The band's best studio album, coming off of the success of Space Ritual. The group's rock roots are juxtaposed effectively with the swelling synthesizer flourishes and pretentious song ideas, creating the quintessential guitar-oriented space-rock record -- the highlight was the live recording of "You'd Better Believe It," with its crunchy guitars, but nobody minded keyboardman Simon House's languid synthesizer-laden "Hall of the Mountain Grill" (especially as it was followed by the Lemmy-sung "Lost Johnny," a great all-out rocker). The sound, especially the mix of ballsy high-volume guitar playing and soaring electronic keyboards ("The Psychedelic Warlords," "D-Rider"), would later get co-opted by outfits such as Blue Öyster Cult ("Don't Fear the Reaper") and Kansas. Overall, this is the sound and imagery that the punkier kids and druggies who went to shows like Laserium were looking for, and if the producers of Laserium had devised something hooked around this record, it could have run 20 years or better.

(by Bruce Eder, All Music Guide)

Well... it's another Hawkwind album. Fortunately, another good one. Don't worry - they're not about to leave their successful formula so easy. However, Hall Of The Mountain Grill does sound a bit more lightweight than its predecessors. The songs get shorter - what's that, the longest of them hardly exceeds seven friggin' minutes? fuck those sellouts - and the songs get a bit underarranged, that is, they just don't do as many overdubs as they used to. Everything has its good and bad sides, of course: the good side is that the record doesn't bleed so much on your ears, and is therefore more accessible than, say, Doremi, but on the bad side, the lack of extra overdubs only further reveals the primitivism of Hawkwind's approach and makes Hall a true patented 'guilty pleasure'.
Another significant 'innovation' is the abundance of short atmospheric instrumentals, awash in synths and saxes and violins. Obviously, the aim was to make a softer record, a lush sonic landscape where you could actually choose your own mode of tripping out - either headbanging to the usual riff-based monstrosities, or calmly relaxing to the soft lulling violin sound. Personally, I like that approach, but while some of these instrumentals sound nice enough, in general they're just boring, generic, sloppily recorded proto-ambient pieces. The pathetic orchestrated title track is perhaps the best of the bunch, but it almost sounds as if it's been adapted from a Hollywood melodrama - if it weren't for the lowly synth growls and the phased effects that crop up from time to time, you'd thought Hawkwind had gone completely whacky and traded their good name for a Hollywood fortune. The violin on 'Wind Of Change' is also extremely nice, but the track's poor production overshadows it so much that the necessary spiritual effect is very hard to achieve. (For the record, it's funny but the violin passage on here actually reminds me of Scarlet Rivera's passionate violin soloing on Dylan's 'One More Cup Of Coffee'. Talk about bizarre coincidences).
That said, the record would still have deserved a decent rating if only for the opening track - 'Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)', despite the usual cheesy title (or because of it?), is a true Hawkwind classic along the lines of 'Silver Machine' and 'Master Of The Universe'. Well, actually, it's not all that different from those songs - based on the usual combination (cool memorable riff + exciting catchy vocal melody + ten thousand pounds' worth of astral atmosphere), but at least if you don't trip out during the mid-section, you'll get to notice that they actually experiment quite a bit on there, changing tempos and exploring all kinds of magic guitar effects, instead of just playing whatever simplistic noises they can on their saxes and synthes. Besides, how can you resist such sincere, devoted lyrics as 'We're the psychedelic warlords/Playing spaced out rock'n'roll'? I mean, heck, these are pretentious lyrics, but God strike me if they aren't true. They are the warlords of psychedelia, and they do play spaced out rock'n'roll. Can't disagree with that, nosir.
'Psychedelic Warlords' isn't the only decent thing on here, though. Nick Turner's 'D-Rider' (short for 'Dragon Rider', no doubt!) is strangely moody as well, with an excellent use of 'background chorales' and more of those hilarious cheesy lyrics. 'We're astral-planing, floating free/On our continuum frequency' - how's that for ya? I'm still at a loss why all of those things don't make me vomit, but somehow they don't. Probably due to the fact that they don't have a shitty overblown singer like David Byron or a shitty overblown guitarist like Mick Box. Amazing restrain throughout.
'You'd Better Believe It', the album's centerpiece, is a relative letdown for me - much like 'Brainstorm' on Doremi, it probably worked better live, although don't forget to pinch yourself somewhere around 3:15 when the 'astral organ solo' comes in, because it kicks some tremendous ass in its laughability. But in general, I feel far more partial towards Kilmister's 'Lost Johnny' - a true hard rock classic that's produced ten times better than it would be on Motorhead's debut album (and running ahead, let us not remember that Lemmy took over most of his contributions to Hawkwind's catalog when he left the band, re-recording them for Motorhead sake - including the band's anthem 'Motorhead' itself).
Overall, while the band does try to slightly expand its artistic boundaries on Hall, it hardly works because Hawkwind is one of those bands who, having once chosen a trodden path, are forced to follow it and aren't at all able to swerve - or they'll find themselves right at the bottom. That said, with a fistful of good will one can easily overlook the flaws and just concentrate on the immortal stuff. 'Psychedelic Warlords' rules! Bring me my deep space plasma-powered wardragon RIGHT NOW! RIGHT NOW, do you hear?

(George Starostin, Rating: * * * 1/2)