Between Vietnam, COINTELPRO, Nixon, Peter Frampton, Barry Manilow, and all the other horrible shit about the era, it was sort of a given that everyone in the ‘70s with a guitar and/or a mustache was getting high. If your body managed to escape the draft, your mind required its own way out, and a veritable legion of pasty North American teenagers found one in the holy trinity of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and local dirt-weed. It’s a combination that birthed many a band—from early adopters/walking legends like Pentagram, Sir Lord Baltimore, and Warpig to those long-forgotten miscreants whose 15 minutes consisted of a solitary, barely-ever-in-print 45 and the story about that one time they opened for Alice Cooper in Ypsilanti, Michigan, or the Allman Brothers in East Dogdick, Arkansas. Toss in a mom’s-basement-dwelling escapist undercurrent of Tolkein novels and pre-Dungeon & Dragons role-playing games, and you’ve got the basis for Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles, the latest compilation from the Numero Group, a label that has built its well-deserved reputation for excellence on a catalog of magnificently curated R&B and soul compilations. But Darkscorch is a different beast entirely, featuring 16 dope-huffing, Hobbit-humping, one-off rock bands from the late, great 1970s.
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