Hall of the Mountain Grill is Hawkwind starting the long descent back to earth. After the somewhat numbing and totally inaccessible droning of Space Ritual, it's good to see the band incorporating such human traits as vocals, real English-language lyrics (however nonsensical), melodies and even an occasional string section. While the cosmic synthesizer whooshes and metronome drumming still turn up, Mountain Grill occasionally sounds more like Pink Floyd than the Hawkwind we used to know. In fact, "Web Weaver" displays a kind of sobriety never heard from them before, and on the title cut they use a classically influenced piano riff as an introduction to the rest of their weird noise song. Hall of the Mountain Grill comes as close to being genuinely listenable as anything done by this band yet, and if they keep this trend going they may even start to sell some albums in this country. (RS 177)

ALAN NIESTER