British guitarist and singer Michael Heslop, Alex Capelle (guitar, piano), bassist Roger Carlier and Willy Stassen (drums, harmonica) founded Belgium’s most successful blues rock band Burning Plaguee in Brussels in 1969. In response to the British and American blues boom of the time, they played numerous live gigs with their gritty, raw and hard-hitting blues rock. In 1970, at the Bilzen Festival, they even performed as the support act for Black Sabbath and The Kinks. Eventually, the quartet signed a contract with the major label CBS, arranged by the Belgian production company Raza. In the same year, they recorded their first and only self-titled album, produced by Jean Huysmans, who later produced the debut album of their Belgian rivals, Doctor Downtrip.

It was released in autumn 1970 with an extravagant cover design by Luk Tegenbos. Great riffs from the two guitarists, slow blues, acoustic tracks featuring slide guitar and harmonica, psychedelic blues and hard boogie all with English vocals earned them excellent reviews and sales of around 10,000 copies. An enormous success for this genre, but it wasn’t enough. Disappointment over the lack of support from the record company led to the band’s break-up shortly afterwards at the end of 1970. Michael Heslop subsequently joined the band Doctor Downtrip. As the LP was released exclusively as a Dutch pressing in Belgium, it is now extremely rare, especially as it is an absolutely brilliant heavy blues-rock album.