Mean Machine marks the return of John Lawton on vocals and while I can confidently say that the band does benefit from his return, musically, they have drifted way off course, but this started even before Lawton’s initial split in 1977. The album is a bit harder edge than Sneak Me In or Good Time Warrior, but the songs are just straight forward radio hard rock numbers and like the band’s previous few albums, it’s somewhat forgettable. Still, this album is a slightly better that the two Starrs fronted LPs and the track “Cool Hand Killer” hints that these guys could have probably pulled off a heavy metal direction if they wanted to. Ultimately, Lucifer’s Friend would go inactive after this album until releasing Sumogrip in 1994, but this is my stop, hah. The band’s first four albums are top notch heavy prog and proto-metal statements and I strongly recommend checking and those out if you are so inclined.
1981 US white label promo edition on Elektra. Funny to me that all of these last three ended up being white label versions as I did not intend it to be. I’m surprised Elektra stuck with them through this era, to be honest.
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