Broken Barricades is the fifth studio album by Procol Harum, released approx. a year after Home. The personnel is the same on both albums, and the same people who played together in Paramounts some years before the constellation replaced the original Procol Harum band members.

I have to admit that this release date is an estimate, since I haven’t been able to confirm it. The UK release was a few months later, on June 11, but they per-released the album in the US shortly after they began a concert tour over there. Since the tour started April 3, I have estimated the release day one week later. Maybe someone can come it closer?

I am afraid I have to repeat myself from the post about Home. This album comes nowhere near the fantastic debut, and compared with Home I find it even boring. I chose to bring it up anyway, even without a precise release date, after all it is Procol Harum and in my opinion one of the entrepreneurs of prog. rock music.

Instead of complaining more about the change of music after the new band constellation, I will quote Mike Saunders from an article about the album in Rolling Stone Magazine. It is from June 10, 1971, the day before the UK release.

Broken Barricades, the fifth Procol Harum album: the last three songs on side one create a typically good PH groove, but the rest of the album is, at this point in the group’s career, a disaster. Over half of Gary Brooker’s songs (five of eight on the LP) are incredibly sluggish, Robin Trower has reduced himself to a sort of anonymous everyman’s heavy guitar style, and BJ Wilson’s drumming is unremarkable for the first time since Shine On Brightly. The sound of the band is muddy, dense, and lethargic, lacking the kick of Whiskey Train or About To Die, which were also dense – but forceful, not plodding.

Gary Brooker – piano, vocals
Robin Trower – guitar, vocals
Chris Copping – bass, organ
B. J. Wilson – drums