Golden Earring

On To the Hilt, Golden Earring fully gives themselves over to the prog rock tendencies that they had toyed with throughout the 1970s. The resulting album has a strong prog feel but lacks the characteristic sound and the solid material that defined the group's best efforts to that point. The band puts in a typically energetic and thunderous performance, but their strong instrumental chops can't overcome the self-indulgent nature of much of the album's material: "Why Me?" and "Latin Lightning" are a few of the potentially interesting songs on To the Hilt that are undercut by dull, overlong sections of jamming. Said songs also lack the tight arrangements and the sudden, surprising instrumental twists that made the group's past epics so interesting.

This 1977 double-album opus represents Golden Earring's entry into the series of live albums that were so popular in the late '70s. At this point in its career, the band's live sound had a newfound sense of power, thanks to the addition of second guitarist Eelco Gelling. Indeed, classics like "Radar Love" and "She Flies on Strange Wings" benefit from a newfound complexity and energy that stems from the energetic guitar interplay between Gelling and George Kooymans. Golden Earring's new double-guitar sound also allows the group to overhaul some of its material in new and interesting ways.

Seven Tears finds Golden Earring continuing to develop its distinctive blend of hard rock and prog elements, but the end result is not as consistent as 1970's Golden Earring. The big problem this time out is that the group's adventurous genre-hopping tendencies don't always result in strong songs: "Silver Ships" is a soft, science fiction-influenced song that generates a potent atmosphere but lacks the strong arrangement and sense of dynamics that would allow it to take flight, and "You're Better Off Free" loses sight of its catchy tune with a lengthy midsection guitar jam that derails an otherwise interesting song.

The Continuing Story of Radar Love is a 12-song hits collection from Dutch rock band Golden Earring, containing both the chug-a-long rock staple "Radar Love" and the full eight-minute version of "Twilight Zone." These two songs are the most renowned on this compilation and both cracked the Top 20, with "Radar Love" hitting number 13 in 1974 and "Twilight Zone" peaking at number ten nine years later. The other ten songs on the album consist of long, heavy guitar-filled runs that surround obscure lyrics, sometimes sounding like modern psychedelia. Some of the songs, like "The Vanilla Queen" and "Mad Love's Comin'" harbor a distinguishable progressive edge, thanks to woven keyboard and guitar interplay.

This 1997 follow-up to The Naked Truth repeats the basic "live and acoustic" formula of that album, but it isn't the uninspired retread one might expect. Since the last album used most of the group's familiar numbers, this collection of songs digs deeper into the group's catalog to highlight some lesser-known gems that will delight Golden Earring fanatics. Two of the best examples are "Buddy Joe," a rousing adventure tale that translates perfectly to the acoustic setting, and "Bombay," a tune that takes an almost hoedown-style quality when stripped of its electric guitars. The set list also includes a few covers that appeared on Love Sweat, "Who Do You Love" and "This Wheel's on Fire."

Together represents an important step forward for Golden Earring. Unlike the group's previous outings, the songs on this album don't fall into strict rock or progressive categories. Instead, the group blurs these strict lines and weaves elements of each genre into a distinctive style that gives the songs their unique flavor. For instance, "Brother Wind" has the complex arrangement and length of a prog rock epic, but it moves forward with the energy and powerful riffing of a hard rock song. The group also makes a concerted effort to give each song a tight arrangement and usually more than one catchy hook. The result is the band's first truly consistent album.

Golden Earring is a Dutch rock band, founded in 1961 in The Hague as the Golden Earrings. They achieved worldwide fame with their international hit songs "Radar Love" in 1973, which went to number one on the Dutch charts, reached the top ten in the UK and went to number thirteen on the US charts, "Twilight Zone" in 1982, and "When the Lady Smiles" in 1984. During their career they had nearly 30 top-ten singles on the Dutch charts; over the years they produced 25 studio albums.