One of the great things about
Jeff Beck is his utter unpredictability. It's also one of the most maddening things about him, too, since it's as likely to lead to flights of genius as it is to weird detours like
Beck, Bogert & Appice. It's hard to tell what exactly attracted Beck to the rhythm section of
Vanilla Fudge and
Cactus -- perhaps he just wanted to rock really loud and really hard, beating
Led Zeppelin at their own game. Whatever the motivation, the end result was the same -- a leaden album, with occasional interesting guitar work smothered by heavy riffs and rhythms that don't succeed on a visceral level. It's a loud, lumbering record that may be of interest for Beck archivists, provided they want to hear absolutely everything he did. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine