MYTHOS

Mythos' debut LP from 1972 is an excellent slab of seriously psychedelic rock of the German variety. I must admit that this one was a grower for me, as the vocals get some getting used to. The opening track, "Mythoett" is a nice, hippie-dippie, flute injected tune, and probably the easiest to digest for the uninitiated listener. With the following song, "Oriental Journey," things get a bit darker and weirder. There is some nice percussion work and sitar going on here, and we hear vocals for the first time. The vocals are haunting and drenched in reverb, which suits the music well. Next up we have "Hero's Death," which sounds like a combination of Pink Floyd circa 1967 and proto-doom metal band Pentagram in the early 70's, and it actually works quite well. The vocals on this one are a bit "off" so to speak, so if you are into Krautrock you will take this as part of its charm, if not you may cringe and run. After repeated listens it definitely grows on you, as does the whole album.

Finally, we have the second half of the album closed with a two part track, "Encyclopedia Terrae." The epic song is an instrumental psychedelic paradise with lots of freaky workouts reminiscent of early Pink Floyd and Ash Ra Temple. It closes with a spoken word story, which is very "of the time" so to speak. It talks about the "killing and fighting" of mankind and how a man built a time travel machine to go into the future to try and escape it, and fails, suggesting (accurately, unfortunately) that it is part of human nature to be violent.

One of the things that struck me most was how well the album sounds. The recording and production is very good for 1972 West Germany, and gives this one a little bit of a boost in the process. It is certainly not a ground breaking masterpiece by any means, but a very good offering of truly psychedelic Krautrock from the early 70's. Mythos would completely revamp its line up after its debut, save Stephan Kaske, and their follow up, "Dreamlab," is not as strong in my opinion. I give their self-titled debut 4 stars.