Suck: Time to Suck

Do you like your rock loud, heavy, and trippy? Then pucker up to Suck. This South African band lasted only eight months together, but that was long enough to put out one monster of an album, 1971’s Time to Suck. The group was notorious for its provocative onstage antics such as wielding weapons during its performances, as well as its scathing anti-war commentaries, and the way by which the band attacked the songs it covered indicated these guys were not messing around. Produced by fellow South Africa hard rocker Julian Laxton of the band Freedom’s Children, the album, released originally on EMI and now remastered via the great Shadoks Music imprint, features brutal, fiery deconstructions of such popular hard rock anthems as Deep Purple’s “Into the Fire”, King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man”, Grand Funk Railroad’s “Aimless Lady”, and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”, as well as a feedback-soaked rendition of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”. Raw, raucous, and uncompromising, Time to Suck is as visceral as early ’70s acid rock gets.