallow,
headlong into the chilling night, as swift
as any arrow.

Feet against the flagstones, fingers scrabbling
at the lock,
craving protection.
'Sanctuary!' croaks a voice,
half-strangled by the shock
of its rejection.
Shot the bolt in the wall, rusted the key;
now the echoes of all frightfull memory
intrude in the silence.
What a crawl against the slope -
dark loom the gallows
One touch to the chapel door,
how swiftly comes the arrow.

"Compassion" you plead, as though
they kept it in a box
- that's long since been empty.
I'd like to help you somehow,
but I'm in the self-same spot:
my condition exempts me.
We are all on the run on our knees;
the sundial draws a line upon eternity
across every number.
How long the time seems, how dark the shadow,
how straight the eagle flies,
how straight towards his arrow.
How long the night is -
why is this passage so narrow?
How strange my body feels,
impaled upon the arrow.