They created a monster. The success and demands of the psychedelic epic “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” left Iron Butterfly in a dark place.
Fame was not a friend. Touring endlessly, the Southern California band’s classic lineup had one last-gasp left, the hurried but solid followup album “Ball.”
No peace. Not much love. The album was anchored by songs of dread and existential panic. Imaginative listeners can hear in 1969’s “Ball” the death throes of the 1960s.
Opening number “In the Time of Our Lives” captures Iron Butterfly in peak form, serving notice the band was no longer trafficking in 20-minute psychedelic slogs. Instead, the taut 5-minute track recalls the brilliant “Iron Butterfly Theme” from the debut album. “Lives” is an equally cinematic work, beginning with a clanging anguish straight out of a Hammer horror film.
Guitarist Erik Brann drives his fuzzed-out Mosrite straight into wounded beast mode. A tortured amp yelps in reverberated protest. Echoplex rules. Chants recall the darkest of the Middle Ages … or some laddie video game. “These are the things that we hear in the time of our lives,” singer and songwriter Doug Ingle explains.
Fate and the transience of existence hang over the proceedings like cloying incense: “How you doing, people that passed on yesterday?” Ingle asks over his funereal B-3. “Did you meet with justice on your judgment day?”
And the summing up: “These are the things that we fear in our world.” Straight out of John Lennon’s primal-therapy explorations of “Plastic Ono Band,” still several years away.
The song’s climax leaves us alone with a stark bit of militaristic snare drum — an effect far less chilling all these years away from the Vietnam war. “In the Time of Our Lives” runs on large doses of psychedelic kitsch, but it’s not without artistry or contemporary appeal.
“It accomplishes in just under five minutes what took an entire side of ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ to do,” one savvy fan posted on social media.
Despite the gloom, “In the Time of Our Lives” cracked Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Benefiting from strong FM radio play (“Lives” along with sister track “Soul Experience”) the “Ball” album went Gold and reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200.