Queen: Sheer Heart Attack (180g, half-speed mastered) [HOLLYWOOD]

Why you'll love it

This Hollywood pressing is half-speed mastered on 180g vinyl. "Killer Queen" reached No. 2 in the UK and gave Queen their first US top 20 hit, and the album was their first to reach the US top 20.

This edition

• Half-speed master
• 180g vinyl

About the album

Queen's first trip to America, opening for Mott the Hoople in 1974, ended early when Brian May was diagnosed with hepatitis and flown home to hospital. By June the band had regrouped at Trident Studios to start rehearsing new material, and the songs that came out of those sessions were their sharpest yet.

With Roy Thomas Baker co-producing, Queen traded the progressive sprawl of their first two albums for tighter, punchier songs, and the classic Queen sound snapped into focus. "Killer Queen" is Freddie Mercury's champagne-cool showstopper, "Brighton Rock" sends May's guitar ricocheting around itself, and "Now I'm Here" is a strutting rocker that stayed in their live sets for years. "Stone Cold Crazy" is so fast it's practically proto-thrash, while "Lily Of The Valley" and "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" show off Mercury's music-hall wit. "In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited" closes the album with a singalong built for stadiums the band hadn't played yet.

Critics now count it among the band's best work and an essential glam rock album. It's the record where Queen stopped being one of several promising British rock bands and became, rather inconveniently for everyone else, Queen.

Also at Kops: more Queen on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Hollywood (cat# D004065001), a reissue of the 1974 album.