Out of all of the pioneers of hard rock and heavy metal, Mountain has to be the most underrated and underappreciated, due to a few factors - their rather jumbled history, comparative lack of output, and obvious links between them and psychedelic power-trio Cream, which got them unjustly pegged as copycats. The group was born from what was essentially a beneficial partnership between struggling singer-guitarist Leslie West and producer-insider Felix Pappalardi, which is where the Cream connection came in. The latter saw the talent in the former, played on West's debut solo record (confusingly titled "Mountain"), then the two together created the lineup for the band which would be known as Mountain, forevermore. Climbing! has been pooh-poohed as Big and Bluster, and no substance by many critics, but they miss the point. The collaboration between West, Pappalardi, Corky Laing and Steve Knight is on another plane altogether, because they go a long way to keep the old psychedelic flames alive, AND manage to forge a weird sort of new energy that points the way to future endeavors. And no other band in this era of heavy rock even came close to duplicating this feat. "Mississippi Queen" lays down the gauntlet from the jump - a two-and-a-half-minute barrel roll of swampy, heavy blues swagger where everyone in the group is at their best and brightest. Much the same could be said about the rest of the album. "Never in my Life" bowls through your speakers at an unmatched level of energy, for example. But the band is just as adept with softer, more mystical exercises like "Theme From an Imaginary Western" (where they really do completely reimagine an earlier Cream song) and "The Laird", where Felix's vocal hovers somewhere between angelic and the backroom of some seedy opium den. Overall, Climbing should be up there with all the other acknowledged heavy classics of 1970, if not in the Top 3 or 5.
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