Exhibiting a truly gone sense of rock and roll -- even without
Creed
, who wouldn't join until the following album --
Chrome
here aren't quite the monster industrial/punk forebears of legend, but the original quartet still has something weird and wigged going for it. One of the best comments this reviewer ever heard about
The Visitation
was that it was early
Brian Eno
meets
Santana
, a judgment that best captures the strange mix going on. To be sure,
Visitation
isn't as laden with Latin funk as the latter, but
Edge
tries some odd percussion here and there, sometimes approaching
Can
's level of avant-garde groove. Guitarist
Lambdin
throws in a fair amount of reasonable enough soloing as well throughout, squelchy and heavily flanged guitar being the result when not offering up basic rhythm. It's good for what it is; there's certainly much worse out there. As for
Eno
, the opening song -- with a sudden musical rush building to the a capella title line, "How many years too soon?!" delivered in shrill, squealed nerd harmonies -- is hardly
the Doobie Brothers
. Strange electronic burps and shades and random drop-ins color the often sci-fi-tinged songs, so things are off in general, just not quite as frenetically so as later albums, with the exception of the thoroughly fried
"My Time to Live."
The higher vocals generally stay a bit calmer after the opening -- whichever singer it is,
or bassist
Spain
, has nowhere near as nails-on-chalkboard screechy warbling as, say,
Geddy Lee
, just possessed of a higher register and with reasonable control. The other lead singer sounds like a breathless
Jagger
imitator, which like the guitar playing is reasonable without being too distinct. In general, the four members sound like they want to do more than what the end result turned out to be, but the seeds were being sown nonetheless. ~ Ned Raggett