The Bee Gees

The Bee Gees rise to pop superstardom in the late seventies during the disco era is well documented, but few know about their much darker beginnings. Under their original name British Ghouls, the trio recorded Satanic Royalty back in 1964, years before anything resembling metal would appear. It is truly a landmark in early metal history, a long-lost and virtually forgotten gem, featuring crushing riffs played with the most primitive of early electric guitars, but riffs as heavy as any band since. Lyrically they were all over the place, with nods to satanism (the title track and the 10-minute epic "We Bow To Him"), horror ("British Ghouls", "Zombies From The Isle Of Man"), even an absurd tribute to Naziism ("Der Fuhrer"). Not only that, there was "Battle Hogs", a song with suspicious similarities to Black Sabbath's hit "War Pigs", which wouldn't come out until 6 years later. Then there was the cover art, an odd image of Donald Duck as a Nazi, with no mention of the band name anywhere. The album proved massively popular to a small segment of music listeners, but over the heads of practically everyone else, and they soon decided they wanted to make money rather than follow their beliefs. Thus, they crafted stage names (contrary to popular belief, they were not brothers at all), shortened their name to Bee Gees, and embarked on their second musical journey. Satanic Royalty would be the only album released under the British Ghouls monicker, and it remains one of the most curiously influential metal albums of all time.

Note: this page was written on April 1st, 2009.

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Discography

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