the straightforward rock style popularized by such groups as Grand Funk Railroad, and gritty "life on the road" themes in the lyrics. Banquet (1974) featured extended, multi-layered jazz fusion compositions and a 30-piece backup band, alternating with some shorter tracks reminiscent of Chicago and Traffic. Those first four albums are all concept albums of a sort and along with the self-titled Asterix album are the most sought after today. Mind Exploding (1976) established a holding pattern and tried to combine the jazz of Banquet with the garage-rock of Rock & Roll Singer, but was not as well received as the earlier albums. Vocalist John Lawton left in 1976 to join Uriah Heep. He was replaced by Mike Starrs. With him the band recorded and released 7" single "Old Man Roller / Writing On The Wall" in June 1977. John Lawton returned for the 1981 album Mean Machine. On the two albums without Lawton the band moved to a more commercial sound, on 1978's Good Time Warrior and 1980s Sneak Me In. John Lawton's 1980 solo album on RCA, Heartbeat, was a Lucifer's Friend album in everything but name, with the lineup from Sneak Me In performing as backup musicians on that project. Lawton's official return, Mean Machine, found the band returning to heavy metal, this time in the vein of Rainbow and NWOBHM. The band officially broke up in 1982 but thirteen years later, in 1994 John and Peter Hesslein briefly reformed to release a new CD, Sumo Grip under the name of Lucifer's Friend II, with Curt Cress, Andreas Dicke, Jogi Wichmann and Udo Dahmen replacing the classic line-up. After this they broke up once more. Recent years Although John Lawton stated that the crew weren't interested in getting back to record or perform live again, in August 2014 he announced on his website that the original lineup would reunite to play some dates in 2015, including Sweden Rock Festival in June, after almost 40 years since their last gig together. They then released a new compilation album called Awakening, followed by four new tracks. Due to the demise of their original drummer Joachim "Addi" Rietenbach a few years ago, his position was now occupied by Stephan Eggert. Also, original keyboardist Peter Hecht refused to participate in the reunion. Due to this, guitarist Peter Hesslein played the keyboard parts on the new album, once again hiring Jogi Wichmann (who