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Satori Part I
Satori Part II
Satori Part III
Satori Part IV
Satori Part V
In 1971, while the West was busy dissecting the remains of the Summer of Love, Japan’s Flower Travellin' Band were making an altogether more celestial noise. After a debut album almost entirely comprised of covers (Muddy Waters, Black Sabbath, The Animals, King Crimson), album number two was a self-written, five-part suite of Eastern-tinged proto-metal.
The result was an album that felt less like an album and more like a spiritual assault, with singer Akira "Joe" Yamanaka's banshee wail keeping listeners on their toes and Hideki Ishima’s giant riffs and droning, sitar-like guitar work creating a psychedelic landscape that was both heavy and meditative. Half a century on, Satori is perhaps the ultimate artefact of Japanese psych-rock.
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
Other albums released in April 1971
- Broken Barricades - Procol Harum
- 4 Way Street – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
- In the Land of Grey and Pink – Caravan
- Overdog - Keef Hartley
- Survival – Grand Funk Railroad
- L.A. Woman – The Doors
- Sticky Fingers – the Rolling Stones
- The Doobie Brothers – The Doobie Brothers
- Thin Lizzy – Thin Lizzy
- Elegy – The Nice
- Extraction – Gary Wright
- Mirror Man – Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band
- Oh! Pleasant Hope – Blue Cheer
- Survival of the Fittest Live – Amboy Dukes
- Thirds – James Gang
- War – War
- Bloodrock 3 – Bloodrock
What they said...
"The grand plan was to create something as daring, outré and dangerous as a Black Sabbath, a Led Zeppelin or a Yes, while still remaining powerfully Japanese. To those ends Satori was – and still is – a remarkable album; heavier than a bull elephant's work boot, but still startlingly inventive, it blends edge-of-your-seat psychedelic shamanism with hair-shaking proto-metal rifferama." (The Guardian)
"The best moments on the album are shuffled to the front, leaving the B-side weaker by direct comparison. Too much of the album’s runtime is spent on overlong passages of hard rock soloing, and not enough developing the more interesting Eastern influences they set out to include here. Instead of carving out their own unique identity, you can still hear inklings of the band’s previous unsuccessful attempts to grab the international stage." (Sputnik Music)
"Satori is a journey to the centre of someplace that seems familiar but has never before been visited. It is a new sonic universe constructed from cast-off elements of the popular culture of the LSD generation. Forget everything you know about hard rock from the 1970s until you've put this one through your headphones. It's monolithic, expansive, flipped to wig city, and full of beach-blanket bong-out muscularity. In other words, this is a "real" classic and worth any price you happen to pay for it." (AllMusic)
What you said...
Gary Claydon: "There is no up or down" sings Joe Yamanaka on Satori II and after listening to Flower Travellin' Band's magnum opus, you can well believe it and could be forgiven for not knowing if you're on your arse or on your elbows.
In Buddhism, Satori means sudden enlightenment, awakening in Japanese. A fitting title for an album that was a big step forward for both Flower Travellin' Band and J-rock in general.
Satori could be treated as one single piece, but this is more than just an extended heavyweight jam. This isn't an album for the casual listener. It needs a bit of effort and rewards repeated playback. This is heavy psych, spaced-out proto speed and doom. Satori I comes in literally kicking and screaming, stomping allover any expectations. Satori II (a top ten hit on the Canadian singles chart) has a killer East-meets-heavy riff, more Indian than Japanese in nature and reminiscent of Over, Under, Sideways, Down by The Yardbirds.
Hideki Ishima's guitar tone is searingly bright, which can be a little tiring after a while. Parts III & IV do tend to drag a bit (the album could easily have been trimmed by 4 or 5 minutes without affecting its overall dynamic). Yamanaka is relegated to a bit part player by this time, but Ishima's soloing is superb, and there is the odd surprise to keep you on your toes, like - whoa! Who the fuck put the harmonica solo there?! Part V closes out with the album's most doom-laden riffage.
In some ways, Satori's genre-bending might have a familiar ring to it some 50-odd years later, but back in 197,1 there really wasn't much like it. Yuya Uchida and the boys were reading from a script that had yet to be written.
Mark Veitch: Nope, would rather slam the door on my knackers repeatedly than listen to this again. Ironically, I suspect that's what this guy was doing. Just not my thing, unfortunately, but I’m sure many will enjoy it.
Robby Jackson: Satori is special because of its place in the history of "forging" heavy metal. This was my first time hearing this group, and while I think the vibe resonates best with teenagers, the band is incredible. When the vocals give way, and they just start jamming, they are awesome – they’ve got that raw, technical power you only get when a band isn't trying to copy the West.
Listening to the masters on the WiiM/ELAC setup, the separation is incredible. This is the real deal – heavy, dark, and it definitely didn't come from punk.
Mike Canoe: I have two trains of thought regarding Satori by the Flower Travellin' Band. Well, three if you include wondering why they didn't give the songs different names.
The first is that, with the continued popularity of doom metal – and the genre's fondness for recording on analogue equipment, Satori sounds like it could have been released last week as easily as 55 years ago. The long thundering passages, freakout guitar solos, and a certain flexibility towards vocals have never gone out of style.
The second thought is a little more complicated to explain. Satori definitely sounds like it was influenced by the first Black Sabbath album, especially Part IV with its wizardly harmonica. And Part III (really, guys, would different song titles have been so hard?) reminds me strongly of Astronomy Domine around the 7:20 mark. At the same time, Part II reminds me of Sabbath's Every Day Comes and Goes and Part I has a similar riff to Blue Öyster Cult's Hot Rails to Hell, both from albums that came out after Satori. So who influenced whom? And how, in the pre-internet days, did the music spread so quickly?
Another possibility is that Flower Travellin' Band found this sound on their own. Not that I've tried really hard, but I didn't find many contemporary interviews with the band, so I don't know what the answer is. The album's Wikipedia page suggests that they were purposely trying to get away from blues-based rock, which sounds a lot like what the early wave of krautrock bands were trying to do around the same time, and Satori doesn't sound out of place next to heavier albums by bands like Amon Düül II or Guru Guru. There are even times when Joe Yamanaka's vocals remind me of Can's Damo Suzuki.
Ultimately, I don't know that the answer matters. It's a good trippy heavy rock album that I've never heard before. While my definition of classic rock has definitely broadened thanks to the club, I seem to be at my happiest with picks from the early '70s. And Satori hits the nail on the head.
Ben L. Connor: I love this album. It’s simply an unexpurgated burst of creativity with no nuance or tact or second-guessing. Just raw, hard rock frenzy unleashed. Obviously, given some of the other comments here, it’s not for the faint-hearted or people who want catchy melodies to relax to. But to soundtrack a psychological freak-out, there’s nothing better.
John Davidson: When I think of Japanese rock (which I'll confess I don't often do), I think of cheesy 80s hair metal wannabes and cheesy Eurometal vibes. So Flower Travellin Band's mix of doomy spacerock blues and noodling proto-prog-guitar-jam was something of a surprise.
Sadly, that's about as interesting as it got, because while it's technically competent (never a good sign), the songs don't really go anywhere and quickly blend into one.
For comparison, I put on UF0 2 (Flying), which has a similar vibe, but is far more varied and engaging. 4/10.
Philip Qvist: The great thing about this site is that many of us get exposed to artists and albums that under normal circumstances would have passed us by, and Satori by the Flower Travellin' Band is a perfect example.
That said, it doesn't mean that all of these albums will be met with universal acclaim by everyone, and I suspect Satori is going to be one of those polarising records that pop up from time to time. Some will like it, others won't – and I'm afraid I'm in the latter camp.
The songs are jarring, monotonous and lacking any cohesion. Apart from a long harmonica solo on Satori IV, I'm not sure what exactly vocalist Joe Yamanaka did in the recording studio, while Hideki Ishima will never appear on my list of great guitarists.
Granted, Satori is not as bad as albums from the likes of Jon Anderson and Michael Bolton, which we have reviewed over the years, but it isn't that far off either. A low score from me this week.
Adam Ranger: I've not heard of this before, so thanks for giving me a new group and recording to review.
It starts ok. I think Slayer listened to the first track when they wrote the riff for South Of Heaven. And that is where the interest rapidly fades for me.
Jazz prog metal? Some nice bits occasionally, but I lost interest as each of the five tracks played out. Amazed I made it through to the end.
I read that they needed an album to take with them overseas, and so they recorded this. The result for me is a lot of improv-sounding music with no real direction. It's hard to tell when one track ended and the next began.
Some will love this album, but apart from that first track, I will be glad if I never hear it again.
Greg Schwepe: I like Japanese sushi. I like Japanese cars. But after listening to Flower Travellin’ Band’s Satori, I decided rather quickly that I really don’t like 70s Japanese rock music.
Satori has five tracks: Satori Part I, Satori Part II, andm well, you get the idea. I fully listened to Parts I and II, then decided it would take Godzilla sitting on my chest to force me to listen to Parts III, IV, and V. And man, is he heavy, because by the time Part V ended, I was ready for Godzilla to let me up and listen to something else. Hey, some weeks you like the off-the-wall stuff that gets selected, some weeks you don’t.
And there you go, possibly one of my shortest reviews in weeks. 5 out of 10 for me on this one. Now to maybe listen to something recorded in Japan, like At Budokan or Made In Japan, to cleanse my Japanese musical palette.
Final score: 5.77 (27 votes cast, total score 156)
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